Island agriculture

Washington Island, Wisconsin, sits in the chilly waters of Lake Michigan, a 7-mile, 30-minute ferry ride from the northern tip of Door County. The 5×6-mile island is home to 700 year-round islanders. In the summer, the population triples.

Immigrants from Iceland settled here in the late 1800s, followed by other Scandinavians. They produced cherries, apples, and maple syrup, but the island eventually became famous for its potatoes.

At its peak, 80 island farmers produced nearly a quarter million bushels a year, according to The Door County Advocate. A port was built and barges carried island potatoes as far as Chicago until 1960.

Today, small-scale growers provide restaurants, the island’s lone grocery store, a farmers market, and residents with fresh produce. A handful of islanders raise livestock, and orchards and homesteads offer their goods at roadside stands.

Cheers from the island

Breweries, wineries, and cideries are very popular in Door County. Island Orchard Cider differentiates itself by growing its apples and pears on Washington Island. In 2005, Bob and Yannique Purman purchased the property and planted 200 dwarf apple trees similar to those grown in Normandy, France, which has comparable climate and soil. The 8-acre orchard now has more than 2,000 trees, including 50 varieties of apples, plus pears and hazelnuts (for the squirrels). 

Orchard manager Casey Dahl says their first trees were pruned to grow on trellises supported by fence posts. “It’s hard to have posts of any kind because of the shallow soil,” he says. Now he is grafting freestanding trees onto semi-dwarf root stock for new plantings. “Even though the soil is thinner, it’s fractured bedrock underneath, so there are all kinds of cracks and crevices, and the roots can get down in there.” 

In late February, Dahl and his co-worker and partner Shawn Murray put on their snowshoes and begin the long process of pruning trees and repairing trellises. Integrated pest management, mowing, and irrigation fill their summer days.

Every piece of fruit is handpicked in the fall. Since there are so many varieties, harvest starts in late August and lasts into November. That allows Dahl, Murray, and the Purmans to pick without much extra help. The long harvest window also makes storage and production more manageable.

Apples are ferried to the mainland and pressed at Seaquist Orchards. The juice goes to Island Orchard cider house in Ellison Bay, where it ferments and matures before it’s bottled and served. Many varieties of cider are sold throughout Wisconsin and at islandorchardcider.com.

A farm of their own

In addition to the orchard, Dahl and Murray run Folk Tree Farm (facebook.com/folktreewashingtonisland). They grow produce for a hotel, the food pantry, and the island farmers market on their 21 acres. “The island is a unique place,” Murray says. “We have an interest in producing locally, and there is a very clear definition of what is local. It’s the island.”

Dahl says that in some areas, buying from farmers may be more expensive than chain stores, but on the island, “there’s more of a price incentive because you have to go on a ferry.” A round-trip ticket for the Washington Island Ferry is $58 for two adults and a vehicle, with added fees for trailers.

The plots at Folk Tree Farm are organized like small fields. “We can do rotations, but when a crop is done, we have room to go through with the tractor and cultivator,” Dahl says. “It has really made life easier.” Goats help keep brush down, dispose of vegetable scraps, and provide fertilizer. Cover crops add organic matter to the soil, and drip irrigation helps conserve water.

Murray and Dahl talk with other island growers to make sure they aren’t duplicating efforts too much. “We don’t like growing the fast turn-around produce quite as well, whereas Russell Rolffs loves growing lettuce,” Dahl says. 

From Iowa to the island

Russell and Alessandra Rolffs came to Hoot Blossom Farm in 2015 to grow produce for a local hotel and restaurant.  

The sandy island soil is very different from where Russell grew up in Marion County, Iowa. An island cattle producer has delivered aged manure to help. “Many growers are solving the same or overlapping problems, and one of us might have a problem that could be a solution for the other,” he says. They also try to consolidate ordering supplies to save on shipping.

Hoot Blossom Farm’s 8 acres include a 30×80-foot high tunnel for trellised tomatoes, a low tunnel for peppers, and 60 plum trees. A 1-acre growing area makes the most of every inch and reduces soil compaction with 3×50-foot and 3×100-foot raised beds.  

The Rolffses grow 130 varieties of 35 kinds of vegetables, plus 80 types of flowers. They produce 2,500 pounds of lettuce per year. “We have a lot of diversity here on a very small footprint,” he says. 

