2022 Farm/Art DTour Guide

1–10 Oct 2022

event guide

COntents

From the Director

5 Layered by Time by Curt Meine, Rudy Molinek, Eric Carson, and Marcia Bjornerud 6 Re-Arrival by Regina M. Flanagan

JOin us A

golden October morning begins with a slight chill, ideal for a ride in the country by bike, car or horse-drawn wagon. Today, hay bales are sculptures. Fields are performance stages. The music of fiddles harmonizes with the moos of cows. Curious, large objects made by artists from around the country are hosted by farmers in their hayfields after the last harvest.

From October 1-10, the Wormfarm team—along with participating landowners, collaborators and local businesses—invite you to travel the Farm/Art DTour, a selfguided excursion through 50 miles of scenic farmland in rural Sauk County, with trailheads in Plain and Sauk City, WI (where you’ll pick up your DTour Map!)

See artwork inspired by the land, hear songbirds and pasture performances, smell fresh cut hay and campfires, discover roadside poetry around the next bend in the road, and enjoy an abundance of local food & beverages. Come closer and get curious. We guarantee

CONTRIBUTORS

Roxanne Aubrey, Madigan Burke, Molly Costello, Dasha Kelly Hamilton, Paul Littleton, Ashley Lusietto, Philip Matthews, Donna Neuwirth, Martina Patterson, Laurel Radzieski, Jay Salinas, Katie Schofield, Austin Segrest, Katrin Talbot Cover Design: Cricket Design Works Design Layout: Adunate Word & Design

Fermentation Fest in the Witwen Tabernacle, 2021

From the Director

This year marks the ninth iteration of the Farm/Art DTour, “DTour” for short (no apostrophe), pronounced 'deetour.' Why the goofy spelling? The thinking back in 2011 was to underscore the another-way-ness of what we hoped to offer. Another way to go, another way of seeing, an unlikely alliance, another…spelling. Since that first year, the DTour has grown beyond our wildest dreams, from a few thousand to tens of thousands of visitors.

In 2020 we successfully adapted to Covid, when many of our colleagues could not, because social distancing is built into this self-guided tour. In 2022 we continue to navigate difficult terrain: an on-and-off-again pandemic, a spring heatwave, political brawls about personal rights, all leading up to a fraught midterm election in this swinging state we call home. We’re also navigating the great resignation, tech fatigue and a housing crisis, even in our rural communities. Democracy is threatened, interest rates are rising, the climate is changing and the rural/urban divide may be deepening. Finding another (read: better) way forward may be the most valuable skill one can hone right now.

system, encountering persistent, optimistic experiments and trillions of breathing lifeforms, billions of years of planetary churn all in a 50-mile loop.

The gently curated stops on the old-school, foldable paper map (see a preview of the route on pages 18-19) serve as punctuation in the changing narrative of this unique landscape on the edge of the Driftless. Some Map Stops are commas: a brief pause, a slight shift in emphasis or tone. Others are periods, full stop. Get off your bike or out of your car. Exclamation points could trigger an argument (!) Personally I’m drawn to the question marks: encounters that may puzzle or please, provoke or enchant. Which is it? That's for you to decide, I just work here.

workout, digital detox (intermittently),

This meandering drive in the country has the potential to be at once a sensual awakening, wayfinding workout, digital detox (intermittently), and an immersion in a small section of the actual messy, fragrant, pulsating, living and dying earth. Practically, it’s an introduction to a new hiking path, cheese factory, artisanal beer, Ho-Chunk artist, or farmstead bakery. The DTour invites travelers to be alert, eyes peeled, ears attuned, senses heightened.

The essays and artwork found in these pages tap into the depth and vastness of the visible and invisible worlds you’ll encounter. You'll read about deep time, fungal networks, and farmers negotiating an outdated system. Along the DTour you’ll find yourself there: among ancient rocks, above the mycelia and soil teeming with bacteria, passing farms that could or couldn't survive the

As our planning team of self-taught cartographers makes decisions over a giant, laminated map, sticky dots move and move again; we’re like generals deploying toy tanks and molded plastic battalions in a Hollywood version of the war room. In fact, our first year that’s what we called our planning area (double duty as our dining room). It was a joke then untethered to concerns about divisive factions that have become visceral in recent years. Now, with an alliance of artists and farmers, we plot ways to interrupt, disarm and surprise when the stakes are high.

Several artists this year help us sense the infra/structures that connect us, from roots and rhizomes to biotic communities and social fabrics. Even when détente can seem elusive on this side of the dirt, cross-sector & interspecies collaboration is alive and well in healthy soil. Perhaps we can all take the cue—as we grab a map, comfy shoes and plan for a full day or two in the country. Which way will we go?

As with art, you the viewer complete the piece.

Donna Neuwirth, Wormfarm Institute Executive Director

This meandering drive in the country has the potential to be at once a sensual awakening, wayfinding

and an immersion in a small section of the actual messy, fragrant, pulsating, living and dying earth.

More Than Dirt

While most of us think of life happening above ground, the soil beneath our feet is actually teeming with life and very complex. There are more organisms in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on earth! And like other living organisms, our soils need food, water, nutrients and protection. In my work with farmers, our goal is biomimicry: to emulate the natural system as much as possible and farm in Nature’s image.

So what’s the recipe for healthy soil and how do we keep it healthy?

1. Feed It

Plants exude 40-50% of the sugars from their roots into the soil to attract soil biology. In turn, those creatures make nutrients available to the plant. The real fertilizer in the soil is the sugar created through photosynthesis and stored by roots, actively growing around the clock.

2. Water It

Water is life, and without it, soil

microbes can’t function properly. Soil compaction and increased evaporation due to improper plant cover robs those microbes of water. With rainfall across the Midwest becoming wildly unreliable, healthy soils give us a buffer by allowing for water storage during droughts and better drainage in wet fields.

3. Encourage Diversity

Just like our bodies don’t thrive when we eat the same foods everyday, the life in our soil needs a diversity of roots from a variety of plants. Diversifying crop rotations while utilizing cover crops helps with this— and integrating livestock with grazing animals at certain times of the year increases the resilience of the system even more.

4. Reduce Stress

Humans don’t respond well to chronic stress and our soil organisms are no different. When fields are tilled year after year, it places chronic physical

stress on the soil, destroying its structure. But when farmers opt for low or no till practices, they prevent severe erosion and protect the nutrients that a healthy soil needs to thrive. An added bonus: naturally nutritious soils undercut the need for excessive chemical and fertilizer use.

