Rural Retreat
Just over the Illinois border, East Troy, Wisconsin has become home to a variety of sustainable enterprises, including organics, alternative energy and a new eco-village
by Claudia M. Lenart
Driving north on Route 120, heading toward East Troy, Wis., you enter a verdant, rural landscape, complete with barns, horses and cows. Its rolling geography, formed by the Wisconsin glacier, reflects its proximity to the Alpine Valley Resort and Music Theater and Kettle Moraine State Forest.
East Troy (pop. 3,800) located just north of the Wisconsin/Illinois border has small-town charm with a village square and gazebo, a train museum and drive-through restaurant. “It’s the kind of place where you can let your kid ride a bike to get around and not worry about it,” said Tricia Riley, general manager of Nokomis Bakery in East Troy.
What someone passing through East Troy may not notice, however, is the profusion of sustainable enterprises that have found a home in this town. These include the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute and organic farm; Nokomis Organic Bakery and Grocery; LifeWays, a Waldorf-inspired early-childhood program; and Uriel Pharmacy, which makes anthroposophically-oriented natural remedies.
“East Troy is one of southeastern Wisconsin’s best-kept secrets. It’s amazing to see the number of organic and family farms in this area,” said Riley.
The newest addition to East Troy’s sustainable community is an eco-village, Fields Neighborhood. The first homes in this subdivision received the highest rating ever from Green Built Home, a Wisconsin Environmental Initiative. A minimum rating of 50 is required to qualify as a Green Built Home and this project received 107.
Fields Neighborhood looks out over Honey Creek and a 170-acre wooded conservancy with footpaths. While it’s surrounded on two sides by open space, it is close enough to walk to school and downtown.
The most unusual aspect of this project is that it is designed with a zero water-runoff system to conserve water. “All the storm water percolates through the ground to the water table,” explained Peter Scherrer, general contractor for the project. The site is designed to maximize water absorption and includes water-collecting gardens with wetland plants. To minimize water runoff, the street is narrow. It is concrete, which is more environmentally responsible than asphalt, and creates less heat than asphalt.
The first two duplexes were placed on the market in August. The architect for the project is the Design Coalition of Madison, Wis. The brick-and-wood buildings were built with numerous energy-saving features, earning the homes a Wisconsin Energy Star rating of 88, which means they require 88 percent less energy to operate than conventional homes. Skylights in the living room and a southerly orientation provide passive solar heat, and the home is active solar ready. High-efficiency windows and insulation further conserve energy.
The homes make use of renewable materials that create a hypoallergenic interior environment, said Joel Jacobsen, the agent who is marketing the homes. In the finished units, the first-floor hallway has linoleum, which is more environmentally friendly than other solid surfaces. The carpeting is made of wool and the paint is low volatile organic compounds. The wood trim is high-quality Wisconsin oak that required less fuel for shipping.
Besides a family room and bathroom, the lower level includes a root cellar and workroom/studio. The root cellar is intended for produce from planned community gardens. The attached garage comes with an exhaust fan that automatically goes on when the garage door is open and sucks out the vehicle’s carbon monoxide.
One of the interesting features on the main level of one unit is the bamboo flooring, which is very attractive and looks like hardwood, but is renewable. The living room/great room has cathedral ceilings and windows with views of Honey Creek and open space. A porch can be accessed from the great room as well as from the second bedroom.
The two finished units are $318,900; the unfinished units are $228,900 and require the buyer to add flooring, cabinets, and plumbing and lighting fixtures. When the community is complete, it will consist of 72 units, including condominium buildings with six units and single-floor duplexes.
Christopher Mann, developer of the Fields Neighborhood, also created an eco-village in Sussex England. “I imagined a place where people could live together, interact socially and in work, and where children could grow up in a balanced way,” said Mann, referring to the Sussex community, in an interview in the December 2000 Rudolf Steiner Foundation quarterly. For the East Troy community, he said he hopes to create a landscape that forms the cultural environment for a new social ethic. Mann, who was out of the country during the research for this article, noted in that publication that it is particularly challenging to create a green community that is economically diverse. “To create something for the middle ground is very difficult. It is easy to fall into the high end and make things too expensive, particularly if you want to make green buildings, have an ecological ethic, and develop a zero run-off site.”
For this reason, Scherrer said while all the buildings constructed at Fields Neighborhood will have some green features, some may not be quite as green as others, in order to make the homes available to people in various income brackets.
Mann is British and grew up in a Waldorf family. As a young man, he moved to Canada, where he discovered anthroposophy — the spiritual science formulated by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), an Austrian philosopher and teacher. Anthroposophy is the basis for numerous holistic initiatives in medicine, therapy, the arts, economics, agriculture and education. Although Waldorf schools draw from anthroposophy, it is not taught to Waldorf students. So when Mann became interested in anthroposophy as an adult, he returned to England for Waldorf teacher training. Mann’s wife, Martina, inherited significant funds that have allowed the Manns a life of philanthropy.
