By Tony Ends
Cooperative Board Member
MONTICELLO — Tickets are on sale online for a new way to eat out seasonally and support area farmers to sustain the Sugar River Food Shed.
Growers and farmers in the Community Kitchen Cooperative (CKC) in Monticello are cooking and serving the meals on four Saturday nights in July and August.
Each meal is taking place in the former Twisted Tree Eatery, also previously the Dining Room, at 203 N. Main St. in Monticello. The first meal is Saturday, July 15.
Individuals can buy dining tickets at https://tinyurl.com/4ehfsv8m to any of four summer meals served family style at CKC.
The cooperative is asking diners from Green, Rock, and adjacent Dane counties to buy tickets ahead of time to any two of the four meal dates. The other three summer Saturday night meals to follow are being planned for July 29, Aug. 12, and Aug. 26.
Cooperative members are sourcing 90 percent of each meal’s ingredients from surrounding Sugar River Watershed producers.
The first summer meal features herb-roasted chicken, vegetables in-season, soup and salad, a fresh country buttered-biscuit, homemade jam, and dessert.
The new co-op dining in Monticello hearkens back to Wisconsin’s supper club atmosphere of days gone by. Yet additionally, the meals by design aim to bring people together, build community, and connect eaters and growers over local food solutions.
At the meals, co-op members will 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. Area people subscribers Community Supported Agriculture-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 of Albany has also located successfully to the building in Monticello to share production space with CKC.
Dining space for 45 people was preserved in the building. That space is now hosting the new food shed club experience on the four summer Saturday nights.
In this co-op dining, the family-style meals will be 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 meal Saturday, July 15.
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 their families, each continues to tend livestock and crops, which they are featuring with other area growers’ ingredients 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. Co-op members are using recipes most highly rated during their former home delivery and pickup.
Arlo Paust of Argyle, 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 want these seasonal meals to spark Saturday evening conversations about local food production. They want to help motivate citizens to act in ways that secure and enhance the Sugar River Watershed and its food shed.
Sugar River Watershed encompasses 218 square miles. At least 83,000 people in 16 communities live in this area that drains into the sugar River. The river extends from Verona and Dane County south to Lake Summerset, Ill.
The watershed has 1,700 farmers, and 77 percent of the area’s land is in agricultural use. CKC members are asking their diners to think about questions important to the region.
● How much of that farmland grows food for local processing and consumption?
● How much of that agricultural production sells only a select few commodities to a vast food system and global supply chain, instead of feeding local eaters?
● What can happen if 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? How can our money curb food insecurity from many challenges our watershed and our people face in a big, concentrated global system, which we cannot control?
Come join in the conversation about how we can answer such questions. Share in the fun and purpose of local, seasonal food dining at CKC in Monticello.
A calendar of the Saturday night meals, pricing, and other details can be found at https://communitykitchencoop.com/.
Look for details there also about a limited number of CKC prepared meals that will be available for pickup on Sunday mornings following Saturday evening dining.
— Tony Ends operated Scotch Hill Farm with his wife Dela and family for 25 years near Brodhead in western Rock County. They raised fresh vegetables for subscribers in Madison, Milwaukee, and the Chicago area. Tony also wrote and edited for newspapers for 17 years. Both Tony and Dela continue to advocate for farming people. Tony also now writes and edits full time for a federal agency.
