St Croix River Road Ramblings

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Thursday, September 20, 2012

River Road Ramble Saturday!!!!

C Farmall, H John Deere, two B Allis Chalmers and another H John Deere at Eureka Town Hall

Two very Old Tractors at Eureka -- from James Anderson Collection

Scenes from the Eureka Farmer's Market

Scott and Margo had a double load of pumpkins and squash


Margo had her long johns on for the cold windy day -- selling $200 worth of veggies helped warm her up!

Some color starting along Hwy 87 near the cabin
Much more down by St Croix Falls



Margo and Scott spent Saturday selling pumpkins and squash at the Eureka farmers market where a cold west wind burned their faces.  I spent most of the day at the Cushing museum visiting with the crowds of history lovers with the thermostat turned up to 70 for the day!   Lots of friends, neighbors and visitors from afar dropped in.  Cousin Sheila and Eddie from down by Milwaukee were up at Menominee for the weekend and toured on up to visit!  They said the colors were just getting underway across Wisconsin.

Got two $10 Sterling Eureka and Laketown History Society membership renewals (get a free book that sells for $10 as a premium! --  SELHS WEBSITE

The number of folks who stopped at the museum increased this year--about 60 folks, up from 50 last year.  Haven't heard how the rest of the stops did, but Eureka was busy.  Margo Scott and I joined some of my St Croix Falls HS class of 65 friends at Wolf Creek for bacon cheeseburgers baskets after the ramble.   Marcie, Shirley and Gary, Carol and Bob, and Sandy K had a great visit and caught up on lots of local happenings!  Marcie, knowing I sometimes post pro-Obama stuff on facebook   Russ' facebook timelinegave me a Romney-Ryan sign to put up.  Haven't quite figured where to stick it up yet but do plan to find a place (maybe in my big swamp along Hwy 87 ;-)   Now I have to find an Obama/Biden one to balance it out!

At sunrise Sunday morning, I took the loop around Hwy 87 and the River road from just north of the cabin at the north end of the Ramble to the Info Center in St. Croix Falls picking up the Ramble signs along the way.  The sun was coming up over a wonderfully frosty world!   Deer were out along the freshly harvested fields; crows seemed thick all along the highways, and the early sun made the early fall colors wonderful--especially in St. Croix Falls, where color is farther along then up here at the cabin.   What a colorful and quiet time, Sunday morning, for a Ramble loop tour.

The Ramble is put on by the Sterling Eureka and Laketown Historical Society, with this project headed up by Joan Swanson, assisted by Marcie Marquardt and Justin Swanson.  They do all the behind the scenes work of getting folks signed up, making tour guide and maps and encouraging others to participate.   At Wolf Creek, Donna Blair, our secretary treasurer heads up the celebration at the Methodist Church and this year David Anderson and his daughter Shaila Johnson took care of the Eureka townhall while the Farmers Market people organized that side of the event.  Others had sales, open houses and made the 7th annual even more fun than the previous ones.

The one complaint I got was that the Hanson family didn't sell apples and maple syrup this year--and I take full blame for it -- I had a knee replacement that prevented me from tapping maples (and it turns out they didn't run this year anyway), and then I got Myasthenia Gravis that laid me up and stopped me from spraying the apples at Mom's farm and although there are a lot of apples, they are extremely wormy!   I normally spray them every two weeks from June through August with Sevin--and boy did they need it this year!  The apples are so wormy, that when one falls on the ground in a sunny spot, the worms crawl out and drag it into the shade where they are more comfortable!  So next year with Margo done with cancer and with me getting my MG under conrol, we will do better.

Margo has been doing very well with her first round of chemo.  She feels almost normal most of the time (with the help of nausea medicine).  Her sodium and potassium levels tend to be low with the chemo, so she has taken to eating 3 bananas every day dipping them in a bowl of salt to bring both up to normal!  She plans to be up next Friday for the last Eureka Farmers market where she will be selling pumpkins in quantiies of 1, 3, a dozen and per ton!  Lots of them still left in the garden as well as a full sized pickup load and trailer ready to go.   Did you know that in the olden days, farmers cut up pumpkins and fed them to the cattle and horses as fall and winter food?  Excellent  for dairy cows -- where pumpkin butter comes from!

This week, Monday afternoon is Polk County Genealogy help day at the Luck Museum 1-3:30 followed at 7 pm by the Polk Genealogical monthly program  Richard Kremreiter, of Osceola, will be taking us on a tour of doing family history including his own experiences with DNA testing to find relatives.  He is a retired Methodist minister, and a very good speaker. Free and refreshments at the Luck Museum

Tuesday night is the Polk County History Society meeting and Thursday the Luck Historical Society meetings.  I will add the info for them as soon!


Website for the 7th annual River Road Hwy 87 Ramble HIstorical and Fall Color Tour of the Upper St. Croix
   The oldest road in NW Wisconsin  is celebrated with a series of open houses, sales, historical events and miscellaneous stops, tours, and beautiful fall color

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wiselhs/ramble.htm

The Map
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wiselhs/RambleMap2012.pdf
The List of Stops
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wiselhs/Ramblestops2012.pdf

Margo will be at the Eureka Farmer's market selling pumpkins and squash
Russ will be rambling in the morning and at the Cushing Museum in the afternoon
Watch for the yellow and blue signs along the road

This is the area north of St Croix Falls   This year there is an orchard at the north end, lots of garage sales. lots of food stops, and historical stops at Eureka, Wolf Creek and Cushing

FREE