My great-great-grandmother is a Saami who married a Norwegian dairy farmer in Norway. They came to Wisconsin and were dairy farmers, as were my great-grandparents and grandparents. I love to read about their way of living. My grandparents told me what they could remember when I was a young woman. I remember how my grandfather farmed sust…
My great-great-grandmother is a Saami who married a Norwegian dairy farmer in Norway. They came to Wisconsin and were dairy farmers, as were my great-grandparents and grandparents. I love to read about their way of living. My grandparents told me what they could remember when I was a young woman. I remember how my grandfather farmed sustainably with twenty cows, pigs, and chickens. He grew his own corn and moved the cows around the pastures in good weather, then baled hay to feed them through the winter. They wasted nothing, and he spread the vast hill of manure he shoveled from the troughs behind the cows in the winter and spread it on the fields in the spring. Grandma had a considerable garden and canned vegetables and fruit from the trees for the winter.
Sadly, my children didn't have those memories because Big Ag was putting small dairy farms out of business, so my father became a turret lathe operator to support us.
I just watched a video about Peter Thiel, how he became a billionaire, and a way of thinking called the "Dark Enlightenment," which is the opposite of how the Enlightenment philosophers thought about freedom and democracy. Scare stuff.
My maternal grandparents were not "Swedish" but were Swedish dual citizens, spoke Swedish and my mother learned enough to converse in Svenska. She was born in Pennsylltucky in 1914, but I had two uncles who were born in Sweden.
On my paternal side, my gradma spoke Enflish, Yiddish, and other languages with a Welsh accent. My dad could speak Welsh.
Virtually everyone I knew as a kid were "picklers." My dad's family were in the produce business. Everyone had cellars filled with produce they had canned.
My great-great-grandmother is a Saami who married a Norwegian dairy farmer in Norway. They came to Wisconsin and were dairy farmers, as were my great-grandparents and grandparents. I love to read about their way of living. My grandparents told me what they could remember when I was a young woman. I remember how my grandfather farmed sustainably with twenty cows, pigs, and chickens. He grew his own corn and moved the cows around the pastures in good weather, then baled hay to feed them through the winter. They wasted nothing, and he spread the vast hill of manure he shoveled from the troughs behind the cows in the winter and spread it on the fields in the spring. Grandma had a considerable garden and canned vegetables and fruit from the trees for the winter.
Sadly, my children didn't have those memories because Big Ag was putting small dairy farms out of business, so my father became a turret lathe operator to support us.
I just watched a video about Peter Thiel, how he became a billionaire, and a way of thinking called the "Dark Enlightenment," which is the opposite of how the Enlightenment philosophers thought about freedom and democracy. Scare stuff.
Take care and happy holidays.
My maternal grandparents were not "Swedish" but were Swedish dual citizens, spoke Swedish and my mother learned enough to converse in Svenska. She was born in Pennsylltucky in 1914, but I had two uncles who were born in Sweden.
On my paternal side, my gradma spoke Enflish, Yiddish, and other languages with a Welsh accent. My dad could speak Welsh.
Virtually everyone I knew as a kid were "picklers." My dad's family were in the produce business. Everyone had cellars filled with produce they had canned.