On a Wisconsin Family Farm flings the barn doors wide open to a cast of characters that built America's Dairyland. A maternal maverick, Anna Satorie, went against cultural-norms and became the sole owner of her family's homestead in 1905. The next year, Anna married John Burich, and the couple went about building a thrifty family farm. Pioneer life was fraught with trials and tribulations as polio and tuberculosis claimed loved ones and the fabricated death of a bootlegging brother turned gangsters away from the farm. Neighbors pitched in as members of the immigrant class aided one another to construct farmsteads and support one another through unsanctioned bank loans, daring dynamite work and barn raisings. Leasing work aside, this community also threw parties met by the rooster's early-dawn crow. Corey Geiger, international agricultural journalist, pairs his rural roots and lively storytelling talents to capture six generations of local tales. Book jacket.

Only a fraction of what is known about Madison’s earliest African American settlers and the vibrant and cohesive communities they formed has been preserved in traditional sources. The rest is contained in the hearts and minds of their descendants. Seeing a pressing need to preserve these experiences, lifelong Madison resident Muriel Simms collected the stories of twenty-five African Americans whose families arrived, survived, and thrived here in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While some struggled to find work, housing, and acceptance, they describe a supportive and enterprising community that formed churches, businesses, and social clubs—and frequently came together in the face of adversity and conflict. A brief history of African American settlement in Madison begins the book to set the stage for the oral histories.