Tony Ends operated Scotch Hill Farm with his wife Dela and family for 25 years, raising fresh vegetables for subscribers in Madison, Milwaukee, and the Chicago area. He also worked in newspaper and sustainable agriculture communications. Both continue to advocate for farming people. Tony also now writes and edits full time for a federal agency.
By Tony Ends
Cooperative Board Member
Saturday night meals of local ingredients to uplift the Sugar River Food Shed are continuing into autumn. The first fall dinner is set this week in Monticello.
Tickets are on sale online for the Sept. 16 meal served family-style and will feature beef Burgandy. Menus for the other Saturday night fall meals, Sept. 30, Oct. 14, and Oct. 28, are also being posted to the Community Kitchen Cooperative (CKC) website.
Growers and farmers in the CKC, which based in Monticello, cook and serve the meals. Each meal takes place in the former Twisted Tree Eatery, also previously the Dining Room, at 203 N. Main St. in Monticello.
Individuals can buy dining tickets at https://communitykitchencoop.com/
storefront/p/monticello-social-club-
summer-membership to any of the four autumn Saturday meals at CKC.
Cooperative members asked people in June, from Green, Rock, and adjacent Dane and Lafayette counties, to join them for the new style meals. People from all four counties have been buying tickets ahead of time for the dining, held now every two or three weeks.
Familiarity among the diners has been growing, as many have come repeatedly to the meals. Eating family-style around tables of eight to ten has encouraged discussion and a lively, friendly atmosphere.
Some area growers have been enjoying the cooperative’s dining when they aren’t busy in fields and orchards. Beth Kazmar and Steve Pincus, who farm 45 acres of vegetables near Evansville, Wis., have attended the Saturday night meals. Drew and Megan Ten Eyck, who operate the five-generation orchard outside Brodhead with Rob Ten Eyck and his wife Annie Berssenbrugge, have been joining the meals, too.
Attendance grew through the first three meals in July and August and was strong just ahead of Labor Day despite the holiday.
Cooperative members source 90 percent of each meal’s ingredients from surrounding Sugar River Watershed producers.
Each meal features an entree, vegetables in-season, soup and salad, a baked item, and dessert.
The co-op dining in Monticello hearkens back to Wisconsin’s supper club atmosphere of days gone by. Yet additionally, the meals aim by design to bring people together, build community, and connect eaters and growers over local food solutions.
At the meals, co-op members get diners talking together about how we can all help each other make the local food shed stronger and more secure.
Dela and I purchased the building in Monticello in 2021 to help the cooperative get its start. CKC kitchen workers and farmers first experimented with prepared take-home or delivered meals of local ingredients, which they sold to subscribers CSA style in 2021 and 2022.
CKC completely remodeled the kitchen area of the 110-year-old two-story building and met state licensing requirements. Sugar River Bakery has also located successfully to the building in Monticello to share production space with CKC.
We preserved dining space for 45 people in the former restaurant of the building. It’s now hosting the new food shed club experience on Saturday nights in September and October.
In this co-op dining, the family-style meals are served at 7 p.m. Trays of appetizers, socializing, and a cash bar of Giant Jones Brewery and Wollersheim Winery beverages precede each meal at 6 p.m.
Dela, of Brodhead, and Erica Roth of Albany are leading cooking of the first autumn meal this Saturday. I’ll be washing dishes on a volunteer basis, as I’ve done when I haven’t been traveling for my work in Maryland.
In addition to working with the cooperative kitchen since 2021, Dela serves as Town of Spring Valley Clerk in western Rock County. Erica served formerly as a Green County Board member representing Albany.
With our families, we tend livestock and crops that have been featured with other area growers in the meals.
Subscriber surveys in CKC’s first year of meal preparation are helping cooperative members select and cook from the most popular meals. Members are using recipes most highly rated during the former home delivery and pickup.
Arlo Paust of Blanchardville, Pat Skogen of Monroe, Alex Thorpe of Albany, Grace and Harry Pullium of New Glarus are some of the CKC growers and workers. They are all helping with the new co-op dining.
CKC members have been happy these seasonal meals spark Saturday evening conversations about local food production. They want to help motivate citizens to act in ways that secure and enhance what we love about where we live — the Sugar River Water Shed.
The water shed encompasses 218 square miles. At least 83,000 people live in this watershed of 16 communities. Sugar River water shed extends from Verona and Dane County down the Sugar River to Lake Summerset, Ill.
It has 1,700 farmers, and 77 percent of the area’s land is in agricultural use.
● How much of that farmland grows food for local processing and consumption?
● How much of that farm production sells only a select few commodities to a vast food system and global supply chain, instead of feeding local eaters?
● What can happen we get to know our farmers where we live, get to know everyone around the table where we meet, too?
● How can our food dollars reduce vulnerability of our Natural spaces and farmland, and curb food insecurity from much in a big, concentrated global system we cannot control?
Come join in the conversation about how we can answer such questions. Share in the fun and local, seasonal food dining at CKC in Monticello.
A calendar of the Saturday night meals, pricing, and a limited number of prepared meals for pickup on Sunday mornings following Saturday evening dining can be found at www.communitykitchen.coop.
