Counties of Wisconsin; 6; Outagamie County

At the coordinates of 44 degrees 25 minutes north latitude and 88 degrees 40 minutes west longitude you would be in one of the counties of Wisconsin. Located in the Fox River Valley is out again. An important manufacturing and agricultural county with a population of about one hundred twenty thousand. Early settlers found stands of both hardwoods and softwoods. They also found the Fox River which drains Lake Winnebago and passes through the county to Green Bay. These elements have played a key part in the development of this county. The largest city is Appleton which is the location of Lawrence University and the

Institute of paper chemistry. At the courthouse we recorded conversations with residents and members of the University of Wisconsin Extension staff. For each activity use are widespread. First a conversation with Marion Whitman Shelley Curtis and 4H youth agents though Shaw and Barbara help and Mary and I know that you've been involved in a program here and I thank you county for quite a few years and that you have six daughters and then in the program I'm wondering what kinds of changes you've seen take place in a voice program. Well there have been very very many. First of all the number and kinds of projects have changed greatly during the years. Now I believe there's over 60 projects available to the members and. They go from not only the clothing and dairy and foods but into aerospace and weather. And almost anything of interest to anyone.

And there are many more activities for the members to get into. We also have gotten into the urban areas of the county and we have several clubs from in Appleton in the surrounding communities. I want to give the county at the present time 600 volunteer I've got leaders and 160 junior leaders. I just mean I'd be interested in how you feel as to what do foreach leaders actually do on a volunteer basis. First of all there is several different kinds of leaders we have the main leaders tragic leaders and activity leaders. Leaders would probably work with the members or the officers in your club and just keep that. A quiet nation between the county office and and the club. The project leaders will work with the

members in their respective projects teaching them new methods. You know things like this an activity early years would. Help in the club such as a recreation leader would help members plan recreation for the year or community service leader would work with community service projects at the Congress decided on and shell a youth leadership is a very popular project in the junior leader programme. How do you feel about your leadership in foreach. You can leadership gives you the opportunity to work with both adult leaders and the younger members of the club in your local club. You can help. Organized groups and programs and it helps teach the younger ones to work together and get along with each other and working

with the adults. It's mostly through the project training meaning where the youth and the adult leaders get together and plan a program on a certain project for the year. So when you mention that you've been involved in clothing and youth leadership what are the kinds of projects have been available to you. My project. For example this year cooling arts and crafts the painting and junior leadership. And clothing. I know me and clothing has taught me that when I go to find Michael what kind of a quality to look for in the club and pull till I do a lot of things given them for the extension for each youth program. Not only works just with the for each aspect but there

are some other ways in which the point you are teaching in the county are involved with you. For example this past week we just finished working with 27 hundred fixed greet you throughout the county in our annual conservation field event. That with fun food by a federal local and state agency with university expansion being one of the sponsoring agency here thinks creators from throughout the county were involved enough field trip experience learning to recognize and appreciate natural resources as it pertains to their life. And again we all feel I can work with church groups other youth groups in general as it relates to youth development. Voice program and I'm a gamey County has expanded now to forty four clubs. We have six very active clubs in the city of Appleton itself and other urban parts of the county. I think that both Marion and Shelley as they work with the boys

program all agree that foreach does provide a good opportunity for parents and other interested adults to work with to work together to influence the development of the young people in their communities. One of the county's dairy farmers is Jon Voight. He talked with the agricultural agent Russ Luko here in the Fox or valley area. One of our large industries is the paper industry. Because of the Fox River flowing through the area. Yeah the leading agricultural industry is the dairy industry. We have approximately 12 hundred dairy farms in gamey County. And of that number we have three hundred twenty five that are on a DHL a testing program. And today we'd like to visit with them one of those. TH I members Mr. John report from the Qana area. John I wonder if you could tell us about your own dairy farming operation. My

dairy farm operation consists of about forty four milk cows. And back about 20 years ago when I first started on the DHS program I had heard every job about 350 pounds. Today we're milking about 50 head of cattle. And last year my DHEA our herd average was eighteen thousand five hundred fifty seven pounds of milk and it's six hundred thirty five pounds of fat. Now this is quite an improvement from when I started on the DHS program. Now certainly this is a real good accomplishment done during say these 20 years. And do you think you would have been able to reach this goal if you were not on the detainee testing program John. No I don't think I would have. There's a couple factors that. Bring him to a point here and one of them is that once you

