Jerry Apps was born and raised on a central Wisconsin farm. He is a former county agent for the University of Wisconsin-Extension and professor emeritus for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at UW-Madison. He is the author of more than forty fiction, nonfiction and children’s books, with topics ranging from barns and cheese factories to farming with horses and the Ringling Brothers circus, and his experiences are detailed in three PBS Wisconsin documentaries: Jerry Apps: A Farm Story, A Farm Winter with Jerry Apps and The Land with Jerry Apps.