Decline of Wheat Farming and Rise of Dairy Farms Activity #3:

Cheese Glorious Cheese (Or, A Cheesy Solution)

Goal:  Students will recognize dairying as a successor industry to wheat farming.  They will see it as an industry that had a significant cultural and economic impact on Wisconsin.

Objectives:

1)      Students will analyze an article from the March 6, 1869 Appleton Crescent.

2)      Students will be able to name at least two reasons given by the author for getting involved in cheese making.

3)      Students will be able to recognize the failure of wheat crops as a circumstance leading farmers to switch to dairying based on their synthesis of information for question 4.

4)      Students will be able to list at least two pros and at least three cons of continuing to farm wheat in the 1860s-70s.

Read the notice from the March 6, 1869 Appleton Crescent about cheese making.

1)  What seems to be the author’s point in writing this short article?

2)  Who is the intended audience?

3)  What reasons does the author give for becoming involved in cheese making?

4)  Using your own knowledge and the context of the surrounding sentences, answer the following question:  To what is the author referring when he tells farmers to “accept the situation”?

5)  Do you find this article convincing?  Why or why not?

6)  Imagine that you are a wheat farmer.  Based upon what you know about wheat farming and its decline in the 1860s and 1870s, make a list of the pros and cons of continuing to farm wheat.

This activity uses the primary source document:

Newspaper article about cheesemaking, Appleton Crescent, March 6, 1869

Click here for a printable worksheet for this activity (PDF file)
Developed by the Outagamie County Historical Society with funding from Cooperative Education Service Agency 6, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and the U.S. Department of Education. © 2006 OCHS.
Click here for a printable worksheet for this activity (PDF file)