Renowned soil health expert Ray Archuleta said, “Our soils are naked, hungry and running a fever.” That statement really changes when you consider that life in the soil is as important as our pets, our wildlife, and our own health. Following the principles of soil health will bring the soil back to life, leaving our farmers more profitable while also improving our water quality. It’s time we stop treating our soils like “dirt” and treat it like the life-giving organism that it is.

Serge Koenig is a conservation technician for Sauk County Land Resources and Environment where he helps farmers plan for and install rotational grazing systems and other conservation practices

Serge Koenig

Wisconsin is layered by time.

Three main geological periods present themselves across the state. Old: Glaciers moved across the land repeatedly through the Pleistocene, beginning their great last melt-back just twenty-one thousand years ago. Geologists noting the prominent glacial marks named that last episode of continental ice expansion the Wisconsin glaciation. Older: They also named an exception to the rule of glaciers. Southwest Wisconsin, unburdened by ice and its residues of sand, gravel, and boulders, is the heart of the Driftless Area. Paleozoic sandstones, limestones, and shales laid down under ancient seas 250 to 550 million years ago, are exposed in the Driftless, and underlie much of Wisconsin from Eau Claire to Kenosha, La Crosse to Green Bay. Oldest: Billion-plus-year-old basement rocks of the Precambrian, hard and dense and resistant, extend down from Canada, cover the northern third of the state, and surface in a few outlier outcrops.

Seemingly solid, Wisconsin rocks flow through time. They well up from deep Earth furnaces. They boil and harden, crust over, melt again, re-form and fold themselves over. They break and crumble down to bits, drift in sea waves, deposit themselves flat and even, compress and surface, erode again, flake away under the force of moving waters. Ice plows them over, transports them, tumbles them over and over into smooth round cobbles, leaves them high and dry on ridgetops, drops them down into kettle bowls. We explore here one spot, in Sauk County, where the state’s layers meet and the three voices of geology sing—old soprano, older tenor, and oldest bass—and keep time together.

I. OLD

The bike path through the former Badger Army Ammunition Plant, reclaimed by the Ho-Chunk Nation and renamed Maa Wakacak (Sacred Earth), marks a boundary much older than the extent of a recovering industrial remnant. It’s also the demarcation between ancient geologic domains. To our west, a flat plain begins to undulate with waves of high prairie grasses before giving way to a skyline defined by bedrock bluffs. To our north, the verdant Baraboo Hills rise low and sturdy upon the strength of their purple quartzite core. And just steps to our east, a small, linear ridge stands up not much taller than we are.

Seemingly solid, Wisconsin rocks flow through time. They well up from deep Earth furnaces. They boil and harden, crust over, melt again, re-form and fold themselves over. They break and crumble down to bits, drift in sea waves, deposit themselves flat and even, compress and surface, erode again, flake away under the force of moving waters.

It’s clear even from here that the landscape is different beyond this modest ridge. Eastward, a shovel finds not bedrock but sand, rubble, and the occasional boulder—which geologists 200 years ago called ‘drift’. The survey sights find not bluffs but rolling hills—which geologists today call drumlins, eskers, and moraines. Before 2.5 million years ago, though, there was no distinction between the landscape across this boundary, which today separates driftless and drifted.

The cause of this discrepancy, the builder of this boundary, was a giant wall of ice, miles thick, extending across Canada and down into what we now call “the Midwest”. In cycles of 40,000 and 100,000 years beginning about 2.5 million years ago, the ice sheet grew and then retreated, sweeping across the land, filling in low spots with drift while scraping down the highest hills: turning riverine bluffs into pulsing hummocks, flowing stream channels into widened lakes.

continued on pg. 8

In the spirit of mutual aid across borders, Wormfarm has teamed up with Public Media Institute and five other partners from across the Midwest, to host an assembly of artist-run projects the weekend of September 9th at MANA Contemporary Chicago. Visit mdwfair.com for details and to read the Atlas, a compendium of digital content curated by editorial partners from the seven participating states.

by Rudy Molinek, Eric Carson, and Marcia Bjornerud Introduction by Curt Meine

"I always defined geology as not only understanding earth, but understanding our place on Earth. It’s a sense of place writ large—not only a sense of where you are, but a sense of where you are through time." —Lauret Savoy

This bike path traces part of the boundary of a temporally and spatially vast icy domain. It would once have been in the bitter shadow of a towering cliff of ice. Now, the path sits at the base of this low ridge: the North American ice sheet’s edge. An ice sheet is never without motion. It flows from its center to its border: a glob of honey dropped on a tabletop. As this ice sheet flowed, it ferried drift, debris large and small, slowly building up a long, low rocky ridge at its terminus: the terminal moraine.

This story of a boundary is a story of ice and land. But it’s also a story of sun and sky. The land is shaped by ice. The ice is shaped by temperature. The temperature is determined by the composition of the atmosphere and the intensity of sunlight. The atmospheric influence depends on the amount of carbon dioxide released by natural processes, or more recently, by burning fossil fuels. The solar forcing depends on the ever-changing shape of the Earth’s planetary orbit around the sun.

This endless, bidirectional chain of cause and effect, feedbacks and climatic pushbacks, stretching from the astronomical to the mundane and back again, is grounded right here. Right here on this bike path, at this low, long boundary in south-central Wisconsin. Here, temperature, the Earth’s orbit, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses, the growth and decay of ice sheets, all come down to this one line, beyond which the ice could advance no further.

II. OLDER

visitors to this fetid wasteland. Each new geologic day brings a change in sea level and with it a change in landscape. Worms burrow blindly through tidal sand. Algae grows layer by layer into mounds that dot the crystal-clear water in lagoons and bays. Another day and the seawater laps the highest points on the Baraboo Range, and as quickly as it is submerged it is buried in lime mud on the bed of a vast marine shelf. Only relentless erosion will show the Baraboo quartzite’s mettle, exposing it again as the soft-rock record of an unknown number of these former worlds is dismantled and carried away as sand and silt and clay to distant lands being formed anew.

mundane and back again, is grounded right here. Right here on this bike path, at this low, long boundary in south-central Wisconsin.

