Wisconsin Farms and Farmers Markets: Tours, Trails and Attractions

Wisconsin Farms and Farmers Markets: Tours, Trails and Attractions

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Wisconsin Farms and Farmers Markets: Tours, Trails and Attractions
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(as of Jan 23,2025 00:00:39 UTC – Details)

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From the Publisher

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Do you love food and supporting small businesses?

Then this book is for you!

The best Wisconsin has to offer, from every corner of the state!

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Southeast — Milwaukee Public Market Outdoor Urban Market

Often compared to Seattle’s Pike Place Market, this year-round hub (all indoors) for food vendors and grocers—there is even a wine shop with a wine bar (Thief Wine)—broadens its scope with the Outdoor Urban Market. Growers, artists, and makers set up along St. Paul Avenue. Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., early June through Labor Day weekend. Looking for culinary inspiration, or tips on canning and pickling? Cooking classes are held inside the market.

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Southwest — Gander Family Farms

This beef farm operates a store (first and third Saturdays of the month from 10 a.m. to noon) and farm stand (summers). Its beef boxes offer half or full shares of roasts, steaks, ground beef, and specialty cuts. Included recipes help drum up a delicious dinner and customers also like the boxes because they do not have to commit to an entire steer, but can still support a local meat farm. Themed boxes of beef include a Bone Broth Kit and a Grilling Kit.

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Northeast — Fragrant Isle Lavender Farm, Shop & Le Cafe

This is the Midwest’s largest lavender farm with twenty thousand lavender plants, spanning a dozen varieties on 21.7 acres since its 2012 opening. Walking into the boutique, you will spot vignettes of retail products—from books about French culture to cute ballerina dresses—guided by lavenders’ calming scent. The café sells delicious treats and beverages, including a lavender Rosé slushie (frosé). It is rare for someone to spend less than an hour here, what with the English-style lavender gardens, white wrought-iron structures, and beckoning Adirondack chairs.

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Northwest — Green Light Farm

Since 2016, first-generation farmers Maggie Sheehan and Ben Olson have grown three acres of forty different flower varieties. Drop by on a Saturday between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. (Memorial Day through Labor Day) for “self-serve, grab-and-go flowers.” DIY buckets of blooms can also be picked up. Workshops coach in growing flowers and floral arranging, while an exchange program through WOOFF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) grants weekly room and board to travelers in exchange for twenty-five hours of work. Dried flower wreaths are sold in November and December.

Introduction – Today’s Farmers Market Vendor

The ages-old image of a farmer—just like Iowan painter Gr ant Wood’s American Gothic of an elderly male in denim overalls—has been replaced. Nowhere is that truer than at your local farmers market. It is here you will see, in full view, how different cultural and ethnic groups around the state have made a career out of farming, baking, gardening or another artisan-food craft.

I can parlez en francais with a French nun ordering macarons at the Kenosha Harbor Market, bite into a Belgian-style waffle baked to a crisp by a young couple inside their trailer parked at Milwaukee’s South Shore Market, or get tips for an upcoming Greece vacation from Mavra Papadatos of Mavra’s Greek Olive Oil at the Greenfield Farmers Market. Mavra grew up on a farm in Amalias Elias, Peloponnisos, Greece, where the olives to craft her oil are grown and then pressed. The more you shop these markets, the clearer it becomes that the “meat and potatoes” assumption—and our crushes on cheese—the coasts have about the Midwest are so not true. We like to eat eclectically here—even more if we cook it ourselves, folding in farm-fresh ingredients.

These are only the cultural experiences at markets near my home in Southeastern Wisconsin, of course. If I travel farther west, into Green County or the Driftless Region, Swiss roots will likely play into a farmer’s genetic make-up and I may very well find alpine-style cheeses for sale, too. The vendors who set up shop at Madison’s Capitol Square each Saturday morning may be Mennonite bakers or cheesemakers who learned the craft from their Swiss father (Willi Lehner of Bleu Mont Dairy).

Throughout the state is a rich tapestry of Hmong farmers continuing their family’s tradition selling alongside Caucasian couples who put everything on the table to pursue their farming dreams. They seed, sow, and till in tandem each spring, working vigorously all summer before winding down with the last root crops in late November.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Globe Pequot (July 26, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 149305581X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1493055814
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.58 x 0.5 x 8.61 inches

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