Left: Old Blackie 
pulled the wagon 
carrying Azalia 
Hesler, with her 
children Grace and 
Frank in the 1900s, 
after the horse had 
replaced the ox. 
Below: Wild marsh 
hay was an 
important feed crop 
and just about 
every county 
farmer made it 
until the 1940s. 
 
use of land--usually marshes--where wild hay 
could be grown. 
Wild hay was so important that in one dry year 
in the 1870s, farmers from Dell Prairie cut hay on 
the Quincy marshes, hauled it to the river, then 
shipped it home on Wisconsin Dells tourist 
steamboats. So much wild hay moved down 
Cottonville Road from marshes in Preston and 
Colbum to farms in Strongs Prairie that it became 
 
known as "the Norwegian hay road." From the 
1850s on, county farmers harvested wild hay in 
good years and depended on it when the cultivated 
crop failed. 
Like all pioneer farms, the Temple operation 
was all but self-sufficient. Family members had all 
the bread they could eat from home-grown wheat, 
meat from cattle, hogs and poultry, butter from 
their cows. They raised potatoes for market and 
 
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