In addition to the hotel and restaurant, the Rolffses sell at the farmers market and directly to consumers. They offer bare-root native wildflower plants at hootblossomfarm.com. 

“A lot of summer residents come from urban areas and really value fresh produce,” he says. “That’s our niche. We aren’t interested in taking pallets of cabbages to Green Bay.”

Giving back through ag

Alessandra grew up in Los Angeles but enjoys living on the island with Russell and their two children. “There are so many things here you can’t get there, like space and water and land,” she says. She works with Russell at Hoot Blossom Farm, but her passion is serving as executive director of Gathering Ground (gatheringgroundwi.org), a nonprofit dedicated to education and sustainable agriculture on the island. Russell is the board president and farm manager.  

The organization’s 38 acres include a vineyard donated by a local couple, fruit and nut orchards, and a community garden. “Instead of little plots each person manages on their own, this is just one big community garden,” Alessandra says.  

Gathering Ground hosts college-age interns through its Ground School program. “It’s for students who have an interest in topics that surround agriculture like food equity and sustainable agriculture,” Alessandra says.

The group also works with the Washington Island School. Students collect data about tree growth and help with chores. “All the kids have had their hands in the dirt here,” she says. 

Celebrity shorthorns

Joe Elmore retired to Washington Island from his Illinois family farm after visiting wife Linda’s family here. After showing cattle since the age of 8, however, he couldn’t make the move without one thing: a herd of his beloved shorthorns. 

While Elmore does sell bulls to those willing to come to Riola Shorthorn Farm, there’s a waiting list of people who want to buy his beef. For processing, he loads them into a trailer for a ferry ride and 75-mile drive on winding roads through tourist-packed hamlets to the next county. At least loading them is easy. “All of our animals are broke to lead,” he says. “I’m getting too old to wrestle.” He grows some corn for feed, the only real reason row crops are grown here, he says.

As part of the island ag community, Elmore has taken part in forums, taught students about showing cattle, and mentored a beginning producer. “Agriculture is a challenge up here,” he says. “A lot of the island agriculture other than hobby things like me rely on tourism.”

Even though Riola Shorthorn Farm isn’t a tourist attraction, Elmore’s cattle, which graze alongside one of the busiest roads on the island, get plenty of attention from visitors. “I do believe my cattle are the most photographed animals on the island,” he says with a laugh. “There’s somebody taking pictures constantly. It’s like they’ve never seen a cow.” 

Building a new life

Sue Dompke and her children moved from Milwaukee to Washington Island in 2009, three years after unexpectedly losing her husband. She wanted to get away from the city and expand her new beekeeping hobby. The first year, she built 10 beehives and harvested 550 pounds of honey, and Sweet Mountain Farm was born. Today, she has 124 hives of Russian honeybees and harvests up to 10,000 pounds of honey per year.

Honey is bottled on site and sold all over Door County, along with candles, soaps, and other products she makes from the beeswax. A community-supported agriculture program provides members with gift baskets. Queens and nucleus colonies are also sold. Dompke designed easier-to-handle cedar hives, available at sweetmountainfarm.com, along with instructions for those wishing to build their own.

Most beekeepers set their hives in lines, but in Dompke’s bee yards, they are arranged in circles surrounding fields of flowers. “The bees don’t have to go far for a little takeout,” she says. That also allows her a relatively bee-free zone for checking hives and doing maintenance from outside the circle.

There are plenty of other food sources for the bees on the island, including Fragrant Isle Lavender Farm, which is about a mile away, as the bee flies. Dompke is currently starting her own lavender plants in a high tunnel system and will be researching its effects on honeybees.

She has another bee yard next to the Island Cider orchard. The bees enjoy the blossoms, but could be harmed by chemical applications. “Casey lets me know when he’s spraying, then I go over there and close up the entrances so the bees aren’t foraging during that period,” she says. “We are cooperatively working together and we both get what we need.”

What is farming? 

Agriculture on Washington Island is different than farming in other parts of the Midwest, but these growers have limits mainlanders don’t. There are only so many acres on the island. The bedrock isn’t going anywhere. Trips to the peninsula will always require a ferry ride. 

Some lifelong islanders claim agriculture here died when the last potato barge cast off, but today’s growers are undeterred. “There are so many kinds of farming,” Murray says. “What we’re trying to do is provide food for this community.”