become testing and test your cattle you realize some of the good cattle compared to the others during the years have not only increased my herd but also by the testing program I have. Look for better cattle. And I have went into registered hosting during this period of time. Now today we have a complete registered herd and I think most of it is due because they started out on a testing program. So in other words you really became interested in the Holstein green and I'm after getting started on the detainee testing program. Right. The testing program was really only the beginning part of it. Once you started testing and finding out what the difference of the cattle are you became more interested in individuals and families of cows. And we were already mating that cattle at that time. But then

it was so near to the registered line that I decided that it would probably be better if I went in to register cattle in that. Being a benefit from what. We do have a complete herd of edge to cattle as I mentioned and we also have fire sirens in different API studs which I certainly never would have happened if one of them that started this program Russ Luko turn the conversation to an area which is of concern to residents and many of Wisconsin's counties. John where you live north of Qana you know what's still in the rural area. But we are feeling the pressures for urban development out there. I wonder if you have any feelings on the preservation of agricultural lands for agricultural purposes. I sure do. This is getting to be a real important factor out there in the country. We have people just moving out right left and we're going to get squeezed

into a point where we don't really feel we're living out in the country anymore. Some time ago there was a group that wanted to buy 40 acres right next to me and develop it into a sort of a housing area. And if this continues it isn't going to be too long or we won't have any farmland to operate our farms any more. Now you know what again the county if you look back 25 years or if you look forward to another 25 years. We're just kind of wondering how many farms there will be left if the expansion is as great now as it was say twenty five years ago. Up to this stage I really think that there is a time coming when we are going to have to set aside this land is going to be used just directly for farming and not for building of homes. I'm sure that I get a lot of opposition on this point because of the fact that there are some retired fires that still would like to sell out some of their lots and so on and reap the harvest off of

that. That last dollar off that acre of land. But really when you look forward to another 25 years I'm sure that there's going to be a time coming when we don't have farmland. And I think this is real important for our county. Although there are many family farms in Wisconsin corporate farms are also an important part of the economy. Less kills Dunk's spoke with farm management agent she would hate us. We work with less and as his banker Mr. Freeland Russia was quite often asked for advice. And quite often we've enlisted a lot of the people from the university Bruns Bob leaning darling he was. Gray Davis from engineering and so many other people Dr. Howard Larson from Marshfield and I I guess I'd like to turn it over to you last and I know that you're the man that does the work out there and you have quite a force of man three four men that are working there even had one girl that melted college that made women seem to do better there. When you have a string of 200 colors being male you

probably could beat any minute and I maybe you could give any fortification to what I've said there and tell us their year if there are how you think that extension should act maybe we haven't helped you enough there last. Well thank you Hubert I think extension has really helped us terrifically I would believe we would not care to go into an expansion project of this size without their assistance. I guess we have to have somebody that we can fall back on ask questions when we don't want to answers ourselves and I think the people that you were just mentioning just helped us tremendously we. Have used many of their recommendations and have avoided I guess many pitfalls because of their help on such a large farm. Additional people are needed. Let's describe the arrangements in his operation. Since this is a corporate farm there is stock available to women

and they are given given stock as a Christmas gift and each individual is kind of in check in charge of a certain area of the operation and if he accepts this responsibility he is able to go ahead on his own and really make decisions in those areas and only come to me to discuss them. See what I think about them and I think you kind of have to. I guess like I read someplace I or a good man and let him do its thing on. Don't interfere with it. What is routine now about a year ago you had 80 columns in these columns of course were in a priest all operation. I'm the home farm where your mother has. And then we visited with Dr. Larson who is a dairy specialist at Marshfield. He really I guess maybe in a way discouraged you a little bit but it must that discouraged me too much because you still went ahead because he said that when you

move cows into this large operation you have no idea whether they're getting enough food you don't see I'm eating all of a sudden you notice that one cow is getting thinner she's sort of quit milking you handling your cows in groups. How do you keep on top of this when you have $200 and you're maintaining more than a 12000 pound milk average I guess you'd be pushing 13000. There's been very little drops and you have this large increase in Kona right. Yes we do have a herd divided into groups. We have dry cows. We also have this rehab first and then group. We have the high producing group which would be probably the cars that can have the most recent cause I can't stand there probably tell that production dropped a little. Oh I would guess 50 pounds then we have a medium group where we are. That would be a production probably in that area would be from 50 to