In the bluffs and hills and deep river valleys that sprawl to the west and south of the Baraboo Range, we can find an outlier to the politely subdued Midwest topography. Beneath the lush deciduous canopy and the low-growing jumble of cinnamon ferns and mayapples are layers of sedimentary rock, the best part of half a billion years old yet not even a third the age of that seemingly indestructible purple-red quartzite. Lacking the brute strength to resist erosion that the heat and pressure of metamorphism bestowed on the Baraboo quartzite, these rocks are more reticent. They show themselves grudgingly, and only because rivers have scoured down through them. Where they are undercut into bluffs and forced to reveal themselves, stacked like a photo album fallen on its side, they tell of a hundred former worlds that existed in this one place.

Bone white quartz sand restlessly prowls a tropical coastline, dunes and shallow lagoons patiently awaiting the evolution of land plants. Waves lap higher on the shore each day as rising water turns a beach into the floor of an oxygen starved sea, kelly green glauconite crystals the only

So zoom forward in time as erosion carves the land, to not hundreds of millions of years ago but rather to mere millions, and see how the continent has changed. Mountains that dwarf the Baraboo Range have risen far over the horizon, the sea has receded hundreds of miles away, and multiple generations of rivers take their turn flowing across what is now the mid-continent. Pockets of gravel, most no larger than a suburban yard, are hidden like Easter eggs forgotten in tall grass. They are the remnants of rivers that carried material from the newly-minted Rocky Mountains far to the west. The great-great-grandchildren of those rivers carve into the bedrock, establishing the first semblance of the valleys we know today. But rivers have their own mind! These flow to the east, hurrying to the North Atlantic Ocean. Only the great glaciers, rank newcomers among geologic processes here, can convince them to change their course. And almost grudgingly, just a blink of an eye ago, the water is coerced to flow south and form the Mississippi River that seems an ever permanent landmark to our human mind.

III. OLDEST

One and a half billion years ago, in a time that will be called the Proterozoic, on a beach near the place that will be named Baraboo, waves wash in and out, tides ebb and flow. The landscape is subdued; erosion has patiently dismantled a chain of volcanoes that had loomed, with seeming permanence, on the horizon a hundred million years earlier.

Rivers ceaselessly convey sand from distant hills to the shore. With no vegetation persuading them into distinct channels—land plants will not appear for another billion years—streams claim the entire terrain, plaiting themselves again and again on their way to the coast.

Waves break and tides turn, imprinting the rivers’ latest delivery of sand with undulating ripple marks. Almost all

This endless, bidirectional chain of cause and effect, feedbacks and climatic pushbacks, stretching from the astronomical to the

the sand grains are tiny orbs of pure quartz, the stubborn residuum of weathered rocks from barren lands upstream.

Tides and waves, waves and tides. Slowly the sands are buried beneath other sediments, sealed away from the sounds of the beach. In the subsurface, grains that were once rambling vagabonds can no longer move. Formerly awash in surf, they are wetted now only by seeping pore waters carrying just enough iron and oxygen to tint them rose pink. Jammed tightly together, the grains confederate silently into solid rock.

The seas ebb and time flows. Seismic murmurs ripple through the crust signaling tectonic unrest. A land mass that was once a speck across the wide ocean has crept inexorably closer and is now pushing with insistence against the edge of the continent. The layer of roseate stone, the sandy remains of older worlds, is reawakened. Now a strong beam of imperial purple quartzite, it pushes back—until finally it buckles spectacularly, wrinkling the crust into a new mountain range.

Rivers immediately set to their obsessive work of flattening the undulating topography. The quartzite mountains, however, prove unusually robust. For a billion years, rivers and allied agents of erosion scour and scrub the land, but they cannot rub out these hills.

Marcia Bjornerud, Eric Carson, and Rudy Molinek are geologists and educators working in Wisconsin. Curt Meine is an author, conservation biologist, and historian.

REGINA M. FLANAGAN

Twenty-four years later, curiosity lures me back to the hollow in the Baraboo Hills. I vaguely remember its location and little is recognizable. A meandering rubble-bedded stream gurgles through the ravine and where it pools, it mirrors the sky. But where are the wispy groves of hemlock that bow over the stream? Where are the birches with golden peeling bark glowing against the blue-green hue of the 80-foothigh moss- and fern-covered walls? Downed trees block passage through the gorge now exposed to sunlight and heat the hemlocks can’t tolerate. Beginning in the late 1980s, flooding rains combined with high winds often swept through these hills.

But in May 1987, delicious cool air greeted me as I hiked the steep slope down into the shady, damp hollow. The light captured and held in this space had a magical quality. In those years I lived in Madison, Wisconsin, most weekends would find me out photographing Nature Conservancy lands, many in the Baraboo Hills, using vintage film cameras, or printing in the darkroom. These landscapes drew me in, providing weekend respite from the workday challenges of launching the Wisconsin Arts Board’s new public art program.

Landscape photography was so outof-fashion in the art world that I had few mentors or peers, so my work was mostly solitary—my main collaborators, the landscapes I wandered through. Aligning my breathing with my gait freed my thoughts to drift and settle in unexpected places; experiencing these landscapes became a creative exchange. But the compositions in my camera’s viewfinder confounded me. What did I hope to communicate with my photographs

Re-arrival

—what was the point? I sensed forces underway that were going to yield some insights. How could I show them and what would they mean?

To honor the complex beauty and understand the dynamics of the landscapes in front of my camera, I went on to study ecology, geology, and plant communities. I talked with scientists and land managers. I learned that glaciers bumped up against these hills composed of quartzite around 15,000 years ago and when the ice melted, torrents of water scoured out narrow valleys. The dramatic hollows and draws with outcrops of quartzite and sandstone are the result

of wind and water erosion. Because of the topography and soils, there are micro-climates where unique and rare plants grow.

Since the 1980s, I have photographed other landscapes throughout the Upper Midwest – big woods forests, oak savannas, floodplain forests –even the recovery of a boreal forest after a catastrophic fire. During repeated visits over many seasons and years, certain plants, trees, and landforms became close friends.

Observing these landscapes, I developed the sense we sometimes have when things are about to change—not

Hollow in the Baraboo Hills, 1987, Regina M Flanagan. (To protect this delicate landscape, exact location not revealed)

unlike perceiving how the barometric pressure drops as a stormfront approaches, before it rains—that is equal parts foreboding and hope.

