Putting Down Roots: Gardening Insights from Wisconsin’s Early SettlersCulture and history can be passed from one generation to the next through the food we eat, the vegetables and fruits we plant and harvest, and the fragrant flowers and herbs that enliven our gardens. The plants our ancestors grew tell stories about their way of life. Wisconsin’s nineteenth-century settlers arrived in the New World in search of new opportunities and the chance to create a new life. These European immigrants and Yankee settlers brought their traditional foodways with them—their family recipes and the seeds, roots, and slips of cherished plants—to serve as comfort food, in the truest sense. This part of our collective history comes alive at Old World Wisconsin’s re-created nineteenth-century heirloom gardens. In Putting Down Roots, historical gardener Marcia C. Carmichael guides us through these gardens, sharing insights on why the owners of the original houses—be they Yankee settlers, German, Norwegian, Irish, Danish, Polish, or Finnish immigrants—planted and harvested what they did. She shares timeless lessons with today’s gardeners and cooks about planting trends and practices, garden tools used by early settlers, popular plant varieties, and favorite flavors of Wisconsin’s early settlers, including recipes for such classics as Irish soda bread, pierogi, and Norwegian rhubarb custard. Putting Down Roots celebrates the diversity and rich ethnic settlement of Wisconsin. It’s also a story of holding fast to one’s traditions and adapting to new ways that nourished one’s family so they could flourish in their new surroundings. |
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acres Allium America apples baking Bayfield County beans beds beets boiling Brassica oleracea var Brassica rapa butter cabbage caraway carrots celeriac century chopped circa cooked County cream crops Cultivator Danish decorative dough eggs EMMERICH JR Farm section farmers Finnish flavor flour fruit GERALD H German grew grown Hafford Heirloom Gardening herbs Historical Society Press homeland Ibid immigrants Irish James Vick kale Ketola kitchen garden KLEMP Knipping Koepsell Kristen Pedersen Kvaale land lawn Mary Hafford House Master Recipe File meat milk NANCY nineteenth nineteenth-century Norwegian Norwegian-American Old World Wisconsin onion parsley peas pepper Petroselinum crispum plants Polish popular potatoes Rankinen re-created root cellar Root Vegetables rutabagas SANDRA MATSON seeds settlers soup Stir sugar sweet tablespoons teaspoon salt TERRY MOLTER traditional turnips WHI IMAGE ID winter Wisconsin Master Recipe Wisconsin unpublished manuscript women World Wisconsin Master World Wisconsin unpublished Yankee York