Chris Hardie

All of this early and extended appearance by winter is putting even more pressure to build the woodpile for what’s shaping up to be a very long and extended heating season.

Good luck and safe hunting to everyone in the woods this year. I’ll never forget the time, during my third hunting season, when I got my first buck.

It’s harvest season; large combines are making short work of picking, husking and shelling millions of acres of this year’s corn crop. But before combines arrived in the 1950s most of the crop was stored as cob corn in a corn crib.

Clearly the survival of dairy farms is in crisis. Are we better off with more mega-dairies and fewer smaller farms? It depends who you ask.

Do you believe in ghosts? It’s easy to be skeptical in the daylight. But when darkness falls, it’s an entirely different story.

Weather in Wisconsin has been unpredictable this year, and unusually wet. Recent snow flurries reminded of just how long and strange the trip has been.

Gardening is farming. We take the good with the bad. It’s never perfect. But this year’s harvest was particularly pitiful at the Hardie farm.

James and Margaret Hardie came to the area now known as Hardie’s Creek in 1854. Four generations have now toiled in these hills.

That 1957 baseball was a special sports memento from a special year. With one swing of the bat, Chris Hardie and his brother lost it.

These past few weeks watching, listening and celebrating the Brewers made me think of that magical Sunday afternoon in 1982.