Rebecca Solnit writes in her essay “Respectfully,” that paying attention is the beginning of respect. Knowing the stories of rocks, soils, plants, wildlife, seasons, and weather and understanding the patterns and sequences of a place all reveal that something deep, complex, and alive is happening there. I acutely feel the risk posed by having acquired this knowledge and intimacy with these landscapes; their stories have become entwined with my life.

The hemlocks and golden birches may, or may not, return. Weather disturbances caused by global climate change continue and will likely worsen. Present restoration efforts by scientists involve transitioning this landscape to the red oak plant community because it can adapt to the warming climate as the hemlocks cannot. While I remain haunted by what no longer exists whenever I visit the hollow, the magic of the place is slowly returning for me, and a small hope grows. Transition is definitely underway but also possibly, recovery.

Regina M Flanagan is a photographer, landscape architect and writer living in Saint Paul, MN. She is completing a short documentary film about the Helen Allison Savanna located north of the Twin Cities that she has photographed for over 30 years. To view her photography, visit: reginaflanagan.photography.

Plant roots and fungi form symbiotic relationships. The fungi help trees or shrubs, and in return, the roots give the fungi carbon, carbohydrates, and other nutrients. The symbiotic relationship between fungi and plant roots is called a mycorrhiza.

Illustration by Madigan Burke

Illustration by Madigan Burke

The Future of Farming with Trees

Illustration by Paul Littleton

deer, a young hazelnut seedling is growing. These perennial tree crops are managed by the Savanna Institute, a nonprofit organization working to catalyze agroforestry in the Midwest.

“We help people who want to plant trees on their farms,” says education program manager Kristy Gruley. Agroforestry incorporates a variety of farming practices, blurring the boundaries between fields and forests. “For example, you can use trees as windbreaks, as food and shade for livestock, or to harvest fruits or nuts as a crop,” Gruley explains. Agroforestry is a foundation of many traditional farming practices, and it can provide a host of environmental benefits, including carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, and wildlife habitat preservation. In the Midwest, agroforestry hearkens back to the

a farm table in 2013 to build a com munity of support for agroforestry practitioners, growing the movement from “grassroots” to “the treetops”.

“No matter where a person is on their agroforestry path, we’re here to meet them with the research, education, tools and community they need to succeed,” Gruley says. “It’s our mission to move away from destructive agricultural practices towards practices like agroforestry that can provide food and other profitable agricultural products on a large scale while also drawing down carbon from the atmosphere and regenerating soils.”

The Savanna Institute scaled up its own work this past year by acquiring several properties in Sauk County to be used as research, demonstration,

and education farms. This new campus is in its early stages of development, but will be used to explore and demonstrate the many different forms agroforestry can take on the landscapes along this year’s DTour route.

You’re invited to explore the sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of agroforestry for yourself during the Savanna Institute’s North Farm Open House on October 1st! Visit E6828 State Rd. 60 Spring Green, WI to learn more about how agroforestry can fit into the Sauk County landscape. Details at savannainstitute.org/events.

Jacob Grace plays a variety of roles within the Savanna Institute, contributing to the Grassland 2.0 initiative and projects related to grazing, silvopasture, and public communications.

JACOB GRACE

SHORT ANSWER

Marcescence occurs when a tree holds onto dead leaves. Such grasping is not usually indicative of a fatal condition.

Consider the accuracy of the following statements then answer the question

To be awake in a time of extended trauma, one’s life serves as an engaged reaction to open wounds.

To be a tree when others are not requires reckoning, dancing, adjacent denial of death.

The act of letting go is necessary work. Such tasks are best not left at the door or tied to a pole.

Trees provide hands-on demonstrations of death’s non-obliteration. Plus, a tree is truly they, veiny systems maintained through shared labor.

Trust in the necessity of periodic full release, repetitive freefall, eventual flowers.

Remember, an act can be meaningful without being explicit. One misstep is unlikely to undo every previous effort.

To become a tree is to welcome the fruit of replicable modeling. Also, green is slimming.

Today could be about being an interesting person, connecting at the hip. Or talking about plants again.

A good title for this lesson would be: A Study of the Progression of Human Yearning for Reintegration with Nature.

Q: Can you define marcescence as it relates to your life and existence? Use examples from the text and your personal experience to support your answer.

Laurel Radzieski

A Grain of Truth

Byrne

William and Alma Gasser are fourth-generation Wisconsin farmers. Their 300 acres of land have been in William’s family since 1873, with a consistent eye towards conservation that led to practices like a focus on crop rotations—William’s great grandfather grew wheat as forage and kept horses working on the farm long after many others switched to tractors. This hilly farm in the Driftless Region with an impressive rock formation as a backdrop also established some of the first contour strips in the area, back in 1950, to manage water. “They’re still laid out in that pattern,” explains William. “It goes well with the art tour because it’s attractive.”

They started growing food-grade wheat 15 years ago, and Alma says her four sons get credit for helping her develop her baking skills. Initially she baked for family and friends, with the grain milled to sell at farmers’ markets. “A lot of people said they’d rather have the finished product [than flour], so in 2010 we started planning a bakery.” Tower Rock Bakery opened in 2014. It is now a popular vendor at the Baraboo Farmers’ Market and open on the farm Fridays and Saturdays. “We tore down an old two-car garage built for Model T’s and put up a 2-story bakery with a garage in its place, where we can easily load up vehicles for the market.”

Looking towards the farm’s 150th anniversary next year, their second eldest son is working with them to increase efficiencies for their 75 dairy cows and cropping plan. They

currently practice rotational grazing and grow non-GMO corn, rye, and barley along with alfalfa and wheat. “It’s a good relationship having dairy cows with the land, having access to manure,” William says. “The alfalfa-wheat rotation also works really well, because the dying alfalfa provides sufficient nitrogen for the wheat. We don’t use any herbicide or fungicides.” Lately they’ve been growing a new variety of wheat, Lang, developed out of the University of Minnesota. “We previously used Glenn wheat, which was nice but difficult to thresh, and was developed in North Dakota where it’s more arid.”

Environmental artist Tory Tepp first approached the Gassers about growing

a new type of crop, introducing them to Kernza® perennial grain.

