My research question was how people got to Wisconsin, why, and how did they like it when they got settled in?  However, I think that my question has changed just a bit because my research has become more complex.  My question from my research now is, how was life like in Wisconsin in the 1800’s and how has agriculture developed?  From my research over the past couple of weeks I have learned what life was like for three different families that moved to Wisconsin it the 1800’s.  I have learned what their struggles were, what advancements were made, and what they did to make ends meet financially.  From the research of the families, I continued to look into the history of agriculture and lumbering.  By continuing my research into the history of agriculture I was able to find lots of information about what happened with the crops that they started growing, and how we developed into the large dairy state that we are.  I’m just starting to finish up my research with the history of lumbering in Wisconsin because that had a huge impact on Wisconsin’s past.  Overall, I believe that this was an amazing journey to feel like I was stepping into someone else’s shoes.  It has made me appreciate the small things in life that we take for granted every day like internet, cell phones, cars, and technological advancements in medicine and agriculture.  However, I am still left with a few questions.  I still wonder about some aspects of the family life, including their education development.  When did they children start going to school?  How many grade levels were there?  Also, with the lumbering industry I wonder how many fatalities there were because it was very dangerous, and what did they do after the lumbering industry collapsed?

My third source that I chose to write about was from two website articles.  One was from  Wisconsin Historical Society website and it was an article about farming and rural life.  The other website was from the Historical U.S. Agriculture Collections and an article of Wisconsin History of Agriculture.  I selected these sources to get a deeper understanding of what farming was like back in the 1800’s.  From these websites, I would like to expand my knowledge and find out what the farmers started planting, what worked and what failed?  How did things develop in terms of what the planted and the foods that came from them.  This source will offer me a complete, and complex understanding of farming and rural life.

This website appeals to the audience by using logos.  The website shows this by telling us the causes and effects from different farming techniques and different crops.  It also provides us with a problem and solution.  For example, the wheat famine.  The wheat famine was a sometimes said to be a blessing in disguise because it lead farmers to figure out what they had to do to keep their soil fertilized and retain good nutrients.  One website was created by the Wisconsin Historical Society and one by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) which makes them very credible sources.  These sources are intended for older people to read, perhaps college students or just people looking to find out more information about Wisconsin’s farming history.  They both consist of a lot of text which makes it unappealing to youth.  The source from the USDA and NRCS was last revised in 2013, which makes it very current and useful to people using it for research today.  I was not able to find exactly when the other article was published but I do know it was sometime after 1996.  The purpose of these articles is to inform people about the history of rural life and agriculture in Wisconsin.  This includes a large audience perhaps from college students, to researchers, to farmers, or to agriculture teachers in high school.

At the first part of my research I thought everyone that immigrated to Wisconsin started as farmers.  As I read this article, I realized they did not.  Early European settlers who arrived in the 19th century were drawn into the underground mineral wealth.  Although, this period did not last very long.  Everything began to change when land was surveyed and people began purchasing their own land which lead to Wisconsin’s dairy life.  Wheat was the first and most important cash crop in Wisconsin because it was easy to grow and inexpensive.  However, despite the early success disaster struck Wisconsin wheat farmers when a disease called wheat rust and tiny insects known as chinch bugs destroyed crops.  The Wisconsin State Agricultural Society was founded in 1851 because of the crisis of the wheat farming.  Through this, the society let farmers report what happened and the conditions of their wheat farm.  This encouraged towns to hold state fairs and cattle shows to encourage the importance of soil rotation.    To keep a profit, farmers had to switch to something else.

What the farmers didn’t know is that this famine was perhaps a blessing in disguise.  They didn’t know that they had to rotate crops to keep nutrition balance in check.  The Civil War stimulated Wisconsin’s wheat production but it also provided a time for experimentation and specialization with other crops.  Many German-American families began dairying on farms abandoned by people who had left to seek unspoiled what lands on the Great Plains.  Many Wisconsin farmer’s began to turn to corn, oats, and hay to feed their cows that produced milk, cheese, and butter. From this came along milk production that created a need for cooperation among the farmers in processing and marketing.  Cheese factories were establish, and over time through years of education farmer’s developed new procedures for making fresh wholesome milk.  The Wisconsin’s Dairymen’s Association was founded in 1872.  This established boards of trade for dairy products and negotiated favorable freight rates for Wisconsin dairy products.   In 1890, Wisconsin ranked first, second, and third nationally in the production of rye, barley, and oats. One other big farming product was the production of cranberries and tobacco.

Green peas, sweet corn, cucumbers, snap beans, lima bean,s and beets also became very important commercial crops in the 1880s and Wisconsin soon led the nation in the production of vegetables for processing. As many farms were developing and prospering in the south, in the northern counties logging became a huge industry.  The lumbering industry in northern Wisconsin provided farmers with winter employment and profit.  However, by the end of the century,  exploitation of the forests eroded the the North’s economic base.  Overall, Wisconsin still remains to be a leader in agriculture in the nation but recently it is on the rise to become more of corporate farming rather than family farming.

I believe that these two sources were very beneficial for me.  I’m glad that I decided to pull information from both sources because then they gave me a well-rounded idea of what exactly agriculture was like back then and how it developed over time.  I believe both of these sources are very credible because they are from the USDA, NRCS, and the Wisconsin HIstorical Society.  I don’t have any doubts about anything that I read, I believe that the development of the different crops was a long, hard process of trial and error.

I learned that things didn’t come easy to the new comers.  They had to work very hard for what they wanted and had to put in a lot of time and effort just to make ends meet.  It was interesting to me that cranberries and tobacco were two major crops in Wisconsin with diary farming.  From the U.S. Agriculture Collections website, it only included a little bit about the history of lumbering.  For that reason, I will continue my research into the lumbering industry.  I feel like that was also a very, very important part of Wisconsin’s past and it provided many jobs for people that came to the area.