Chris Hardie

A sycamore tree growing on the Hardie farm is about 50 years old, surviving Wisconsin winters much colder than its preferred climates.

Memories are strange things at times because you never know what triggers recollections from the aging gray matter. Recently, the warm weather triggered decades-old memories of a Shetland pony named Cinnamon.

And suddenly, summer is over. Another summer that began with such high hopes that we had turned the corner on the pandemic is fading just as we face another spike in COVID-19 cases.

Whether it was at Grandma’s or Aunt Sara’s, I’ve always loved hearing stories. So, it should be no surprise that I was drawn into a career of hearing them and telling them.

One of the best things about living in Wisconsin is traveling around our beautiful state and experiencing places and activities that are not far from home.

Bit by bit, the smaller homestead farms disappear a little more each year as houses and buildings are torn down or left to decay. But if you look closely while driving through farm country you can still spot one legacy of farming that still exists in many places — the treasure troves that some may call junkyards.

Severe weather goes part and parcel with summer — and this year is no exception. Recently, tornadoes and severe thunderstorms swept through the state of Wisconsin, capping several days of unsettled weather.

If my long-running battle against woodchucks were a Hollywood sequel, I think we’d be at “Groundhog Strikes Again Chapter XXIV.”

The idea behind analog summer is we’re turning back the clock to simpler times — when our lives were not dominated as much by digital devices but by human interaction and natural experiences that don’t come from liquid-crystal displays.

It was a peaceful Sunday afternoon on the farm the day after a much-needed late-June rain. Suddenly, the sleepy midday was shattered by two loud bangs. The source of the noise? Two large limbs from an oak tree in our yard suddenly and violently plummeted to the ground.