As Wormfarm Institute’s Artist Residency Manager in 2019, Tory had been working at the organic farm every day, thinking about soil, sustainability, and the inherent legacy of land stewardship. Connections to UW-Madison Agronomy Professor Valentín Picasso Risso led to his discovery of Kernza, a cousin of wheat with roots that grow 12 feet down into the subsoil, offering myriad environmental benefits. “I always knew I was going to do an earthwork,” Tory says of the thought process that led him to build the Sauk County ARK on the Gassers’ farm for the 2020 Farm/Art DTour. “It would

Elena

“We tore down an old two-car garage built for Model T’s and put up a 2-story bakery with a garage in its place, where we can easily load up vehicles for the market.” —Alma Gasser

Field of Kernza® at Gasser Farm.

be something meditative and observational, to honor what we were growing.”

The ARK earthwork evokes a shipwreck in a four-acre sea of Kernza. It represents systems of ag that are not sustainable, that are detrimental to soil, and suggests a new direction for agriculture. The ARK is made of old farm detritus: silo staves and panels, railing from dairy stanchions, and portholes made from silo door hatches. As you approach, you see glimpses of the past in those portholes—photos going back to the 20’s, evidence of how this land has changed over time. And not changed.

“The Kernza, an older strain provided by Valentín’s lab, is in its third year, and in heavy competition with weeds, but it will outgrow them by July,” according to Tory, who hopes to add a listening station to the ARK this year: earthtones with improvised instruments made from farm tools, like a pitchfork, which debuted at the 2020 DTour and has been affectionately dubbed “farm metal.”

Tory has been talking with Vintage Brewing Co. about a special limited run of a Kernza brew, and another new effort holds exciting promise: together with a colleague, Tory constructed a clay oven this spring. “It’s made with the deepest orange red clay from a nearby farm. We’ll take it to the ARK site and will work on making savory Kernza crackers with it. We’d like to have a tasting with the crackers and brews made from the harvest.” It could end up being a complete cycle, as the Gassers typically use spent grain from the brewery to feed their cattle.

It’s serendipitous that Tower Rock Bakery and the Gassers’ farm is situated near a school—they regularly host students to hike their woods or explore agriculture in other ways. Tory was able to work with grades 1-3 at the ARK site in summer 2021, making mud bricks impregnated with cover crop seeds. You can imagine the conversations surrounding all those small hands in the dirt, synapses firing as connections are made between seeds, the food we eat, and the land.

Through their bakery, the Gassers also regularly “reach people of all ages who are interested in agriculture. We have the most awesome customers,” Alma says.

Of Kernza, William says, “We’ve got a lot to learn yet, I think.” That’s pretty true for all of agriculture, for all of us, one might say. And art is a welcome instigator.

Elena Byrne is a local foods specialist for Renewing the Countryside and the communications manager for Artisan Grain Collaborative.

THERE MIGHT BE GIANTS

Drive the Farm/Art DTour

Celebrating its ninth year, the 2022 DTour meanders through southern Sauk County with trailheads in Plain and Sauk City. This figure-8 shaped route is punctuated by large-scale artworks, local food markets, roadside poetry, educational Field Notes, and attractions like the historic Witwen Park and Great Sauk State Trail. Celebrate the unique beauty of the Driftless Region and come meet the innovative landowners, businesses and agri/cultural organizations who call Sauk County home.

Touring Sauk County

You’ll wander through small towns, country churchyards, and a diverse landscape—from the bluffs of the Baraboo Hills to the Sauk Prairie and working farmland between. Here, artists explore the timeless connections between land and people, farmers perform fundamental, inspiring work—and lines that can sometimes separate, converge or are happily blurred.

Announcing 2022 DTour Artists

This eclectic mix of artists from around the country are invited to create site-responsive work in collaboration with Sauk County farmers and landowners:

Austen Camille, TX

Rosalynn Gingerich, IL

Sarah Kavage, WA

Christopher Lutter-Gardella, MN

Bill Mitchell, WI

Christopher Sweet, WI

Tory Tepp, FL & WI

W. Scott Trimble, WA

Denise Rolland Troyer, IN

Plus Mystery Spots!

For thousands of years, farmers in cultures around the world interwove dance, music, and art through rituals of planting and the harvest in celebration of the land and those who care for it. Through a contemporary approach and within this timeless context, we continue that tradition.

I AM FOR… (STATEMENT, 1961)

I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.

I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a starting point of zero.

I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap and still comes out on top.

I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.

I am for all art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.

I am for an artist who vanishes, turning up in a white cap painting signs or hallways.

—Claes Oldenburg (1929–2022), Swedish-born American Pop-art sculptor, known for his giant soft sculptures of everyday objects.

Get to the Pie by Brent Houzenga, 2020 DTour

Take A Drive In the COuntry

Since 2011, over 200,000 people from near and far have traveled the DTour along Sauk County’s winding rural roads where you never know what might be around the next bend. In their wake, towns have been enlivened, businesses have formed, and new attention has been paid to this fertile, storied landscape. Here’s a preview of the DTour route, but be sure to pick up the official DTour Map starting in September. Maps will include the locations of all stops and details about participating artists, farmers, landowners and local attractions. Don’t leave home without it!

Abundance and scarcity—lots of land and sky, but phone reception can be spotty! Trust us, you’ll want the paper map.

Reedsburg

Rural Revival

A former church camp and historic gathering place with white wooden buildings in a quiet setting next to Honey Creek, Witwen Park has been stewarded by the Sprecher family since 1922. The first record of summer revival

MEET OUR VENDORS

Chef K. Clark Pickles & Preserves

Ernie’s Kick Sauce Fizzeology Foods

Four Elements Herbals

4GROUND MIDWEST LAND ART BIENNIAL

Artist Tory Tepp has created a new earthwork “Vortex to a Future Canoe” at the historic Witwen Park for 4Ground: a far-reaching initiative spanning four states and tribal lands of the Upper Midwest, organized by Franconia Sculpture Park in collaboration with more than 20 community partners.

Visit 4groundbiennial.org.

Farming COnversationS

We asked a group of local farmers and advocates, “What do you wish people knew about farming today?"

"Farmland values have increased approximately 30% over the past year. Rising land prices have made it more difficult for beginning farmers to purchase land. While there are programs through the USDA Farm Service Agency that offer low-interest loans to beginning farmers for land purchase, the programs typically limit the size of the loan and the acreage that can be purchased. There are not really any grants available to help beginning farmers purchase land."

