A Grain of Truth by Elena Byrne

Elena Byrne A Grain of Truth

“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

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 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.

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