Editor’s note: This yarn is divided into two parts. Read next week’s edition for part two.
Editor’s note: When I began publishing excerpts from my great-grandfather’s farm diaries several months ago, I mentioned that all 60-plus volu…
A snowball fight was a big winter thrill in the 1950s and 1960s at Oak Grove School two miles northwest of Seneca, Wisconsin, in the heart of …
My father came from a large family of 10 boys, with a sister for each, and grew up on a dairy farm atop the Niagara Escarpment in Calumet Coun…
What is the No. 1 topic most of us talk about, gripe about, joke about, worry about, pray about and occasionally even sing about? Why, the wea…
Ever since I was seven years old, I worked around the farm in my father’s shadow. As a seven year old, the first thing Dad taught me to do was…
Years ago I was glancing through an old family photo book and ran into a Kodak of my father Harold when he was a Roaring Twenties teenager sit…
Sometimes good luck comes in threes. Christmas of 1953 brought new sleds to me and my two brothers, Phillip and Bob. These sleds were the Flex…
The Country Today is seeking submissions for this page. Stories can include accompanying photographs. We also welcome old photos for The Count…
I was in my teens when this crazy Christmas happened. Now it’s 55 years later, and we still laugh about it. Dad and Mother are gone, but they …
It was Christmas morning the year of 1967 and four-year-old Melissa May was all excited as she sat on the couch with her coat and cap on, anxi…
Remembering back on past Christmas mornings, my mind eventually goes to the time when I was too grown up for Santa Claus but still appreciated…
At Christmas time of 1961, I was living with Mom and Dad and two sisters. We lived in rural Richfield on our family farmstead. My brother Jim …
My wife and I were married in Lima, Peru, in January of 2009 one day before my wife’s birthday. I figured having the two dates together would …
On December 27, 1872, my-great grandfather wrote the following entry in his diary:
Editor’s note: The following Yarn was submitted as part of a previous Christmas Memories contest held by The Country Today.
At Thanksgiving farm folk say a prayer for the potato crop. It’s required not to forget the corn, the soybeans and the tomato patch. A prayer …
“I’ll hold my breath, you count,” I said, sucking in a huge lungful of air and puffing out my cheeks. My sister knew the drill and she started…
The Country Today will be running its Christmas Memories Contest again this year.
It was back before I’d ever uttered the words, “Back in my day.”
One of the nicest aromas from my childhood was the smell of fresh baked bread on a cold winter’s day. It always seemed that the crust on each …
My great-grandfather seldom missed a daily entry in his six-decade long farm. Many entries tell little more than the weather and what he paid …
Dad was blessed with five daughters and one son. I am number 3. That meant as a farm family in the ‘50s and ‘60s the girls did all the farm wo…
In about 1934 when my Dad was six years old, his father decided to buy a farm in Cataract, Wisconsin. He had three “strapping big boys,” so he…
When our parents told us they had bought a farm on Goat Back, all six of us were disappointed. We lived close to Pepin, and even though we had…
Recently, while extracting a pan of hot, caramel apple bars from the oven, I couldn’t help but reflect upon the fall bounty harvested in the 1…
In my last appearance on these pages, I introduced Country Today readers to my great-grandad, Dave Wood (1840-1927) and his 63 years of daily …
I grew up in east central Minnesota in the small town of Almelund. My dad worked as a breeder for American Breeders Service. He always had dai…