Jerry Apps was born and raised on a central Wisconsin farm. He is a former county extension agent and professor emeritus for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Today he works as a rural historian, full-time writer, and creative writing instructor.

Jerry is the author of more than forty fiction, nonfiction, and children's books with topics ranging from barns, one-room schools, cranberries, cucumbers, cheese factories, and the humor of mid-America to farming with horses and the Ringling Brothers circus. He and his wife, Ruth, have three grown children, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandson. They divide their time between their home in Madison and their farm, Roshara, in Waushara County.