The Manns were attracted to East Troy because it is the home of the oldest biodynamic farm in the United States, the Zinniker Dairy Farm, which started in the 1940s.
“The East Troy area had the look and feel of valleys in Europe and they fell in love,” said Ron Doetch, executive director of the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute.
The Manns, along with Ruth Zinniker, in 1984 founded the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute as a non-profit designed to conduct agricultural research and train farmers in sustainable, biodynamic and organic systems. Biodynamic agriculture goes beyond organic agriculture, and looks at the entire farm as a living organism. It recognizes the importance of the soil to the health of the farm and looks at the farm, the animals, the crops and ecosystem as interconnected, with a goal to bring balance and health to the whole.
For the past 12 years, it has brought together farmers and consumers at its annual Urban Rural Food System Conference in November.
The major thrust at Michael Fields is changing the way farmers farm to preserve resources and to keep the family farm alive. Doetch pointed out that outreach programs are open to conventional farmers, since teaching them how to reduce their chemical use by one-third, and still be profitable, can have a significant impact.
Michael Fields works to increase federal funding for research and education for sustainable agriculture. Less than one-half of 1 percent of USDA research and extension funds go to sustainable agriculture.
Doetch believes it’s a good time for Michael Fields, as organic products have caught on in the mainstream. “With asthma, diabetes and learning difficulties on the rise, people have started to realize the diet of our children is wrong,” he said. “People have come to realize we are what we eat.” Doetch said food consciousness has been awakened due to threats from genetically modified food and Mad Cow disease.
“It’s nice to be doing the right thing for the right reasons and at the right time,” said Doetch.
With the Mann’s financial and emotional support, a number of initiatives have found a home in East Troy.
The first of these was Nokomis Bakery, started in 1984 by Martina Mann, who would bake bread, using grains from local farmers, in a clay oven in a shed. People would come to the shed to buy this hearty bread. “It was part of [the Mann’s] vision of preserving the quickly disappearing family farms,” said Riley, general manager of the bakery. Riley’s husband, Jamie, is the baker at Nokomis.
Today, Nokomis bakes 2,000 to 3,000 handcrafted loaves of stone-ground, whole-grain bread per week, which is sold at the bakery as well as health food and gourmet food stores in Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago.
Riley said her grandparents on both sides farmed. She grew up in Lake Geneva and segued into the natural-food business after she became dissatisfied with corporate life.
“I find it so satisfying to shake the farmer’s hand and walk the fields of wheat before it is brought in here to work with,” said Riley.
Nokomis Bakery, located next door to Michael Fields, also runs a natural-food store, open seven days a week. It carries organic milk in glass bottles, local cheese, bulk organic grain, organic produce, Wisconsin free-range chicken, locally raised honey, and sweet treats made with butter and sugar.
Another East Troy initiative was started by a former Waldorf teacher, Bente Goldstein, who is married to Walter Goldstein, head of crop research at Michael Fields. Bente Goldstein runs A Week on the Farm, a program designed to empower children through the responsibility of daily farm chores. “There was a time when children would go to their grandparents’ farm for this experience, learning where food comes from; modern kids are missing out on this basic experience ... A farm is the perfect setting for building character,” said Goldstein.
LifeWays, also located near Michael Fields, was started by Cynthia Aldinger, a Waldorf teacher who was concerned about the trend towards impersonalized early childhood care. LifeWays Center, a Waldorf-inspired center, was opened in 1998 for children 3 months to 6 years old. It is set up with three suites that resemble a home and is designed to provide consistency and long-lasting relationships by placing children in a multi-age setting, as they would be in a large family.
“The children are outside a major part of the day. They’re in the organic garden picking vegetables and helping wash and prepare them. It’s also a wonderful area for hiking and keeping attuned to the natural environment,” said Jodi Fitzgerald, LifeWays manager.
The concept has spread and there are LifeWays centers in Milwaukee and Sedona, Ariz. Another one is scheduled to open at Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, Calif.
Fitzgerald says the sustainable community is only a part of the microcosm of the larger East Troy community. Initially it had to weather some resistance, but now has started to gain acceptance.
“Michael Fields, Stella Gardens, Nokomis — it all fits together with a lifestyle. It’s a lifestyle of respect for the environment, respect for each person,” she said. “It’s about putting back into the environment what you take out of it.”
Claudia M. Lenart is a writer and editor who lives in Antioch, Ill. She is the mother of a child who attends Water’s Edge School, a Waldorf initiative in Wauconda, Ill.
Get More Info
Fields Neighborhood, South and West streets, East Troy, Wis. Contact Joel Jacobsen, listing agent, jacobsenjoel@sbcglobal.net or 262-763-8477, ext. 32.
Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, www.MichaelFieldsAgInst.org or call 262-642-3303
LifeWays, www.lifeways-center.org
A Week on the Farm, www.aweekonthefarm.org
Nokomis Bakery and Organic Market, N2463 County Rd. ES, East Troy, Wis.; 262-642-9665, www.nokomisbakery.org
