Deerfield

It was amazing how there were so many shapes of barns, and so many things were grown under those roofs.

–Emily

Perry Halverson owns 500 acres of land. Right now, the “allotment” he is allowed by the government for farming tobacco is only three acres, but he farms tobacco on neighbors’ land as well. (Allotments are used to prevent over- or underproduction.)

Tobacco farming requires lots of people. First Perry buys the plants from a greenhouse up in Michigan. Then he plants them using a tobacco planter. The planter is pulled by a tractor. There are four seats, two small ones and two large ones. There are two wheels and two people feed each wheel. You take a plant and put it in a basket in the wheel. The wheel then turns and plants the tobacco.

Different kinds of tobacco are planted in different places. The type grown in Wisconsin is type 55. You couldn’t grow, say, type 21 here because it’s not adapted to our climate.

After you harvest the tobacco, which is done with a special ax, you use a spear to pierce the tobacco leaves and tie them to lathe boards. Then you hang the boards between logs that are strung all the way up to the top of the barn. The barn has open slits to give the tobacco more air so it dries out.

–Anna

You have to have proper tools for this kind of work. Even if you’re a professional, it takes about two-and-a-half to three hours to prepare the land and plant an acre of tobacco. So imagine how long it will take to plant one acre if you don’t have tools!

–Nick

In Deerfield, we met a class of other fourth-graders. We went to the dance studio for polka lessons. Some of us danced with people in different classes, but nobody danced with the opposite gender.

–Emily

The polka is a dance people do at weddings. There are three kinds of polkas, and we learned the easiest one. It was still a little bit hard. In this dance you stand on your toes for the first part and they start to hurt.

–Emma

The polka is a very common and old dance. It is a really simple dance. You mostly use your legs.

–Nick

Auctioneering is not often thought of as a professional job, but it is. You go to school and learn things, and you have to get a license just like any other major profession. To learn to be an auctioneer Marvin went to a two-week school called Taylor’s Worldwide Auctioneer School. People came from all over the world. Marvin had roommates from Japan, Brazil, and a couple of other countries. At the school they were taught how to talk fast. One way they did this was by saying, “The big brown bug bit the big brown bear” as fast as they could.

–Anna

Marvin told us that a lot of things can be worth a lot of money. Someone might pay a lot of money for a very old penny, or one from a time like the Great Depression when there weren’t very many pennies. One time when a guy died, they were taking stuff out of his house and found a painting by Vincent Van Gogh. They sold it for more than a million dollars.

–Brett

Lenny Anderson is a storyteller who has lived in Deerfield since 1936. He said that in 1880, Deerfield was a mile north of where it is now. When he was a kid, they had a train that brought the mail. He said the train would be going really fast, and someone threw the mail out the window. They stuck hooks out of the train and grabbed the mail waiting to be sent.

There used to be a lot of Norwegians in Deerfield. A lot of the Norwegians grew tobacco. Lenny once worked in a tobacco warehouse, selling tobacco for $1.80 a pound.

–Brett

In 1936 Lenny was born in Deerfield. I think the workers in Deerfield broke the surveyor, and that is how they got the name Deerfield.

–Pakou

The Holy Notes is a band with three women and two men. They play blues and gospel. They really only play gospel, because if you have a saxophone, it really ain’t blues.

–Marcus

The band has been playing together for one year. One of them learned how to play their instrument in fourth grade. One of the members learned how to play the accordion and other instruments before she learned how to play the bass. One of the members decided to play guitar because he heard his friend playing guitar and he thought it sounded good.

–Dylan

Everyone in the band sings. They normally sing religious songs and songs about the blues or happiness. Their music was wonderful, and I want to see them again.

–Erika