Mineral Point (Part 4)

The farm was not an animal farm or a crop farm but a tree farm. After first planting in 1985, the plan was that we'd first start selling the trees around twelve years later, the time it takes for a white pine sapling to grow six feet tall. The Frasier Firs and Black Hills Spruces, the 'money trees' that could be sold for twice as much as the pines, would take longer to grow. Over time, the trees would help pay for my brother and I's college tuition. So said my dad in response to our complaints. It was unclear what the trees and this work would mean for my sister, however, who would be out of college by the time we started selling them. Simultaneously, as we waited for the trees to grow, the farm was enrolled in a nature conservancy program such that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources would pay us to mow the fields and maintain the land as a bird sanctuary. This meant that there was always work to do, mowing the hilly acres that weren't planted with trees. We started with one 'Persian orange' Allis Chalmers tractor, mid-size, wheels taller than my seven-year old self, but not huge like the kinds of tractors with tires as tall as a full grown man. A tractor just big enough to pull the tree planter or the large mower. Later we bought another tractor, a cherry red Case that was slightly smaller, new, and a bit easier to drive. It was primarily just for mowing the fields. Susan, who before she divorced my father, sold the farm along with tractors and left Wisconsin, preferred to drive the red one.

For the first five years or so we lived on top of the hill. The house on top of the hill was originally a manufactured home with a dug in basement. My dad did a serious remodel on it when we moved in, redoing all the walls and adding a large addition on one end that he used as his bedroom for most of the time we lived there. Adjacent to the house was a large metal building, a barn really, that we called the machine shed, and was where we kept the tractor and tree planter and all kinds of other rusty junk. A bit down the hill to the South were two barns that we didn't use much and silo that we didn't use at all. The farm used to be a cow farm and one of the barns had an upper and lower level, the upper to store hay and the lower to keep the cows. There was a little shed to process milk just off one side of the barn that my brother and I broke all the windows in the first days we set out to explore the farm. We threw rocks at the windows, one by one. I'm not sure if my dad knew we did that or just didn't mind, our fun more important than the windows in a useless building.

The other barn was a horse barn and before Susan sold her horses she kept them there, Shadowfax and Domino. From Google maps, circa 2021. The hay barn on the left side of the picture, the horse barn torn down sometime ago and replaced by what looks like a little shack with a white roof. In the center of the picture are pine trees, a mass of green as seen from above. They were planted to be Christmas trees but when my dad got too sick to manage the operation they all went to seed, growing too big to be trees anyone would want to cut down and put in their living room. 

In the lower right corner of the top view photo a hill drops sharply into a valley. On both sides of the valley we planted trees on the steep hills. The hills closest to the house were planted with Black Hill Spruces and on the opposite side, about a 10 minute walk from the house to the base of the hill, we planted pines. On top of that opposite hill was an expanse of land that levels out into trees, some small fields, and eventually a little apple orchard that produced mostly inedible apples. The farm consisted of dramatic hills that originally was 160 some acers. Most of the trees were planted on an incline of some kind as there was hardly any flat land anywhere on the farm, which is why it was available for sale in the first place. There were other fields, other rows and nooks and hills we planted, but this pictures shows the trees just South of the farm house.

The masses of concentrated green, the one on the middle left just below the road are the Black Hills Spruces, below them some rows of pines we planted later. The dark mass on the bottom center-right is a huge hill where we planted pines. The rows of trees still vaguely visible. The upper right is another field on top of a hill for pines. I remember each one of these sites while we were planting. The left and bottom trees earlier in the evolution of the farm when I was a small kid following behind the planter closing the dirt around the trees with my feet, the upper-right a bit later but tasked with the same job. I preferred to walk behind the tractor rather than sit in the planter and get covered in the cold, goopy gel we dipped the saplings roots in before we put them in the ground. 

Later, in the summers my dad would pay me and my brother and other local kids seven dollars an hour to trim the trees with large machetes. To do this he would buy us white button shirts with French sleeves from the Bargain Nook, the second-hand store that stocked returned items from the Land's End factory in Dodgeville, the next town over. The shirts often were perfectly nice but someone had made an embroidery error, getting someone's initial's wrong on the right breast pocket. The French sleeves meant that there were no buttons on the cuffs and therefore were easy to roll up or could hang loose over the hands. All this to protect us from the sun in the hot and humid Wisconsin summers. My dad seemed to be proud about these shirts, talking about their French cuffs and that they cost a few dollars with vaguely humorous enthusiasm. There is a joke there that I can understand but I'm not sure if I can explain it. 

South-Western Wisconsin is home to one of the few 'unglaciated zones' or driftless areas in North America. Meaning that the glaciers, when they ploughed over most of North American during the Ice Age didn't plough over these areas. So as, South-Western Wisconsin's features a bit more delicate and dramatic than a lot of the Mid-west, instead of large flat areas or wide, smooth hills, there are clumps of exposed rocks and cliffs and many little creeks and valleys. This picture, dated 2002 though really it was 2001, taken in the Spring, is a view from near the top of the hill where the original house was, facing south-ish towards the hill were we had first planted the most trees. 

The new buildings, built in the early 90's, the Cabin and what we called the Barn, were nicer and more intentionally designed than the old house on top of the hill. The cabin was two stories and built into the side of a hill such that the upper-floor was really the ground floor and the lower-level a basement that opened into a outdoor space that was never really used. It was sunny and warm, lots of exposed wood and a nice bathroom that had a somewhat large tub with water jets. There was only one bedroom on the upper-floor but another bed was eventually put in the lower room. The Cabin was never a place that any of us kids lived in. It was for Susan and my dad. An adult space, a kind of bachelor pad for two.

This is the only picture of the Cabin I have a digital version of, facing West, the back edge of the cabin on the left side of the image. Sterling the Jack Russel Terrier is running with a ball the size of his head. Why Sterling is running or where is going will be an eternal mystery. Andy, his running mate, a goofy Airedale can been seen in the background above to the right of Sterling, sniffing at something on the ground. They were puppies during in my eighth grade and I helped to take care of them both when they were little. In the foreground is a hitching post that I never saw used, but that's not surprising as by the time the cabin and barn were being lived in my brother and I had entered high school and didn't come to Mineral Point on the weekends, my sister already in college.