—Paul Dietmann, Compeer Financial and former Sauk Co. Agricultural Agent

"It turns out the reality of dairy is a lot more challenging than the cute little cheese factory we had dreamed of owning. But we’re finding ways for our farmers to get a premium on their milk checks and building trust. Over the years, there have been funerals and arguments, weddings and children. We’ve found that we’ve bought into a community that’s bigger and more important than just our business."

—Bob Wills, Cedar Grove Cheese

"The majority of agriculture in America is extremely mechanized and not at human scale. To actually know a farmer whose hands grow your food is special."

—Squashington Farm

"I once read that farming is a life of hope. Boy is that true! You hope for good weather to get in the fields & rain to make crops grow. You hope the costs are less than the income coming in and for fewer breakdowns. Farming comes with great responsibilities, not just to the community but to the animals, crops, and laborers."

—Karl Hausner Farm

"I

like to get done."

"Dairy farming is full of an overwhelming number of everyday tasks; cows need to be milked, fed, new calves need careful attention and new moms often need some extra care. Despite the work that seems endless, I always feel good when I have finished these tasks each day, when all the new calves have fresh bedding, a boost from the first milk colostrum and I've given them their vaccinations. They are ready to do their job, growing up to be healthy milk cows. Each day has these completed tasks. All to start again the next day!"

—Nels Nelson & Sarah Lloyd

"I want people to know that farmers care DEEPLY about the land and their animals. Farmers make sure all their animals are fed first before they take time to eat. Farmers will not count the long hours but work until the job is done (or done enough for the next day). A farmer's joy is found in fresh cut hay, newborn calves, and daily working with family. Although the work is hard, rewards are not only measured in dollars but in the peace of mind one finds connected to the earth."

—Dorothy Harms, Valley Springs Farm

"So much thought and decision making and puzzle piecing and pivoting are involved in farming. Although the physical labor of organic vegetable farming might seem like it takes the most work and energy, the mental and emotional energy spent running a vegetable farm is just as important. It is a rare day that I know exactly what will happen when I wake up. Gotta be on and aware and analyzing situations at all times."

—Laura Mortimore, Orange Cat Community Farm

"Farming has the capacity to turn forests into deserts or deserts into forests depending on how it's done."

—Dan Enge, Veggie Emporium

RURAL uRBAN FLOW

"The division between urban and rural is the only serious border left to us. One serves to undermine the other. One could just as easily serve to mind the other. I am a serious border-crosser."

C.D. Wright, Cooling Time

Rural Urban FLOW is an evolving network of creators and producers from Milwaukee, Sauk County and beyond who organize seasonal exchanges. We look beyond neighborhoods and news feeds to cultivate common ground.

Look for a multimedia installation on the DTour organized by our FLOW partners. Visit ruralurbanflow.org

“My own childish passage from rural beauty to urban ugliness was matched by a multitude of other possible journeys: from pastoral simplicity to cosmopolitan sophistication, from rural bondage to urban freedom, from purity to corruption, from childhood to adulthood, from past to future. Each possible journey forms a powerful narrative trajectory, a compelling token of the divided world we inhabit—and yet each also reproduces that divided world. All these rural-urban passages share one underlying assumption which is itself deeply problematic. They all assume that city and country are separate and opposing worlds, that their divisions far outweigh their connections. And so all reinforce our widely held conviction that people can somehow build a world for themselves apart from nature.”

— William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis

Kanopy Dance, 2016 DTour

Step Right Up by Erika Nelson, 2020 DTour

Ibanners, braided the stories of Ho-Chunk and farming families who live here with the Driftless landscape and Honey Creek. I can’t reflect on that summer without recalling the pandemic and how that year took twists and turns none of us could have anticipated.

Although we had proposed to work with the bright blue sun-print medium in November 2019, the way we made the banners radically shifted with the requirements for social distancing. Before the pandemic, we had proposed to facilitate workshops during the DTour. Our vision was to share the magic of cyanotypes which, when exposed to the sun, change from green to grey; then bright blue when we plunge the treated fabric into large vats of water, exposing the white marks of objects, plants and stories. But to be safe, we shifted to collecting stories and images through mail and collecting farm detritus and plants ourselves through a trip to the region.

For 10 days I lived with Emilie in Minneapolis. We opened letters from people sharing stories and images of the Driftless while checking into Zoom meetings for work. We raged on the sewing machines for hours while donning masks for daily trips to Menards. Crysten, Emilie and I spent nights dipping the sewn fabric triangles into light-sensitive chemical solutions in her garage-converted-darkroom to dry; we spent days exposing the banners with materials we had collected through mailings and our trip to southwest Wisconsin earlier that summer.

the community and the land was essential. The fact that we received support and built relationships with folks in the region is what makes this project so memorable. And the fact that we created something we were proud of? Delightful. The truth is, I was so grateful to finally be in physical proximity to creative people, to be able to hold a friend, to grumble about grommets.

FLUVIAL dramatically impacted me. We created a mile path through pasture & marsh and an artwork that tied together histories and ecology as we told the stories of the land, people and water along Honey Creek. We found resilience in unprecedented times. We centered creativity as a tool for transformation and connection. Its methods and ideas and joy continue in my work to this day.

Sheila Novak is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and public art specialist living in Boston. With Emilie Bouvier and Crysten Nesseth, she cre ated FLUVIAL for the 2020 DTour. Learn more about their project and see the full list of collaborators at sheilanovak.com/FLUVIAL.

SHEILA NOvAK

From the City to a Corn Field

Over the last several years I’ve been working on a particular way of seeing the world around me. As I move through space, often in a city, but in suburban and rural areas too, I work at trying to see every single bit of open space and exposed piece of land as special, energized by a unique history and a potential new story to tell

As I walk from my house I acknowledge the street terrace I cross, and think about how it’s changed in the last few years since the road was rebuilt. As I ride my bike I observe the paralleling green strip, notice new saplings, and remember the trees cut down when the city widened the path. As I move past a giant warehouse, I note the shaggy strip of land separating it from a road. The open space is bristling with honeysuckle and ditch lily, and a good sized mulberry stump sprouting a crown of hopeful suckers. How big did that tree get before it was cut down? Who might have enjoyed its plump, plentiful berries every summer?

I pursue this thought exercise as a way to resist a habit of mind that disappears land. Many of us are so familiar with the notion of land as an anonymous commodity, something with minimal history and a future decided by someone who is often far away, we don’t ask questions. I think

of this disappearing as a kind of “orphaning,” a severing of connection between people and the Earth they inhabit. We have our special, revered places, but many of us are surrounded by territory we routinely ignore.

