2025 Season
Thriving Together:
Healthy Lands, People, and Communities
In 2025, we focused our series on the positive—the amazing, the thought-provoking, the beautiful. We considered the connections and influences between healthy lands, people, and communities.
Thriving Land: Farming while embracing a land ethic
Monday, June 30, 2025
In this event, a panel of Wisconsin farmers shared their unique stewardship approaches to agriculture, embracing the Leopold notion of a "land ethic": personal responsibility for the conservation of the soil, water, and land, and gratitude for its gifts.
Panelists were:
John and Kim Koepke, Koepke Family Farms, Oconomowoc (Mid-scale dairy)
Joe and Theresa Stapleton, Stapleton Farms, (Spring Green Grain and forage crops, and dairy heifers)
John and Halee Wepking, Meadowlark Organics, Ridgeway (Heritage grain, vegetable, and forages)
Dick Cates, Cates Family Farm, Spring Green
Dick served as the event moderator.
Film Screening: Fungi Web of Life
July 28, 2025
All life on Earth is connected by a great mystery we are only just beginning to unravel. Hidden between the world of plants and animals, another world exists…Fungi: Web of Life. We’ll begin in the mysterious world of the forest floor, where fungi are the central players in nature’s story of birth, death, and rebirth to discover that life as we know it simply would not exist without them.
Book Discussion at The Shed: Entangled Life
August 21, 2025
Emily Whitmore, Spring Green Community Library, hosted this casual and lively discussion of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds at The Shed, 123 N Lexington St, Spring Green, WI 53588. She was joined by mycologists who will share their insights and answers to your questions.
Wisconsin’s Dugout Canoe Conundrum – What Lays Below The Surface
Bill Quackenbush
Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Ho-Chunk Nation
August 25, 2025
In 2019 a native american dugout canoe was discovered by divers in Lake Mendota that when later recovered in 2020, brought to the surface with it questions that many found difficult to answer or even comprehend in relation to Wisconsin’s history. Questions such as how “ancient” it was scientifically dated to be, who actually made such a vessel, and how did it survive the many years submerged under water only to be discovered now. These and many other questions are now being asked as additional dugouts continue to be discovered along the shoreline of what is known to the Ho-Chunk People as Tee Waksik Hominakaja - Lake Where He Lays.”
An Evening Celebrating Fungi
September 9, 2025
On September 9th, we gathered in the barn for the last time of the 2025 season and concluded our exploration of fungi with an engaging panel of mycologists.
Midwest Bedrock: The Search for Nature’s Soul in America’s Heartland
October 22, 2025
Author Kevin Koch took participants on a photo-journey across twelve Midwestern states to out-of-the-way nature and outdoor-cultural sites defying the usual stereotypes of Midwest landscape. Geology, biology, archaeology, and history are interspersed throughout the narrative of this twelve-state journey. The presentation is based on Koch’s most recent book, Midwest Bedrock: The Search for Nature’s Soul in America’s Heartland.