probably 30 and we have to look at it was Ingo which is the balance. Of the cars before they were dryer Elsevier colored collars or whatever the case may be. And as far as keeping an eye on my guests takes good herdsman ship and you know are we have a wager that one is observant and pays attention to the amount of milk in the jar from a particular cow. Is a pretty good idea how the car's doing out there but I know the left is A.H. a calf and its forage and a little earlier it came up that we're going to have a jewel and this large operation left nearly entirely on corn félix with very small amount he lives and he rents most of his land and operating I believe over five hundred acres totally owning maybe about 150 of that which is under your control and and so I guess that this is a thing that we expect to see 10 years from now.

And those of us in extension that I don't look at. Relishing late and I can go out and work with less because this is the way either the series producer Ralph Johnson had some questions for Russ Luko Ross who talked a good deal about agriculture for each and other activities. What about manufacturing. Well this is the paper making area of Wisconsin here in the Fox Valley area some 10 or 12 Paper mails and certainly that is the primary manufacturing industry that we have with the paper mills and then the other processing plants that finished the paper product into newspaper print or magazine type paper and these kinds of other uses for paper. So in the county the workforce employed by the paper manufacturing industry somewheres in the neighborhood of 35000 people.

Is there any activity between the extension office in a way research and the paper industry. Well not directly between our office. We have worked with the people in the forestry department the extension forester and one of the paper mail son trying to utilize bark as a waste product as a as a bedding for dairy dairy cattle and dairy farms. There were several years when this was in very short supply. And so the Forestry Department did undertake a research project with one of the paper mills on this particular phase. Lorraine cure ster and Carole Girty discussed the homemaker program with home economist Alice Schultz the family I mean program does try to enhance the quality of decision making and increase the knowledge and skills which are needed to carry out these decisions. We like to feel that we're programming around societal and current issues

not just every day. So I think cooking type of things Carol how do you feel that extension homemakers has helped you in in this regard. Well I joined the homey group when I came to Appleton just to meet people foolishly. And through the homemakers I got involved in the extension and through the extension in different community projects and a lot of people who enjoyed working with on different projects here in the county. And I know that when you first came here you used it as a tool to get to know people but it it sort of snowballed and it's here to continue. I always made family life chairman this year and got involved in different projects eating young people in the school groups and I thoroughly enjoyed it. That's good and I know that Lorraine you have a family and of course some of the projects that we have done pertain to ideas that helped you develop and your children along the way too. But when you became vice president of extension homemakers are you now as a nation what new

types of duties did you assume there. Well I first of all the spring banquet chairman which really gave me a broad view of overextension and their programs and leadership which was very important to me and I can carry that back to my home also. Helped me in the whole area learning more. The county you know the different programs that they have to offer. We really like to know that the extension aren't as Asian as a whole and this pertain to all programs that family and I can particular helps to increase the ability to use and participate in the development of community services and I think both of you have illustrated this in what you have said some of the projects that have been carried on by the extension homemakers as the main instrument or a volunteer service with the. The library survey. Do you want to talk a little bit about that. I mean. The library survey was conducted for the surrounding

areas vamped would turn Appleton has their own survey and the purpose was to find out how the library facilities were reaching the county people really right. I guess it ended up that they didn't feel that the services and I really had to be expanded by the county to reach their needs. Another one that was real active and I think you know retained greatly to our county was a vision screening of the young people in the county. It's true in the rural areas there was a great need for this help a lot of the women got involved in and took the training necessary then went into their schools in their areas and worked with the young preschool children and gave them the necessary eye screening test which enabled the. County to know just what was needed and would help the young children before they started school. Take care of all their vision handicaps so that when they started school in the kindergarten grade that they were ready to use their education and learn well.

It's really mainly to determine amblyopia and you do work closely with the nurses of each school. Another project that is going to our county and one that we try to carry out in different parts of the county each year is the estate planning series and either you attend to that one or both Lorraine and I did and my husband also went with me and we