By seeing anew large and small spaces—the overlooked abused vacant lots, neglected back edges, or fenced off and mowed right of ways—I can feel a sense of expectation. All these places, in their ugliness and sometimes elusive or gritty beauty, all of them can expand a little, with a promise of an alternative reality. Because, of course, tremendous energy resides there. Think about the fencing, mowing, herbiciding, asphalt and cementing, tiling, channeling, lighting and other ways we “discipline” places so they don’t become full of life and activity that doesn’t fit in with our infrastructure needs. In the noticing, and in the asking of questions, and in paying attention to the feelings that different spaces can elicit, I’m attempting to shake off various strictures or blinders that foreclose possibility.

Walking one early spring day with my friend John in a farm field, I observed the uniform rows of dried corn

stubble, emerging from pale clods of soil. My “orphan space” exercise worked here too. I could see easily the lay of the land; the field was bare except for the foot-high stalks that threw my feet off course with each stride. John was ahead gesticulating, talking about land “beat to hell.” He showed me a giant gully created by heavy rains falling on bare earth, carrying away topsoil. It was full of big boulders and old rusty iron things. Then he started on about glaciers, and I began to grasp how massive ice created the remarkable undulations of the landscape, leaving a cap of cobblestones atop one hill. And there it was, an opening in my mind to expand on a “you’ve-seenone-you’ve-seen-’em-all” way of looking at a corn field.

What I could so easily disappear, as I zipped past in a car, gained history and possibility. John talked about the woman whose family owned the land before, how long her family had farmed it, and how she donated it to support agricultural education. The new caretakers are planting an heirloom orchard and experimenting with agroforestry, alternating strips of hazelnuts and other woody perennial crops with annual row crops like corn and soybeans.

In place of an anonymous corn field, I came to see glacial sculpture, a place

“I thought, ‘How could you separate yourself from this glory?…Do you see what the clouds look like when they are coming so strong over here, they look like a wave? Have you noticed? What is that? Who did that? How did that happen?’ ” —Alice Walker in conversation with Kai Wright, May 30, 2022

We have our special, revered places, but many of us are surrounded by territory we routinely ignore.

Photo by Katrin Talbot

shaped and connected by flows of water from here all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. I considered who walked here long ago, what happened to them. I think about the new stewards and all their ambitions.

Frankly, attending to how we physically and mentally “orphan” Earth can be exhausting. I rarely have answers to the questions that pop up, and much of the time I’m left uneasy by all that I don’t know, or by what looks to me like nothing going on. Uncomfortable histories can emerge whenever we ask questions about land: people violently removed or prevented access, bankruptcy, fights, abuse, pollution. But still, I feel stronger for attempting to tell fuller stories.

STORM

We all carry a storm inside He said to no one in particular Everyone at once Gathered in polite distances tempests spinning in our bellies

Many who work with the land are well aware of Earth’s generative energy as they manage it in specific, productive directions. Closely attending to land is what good farmers do. I think about something a farmer told me recently about the nutrient management plans that he submits for approval each year. Sometimes my plans don’t match with the guidelines, he told me, but when the agronomist calls, he can explain that while the recommendations are based on 100 acres, there is one 20-acre section that needs to be managed differently. “After a while she understood that I was doing a more fine-grained analysis,” he said. “I didn’t match the recommendations all the time. But she knows I’m paying attention.”

Closely attending to land is what good farmers do.

Our conversations a symphony of thunderclaps and howl electricity and torrent We trade glances, opaque with glacial cold and slow molten gurgles of stone

Ravaged by wind and wishing We are sand and secrets Broad acreages of intention and expectations devastated by unrelenting rains We are littered with fallen trees and debris Relief may never come maybe came and went maybe some will adapt to this rubble Some have already perished in depths of apocalyptic rains

We all carry a storm inside rainbow dreaming for a new, clear day

That paying attention resonates. I feel empowered entertaining questions that pull my attention outward, require more of my senses, and insist I acknowledge a particularity, something special. Why is that water pooled there? Look how it reflects the sky. And how does the sun move across this space? Who and what else might have taken in this view? What did it mean to them? These are good questions to ask. Even some of our most unremarkable landscapes can become an opening to think about a long, complicated history and a mysterious future. Places everywhere of reckoning and possibility.

Mrill Ingram is the author of Loving Orphaned Space: The Art and Science of Belonging to Earth. She is a participatory action research scientist at UW-Madison working on sustainable and integrated agricultural systems.

—Dasha Kelly Hamilton

Mrill Ingram

Drawing by Martina Patterson

BRIDGE SWALLOWS

Their nests: the keys of a flute, or Greek chapels overlooking the sea.

Peering out, their burnt orange necks glow like the cherries of one-hitters.

Their beaks: gunmetal. Their bellies: navy beans. Their flight: flamebacked in the Greek, smelling out all the possible curves.

— Austin Segrest

Epithelium (detail) by Peter Krsko, 2020 DTour

Carotene Spirit

Is there anything more magical than pulling a beet root out of the dirt and slicing into its earthy skin only to discover a bright golden hue, more reminiscent of sunshine than the dirt that it came from? Celebrate color with this beet stew! It’s not your average borscht.

Ingredients

4–6 medium-sized golden beets, unpeeled

3 tablespoons olive or sunflower oil, divided

1 medium yellow or white onion, finely chopped

2–3 carrots, finely chopped

2 stalks celery, finely chopped

4–6 medium-sized potatoes (preferably Yukon Gold, but any potatoes will do), cut into ¼-inch cubes

1–2 turnips, cut into ¼-inch cubes

1 small celeriac, cut into ¼-inch cubes

4–5 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

2 teaspoons black pepper, plus more to taste

2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh parsley, divided

2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh basil

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme

4 cups water

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Lemon wedges, optional Plain yogurt, optional

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Trim and scrub the beets. Coat them with 1 tablespoon of oil and place them whole into a roasting pan with about ½ inch of water. Cover the pan with foil and bake at 400 degrees until the beets are easy to pierce with a fork, about 40–60 minutes.

3. While the beets roast, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in a Dutch oven or large stock pot over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot and celery. Sauté until the onions begin to turn transparent, about 10 minutes.

