The Farm on Badger Creek : Memories of a Midwest Girlhood (Paperback)

"Peggy Marxen grew up in the somewhat isolated environment of northwestern Wisconsin's Sawyer County, yet was surrounded by close-knit extended family. In 1916, after a lengthy search conducted by train and bicycle, her grandparents settled a forty next to Badger Creek, in the hilly cutover land that remained after lumberjacks harvested thousands of acres of pines. They arrived just before the creation of the Township of Meteor in 1919. In the 1920s and 1930s her parents and an uncle and aunt built homes near her grandparents and began to raise their small families. Multiple generations of her family witnessed the changes to rural Wisconsin, which changed the fabric of their lives and the lives of all in their community: new farming techniques, education, transportation, and technology, among others. Peggy's traditional farm family supplemented their subsistence herd of dairy cows by hunting and fishing and selling timber and maple syrup. Her home, like those of the neighbors, for a time lacked indoor plumbing, electricity, and a telephone. Until statewide school consolidation (when Peggy was in 5th grade), she attended a one-room schoolhouse and walked, biked, or sledded the three miles to school and back, no matter the weather. Through her girlhood eyes, Peggy Marxen traces her family's story through the best and worst of times, examining the strength of Wisconsin's small communities. Her book is a fitting tribute to her settler ancestors and a way of life now gone-and a celebration of the hardy people of northwestern Wisconsin"-- Peggy Prilaman Marxen grew up near the town of Meteor in northwestern Wisconsin's Sawyer County, isolated by geography yet surrounded by close-knit extended family. Multiple generations of her family witnessed changes to rural Wisconsin that altered the fabric of their lives and the lives of all in their community, including the introduction of new farming techniques, school consolidation, and revolutions in transportation and technology. They supplemented their subsistence herd of dairy cows by hunting, fishing, and selling timber and maple syrup. For many years, her home, like those of her neighbors, lacked indoor plumbing, electricity, and a telephone. As a young child, Peggy attended a one-room schoolhouse and walked, biked, or sledded the three miles to school and back, no matter the weather.