Voices of Rural Wisconsin Part One: The Call of the Land
Bill Ferraro
Bill Ferraro is the tan and fit, sixty-seven-year-old owner and operator, along with wife Claudia, of Apple Hill Orchard in the town of Bayfield. Ferraro is a transplant to the Bayfield Peninsula, arriving more than three decades ago, and he says he isn't going anywhere else now. Ferraro was a U.S. Park Service employee when he arrived, stationed at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, and he is now a Town of Bayfield supervisor. Ferraro was on the town board when it established one of the state's first local purchases of development rights programs, special arrangements in which farmers are paid to sell the development rights to their properties. We sit at the family's kitchen table on an autumn day. The busy season has passed. It is cloudy but mild, and few vehicles ply the hilly road to the west. Ferraro recalls how his life changed on July 4, 1978, when he heard the call of the land.
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