4. Add the potatoes, turnips, celeriac, garlic, salt, pepper, basil, thyme, and 1 teaspoon of the parsley. Continue to sauté until all the vegetables begin to brown. Add the water and cover; lower heat so the soup maintains a very gentle simmer.

5. Periodically check to see if the beets are tender. Once they are done, remove the beets from the oven and allow them to cool until they are cool enough to hold in your hand. Peel and chop the beets into bite-sized pieces. Add to the simmering soup. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste.

6. Once all the vegetables are at the desired level of tenderness, remove the soup from heat and add the lemon juice.

7. Serve warm. Sprinkle bowls with the remaining 1 teaspoon of parsley. Garnish with lemon wedges and/or top with a dollop of yogurt.

In the fall, many of the most exciting flavors of the year finally come into season. The cool autumn air entices us toward earthy, rich foods like mushrooms, squash and root vegetables to ground us in the present moment. It’s time to unearth the goodness growing beneath the surface and enliven our senses with a little spice and heat to counterbalance the nip in the air. Let’s dig in!

Recipe by Bazile Booth and David Pedersen of Soups I Did It Again. Originally published Fall 2021.

Tastes of Fall

Hidden Roots and Fiery Tonic—Recipes from Edible Madison Magazine

Fire Cider

Recipe by Laura Poe Mathes, Viroqua Nutrition Counseling. Originally published Fall 2020 Set your tastebuds aflame and fortify yourself for the chilly weather ahead with this DIY health potion. Bonus points if you ferment your own apple cider vinegar.

Ingredients

1 cup chopped yellow onion

1/4 cup grated fresh ginger

1/4 cup grated fresh horseradish root

8-10 cloves garlic, minced

2 hot peppers, such as jalapeño or habanero, diced

2 tablespoons fresh turmeric, grated, or 1 Tbsp dried turmeric

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Zest and juice of 1 orange

2 to 3 cups raw apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup raw honey or to taste (omit completely if on a lowsugar diet)

Optional additions: 2 to 3 tablespoons rosehips, fresh rosemary, thyme, and/or oregano

Directions

1. Pack the prepared vegetables, citrus, and herbs into a clean quart-sized glass jar. Using food-safe gloves will help you avoid getting hot pepper juice where you don’t want it, and prevent your hands from getting stained with turmeric.

2. Add in the apple cider vinegar to cover the herbs, filling to the band of the jar.

3. Cover the jar with a non-reactive plastic lid, or a metal lid with a piece of parchment between the lid and jar to prevent the lid from rusting. Seal tightly and shake for several minutes.

4. Label and date the jar with the day you made it. Set aside for 4 to 6 weeks, shaking for a minute or two every few days to fully infuse the vinegar with the herbal goodness.

5. After 4 to 6 weeks, pour through a mesh strainer over a bowl to strain out all solids, reserving the liquid. Squeeze solids with gloved hands to extract as much vinegar as possible. Return the liquid to the jar.

6. Add raw honey to the jar and whisk thoroughly to dissolve. Cover and store in the refrigerator, where it will keep for about one year.

Walnut Mushroom Pâté

Recipe by Lauren Rudersdorf of The Leek and the Carrot. Originally published Winter 2021 The fungi kingdom is perhaps the most strange and fascinating class of organisms. The fruiting bodies we typically eat are only the tip of the iceberg, and offer no hint of what lies beneath—networks of mycelium that can wander for miles. What exactly are those mysterious mushrooms up to? Forging connections as rich and nutty as this pâté!

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter

1 medium shallot, minced

1 garlic clove, minced 3 ounces shiitake mushrooms

3 ounces oyster mushrooms

1 teaspoon kosher salt ¼ teaspoon pepper

2 tablespoons dry red wine 3 ounces goat cheese ½ cup toasted walnuts

Directions

1. In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the shallot and cook until softened and fragrant, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté a minute longer. Add the mushrooms, salt and pepper, and cook until the mushrooms are softened, about 5 minutes.

2. Add the wine to deglaze the pan. Once the liquid is reduced, add the goat cheese and cook until it’s incorporated into the mushrooms.

3. Add the mushroom mixture to a food processor along with the walnuts and process until combined but still retaining a bit of a crunchy texture. (This can also be made up to 2 days in advance. The flavor gets better with time.)

Brought to you by

OUR SPONSORS, FUNDERS, AND PARTNERS

wormfarminstitute.org

Dedicated to integrating culture and agriculture along the ruralurban continuum, Wormfarm Institute is an evolving laboratory of the arts and ecology, and fertile ground for creative work. Planting a seed, cultivating, reaping what you sow…both farmer and artist have these activities in common.

Founded in 2000 by Jay Salinas and Donna Neuwirth, Wormfarm Institute is a Wisconsin-based non-profit organization working to build a sustainable future for agriculture and the arts, by fostering vital links between people and the land. Generating, supporting, and promoting these links between our creative selves, our work, and our place on earth is essential for a thriving community. Our programs nurture new opportunities for cross-sector collaboration to rekindle cultural connections, enhance the economic possibilities of our region, and celebrate our unique natural and human history.

The name is inspired by a quote from Charles Darwin’s book The Formation of Vegetable Mold Through the Action of Worms.

○This project is funded in part through grants from: The Educational Foundation of America, Builders Initiative, the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Sauk County Arts and Culture Committee.

This Agri/Cultural excursion is free of charge but hardly free to produce. Please consider joining this coalition of partners by making a tax-deductible donation today. Keep the DTour free for thousands of visitors. Donate at wormfarminstitute.org/donate.

“Every fertile grain of soil has passed at least once through the gut of an earthworm.”

Red Piano Farm Form by Reedsburg ArtsLink, 2016 Farm/Art DTour

JOin us for the 9 th biennial Farm/Art DTour and come to your senses

Thousands of people come from down the road a piece or hundred of miles away to take this 50-mile, self-guided drive through the scenic farmlands of Sauk County, Wisconsin—punctuated by temporary art installations, roadside poetry, field notes, yummy food, mystery spots and more.

As you meander through small towns, grazed pastures, country churchyards and productive farmland, you’ll be amazed at the creations of artists and the daily artistry of farmers. Come be delighted, enlightened and fed, while catching a glimpse of the culture within and inspired by agriculture.

Pick up the official DTour Map at designated Trailheads Or find it online

It's harvest season. Be sure and yield to farm equipment and the odd buggy or two.