MADISON, WI – Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) made the following statement June 30 following the final Senate’s passage of the State Budget bill: “I am very proud of the legislature’s state budget. We made strategic investments to support the priorities of the people of Wisconsin while respecting the hard-working taxpayers we serve.
My maternal grandmother in Iowa loved her milk cows. Born in 1878, she and millions of others like her in the 19th Century nourished a tender relationship with their farm animals. In the first Federal Census in 1790, 90-some percent of the people enumerated in this country were engaged in farming of one kind of another. By the 1940 census – the last one we can have access to — the statistics were reversed, with 90-something percent of our citizens off the farms and doing something else for a living. I cherish a photo of Grandma perched on her milking stool, cheek against the flank of a cow, filling a bucket to be drunk at the next meal by her many dependents, or to make butter, or use in many other delicious ways. Such as to whip up a batch of her buttermilk “gems”. Yum! My cousin Jerry, who grew up in my grandparents’ house, would only drink the Brown Cow’s milk (a Guernsey, perhaps), not the other milker they kept at that time. I couldn’t tell the difference between the two, myself, but he had developed discriminating tastebuds and insisted on Brown Cow. On the other side of the tree, my father’s family established successful dairies in Dundee, Illinois in the mid-1800s, replicating dairies they had owned in Western Massachusetts before emigrating West.
For reasons I won’t go into, I don’t have my own Internet connection. This is usually not a problem, but it has created some awkward situations during this time of a cautious reopening of public spaces. Such was the case the other day when I was invited to attend a short webinar.
It’s been one heck of a year. Through it all, our farmers have been strong and steady. They have added extra hours onto their already long days to ensure that we have safe and healthy foods on our table each night. They also have weathered unpredictable markets, pricing, and supply issues. Producers and processors are hard workers, they give back, and they make up so much of what we value in rural communities.
We had our own homegrown Juneteenth celebration here in Plain last weekend, in a village known more for its homogeneity than diversity. The party in our neighborhood was ostensibly a birthday party for a one-year-old, but it was charming and inspiring in its inclusion of a wide variety of ages, races, and genders.
If you follow Valley Sentinel on social media, over the last few weeks you’ve seen that we have been struggling with inconsistencies and missteps with the printing company that prints the paper each week.
I just made a short visit to a place three degrees of latitude farther north. That’s not much for seasoned travelers, but it served to remind me that my home is only halfway to the equator. The farther north you go, the more the spring is compressed into a few fleeting days. (We had our share of frosty weather last month, but at least we don’t have a Great Lake messing with our temperature.)
Follow along each week on the adventures of Mark Walters, a syndicated outdoor adventure columnist who lives in Necedah, Wisconsin. He began writing his column, An Outdoorsman’s Journal, in 1989. It includes hunting, fishing, lots of canoeing and backpacking. He currently writes for around 60 newspapers on a weekly basis. He hopes you enjoy reading about his adventures!
This week’s column is all over the map. My plan was to trout fish in Florence County and sleep in the bed of my truck at night, simple, inexpensive, and adventuresome. I had obtained some information from some very good friends of mine and my plan was to fish Woods Creek and either the Pine or Popple River.
Follow along each week on the adventures of Mark Walters, a syndicated outdoor adventure columnist who lives in Necedah, Wisconsin. He began writing his column, An Outdoorsman’s Journal, in 1989. It includes hunting, fishing, lots of canoeing and backpacking. He currently writes for around 60 newspapers on a weekly basis. He hopes you enjoy reading about his adventures!
This past week I spent a lot of time in the turkey blind with Michelle Chiaro who was hoping to harvest her first turkey and with my 20-year old daughter Selina who has was hoping to harvest her ninth.
I had a busy April, but most of that was one-on-one activities with friends (or events with a defined endpoint where I couldn’t linger). Recently, though, I had the pleasure of going to a real live Event. It came complete with kids running across the lawn, adults from outside my “bubble”, delightful vintage items for sale, and lunch served by a local business. It was my new community in miniature, and the energy was infectious.