Taking their name from designated parts of a field where crops and agricultural techniques are trialed, Test Plots are nimble experiments that engage the community and serve as research and development for more ambitious artist-led projects.

This year we’re building on the initial success of two projects piloted during the 2024 Farm/Art DTour, and planning fall programs that celebrate 25 years of deepening cross-sector relationships within our cultureshed as we push the boundaries of agri/cultural innovation.

Hay Rake Ballet

Second Act

Choreographer Sarah Butler will return to further develop the Hay Rake Ballet–a performance that a lucky few had the chance to experience–during this year's harvest season. Framing everyday farming practices within a classical dance aesthetic, the Ballet pays homage to the inherent craft and significance of family scale farming practices. The piece invites audiences to consider that stewarding the land is a choreographed effort, and that a web of nuanced, creative decisions have shaped, and continue to shape, our agri/cultural landscapes.

Woolen Mill Gallery Shows

Celebrating 25 years

Our newly fenestrated Woolen Mill Gallery in downtown Reedsburg will host two shows this year. In late June we will take a retrospective look back on Key Ingredients, the Smithsonian show that sparked Fermentation Fest and led to the Farm/Art DTour. The second show, curated by artist and board member Catherine Schwalbe, will take place in early October and highlight the current working creative life of the community of artists who’ve been a part of our story over the last 25 years.

Walking and Talking

Stories in Motion

Artist Patricia Tinajero and Puentes/Bridges Director Mercedes Falk will reunite this year to continue Walking and Talking, a socially engaged art practice. Together they will walk a stretch of rural roads between Wormfarm in Sauk County and Puentes/Bridges in Buffalo County, stopping at farms along the way to engage in conversations around migration, agriculture, and soil health. Stories and artworks gathered during the 2024 DTour walk will be included in a forthcoming zine, designed by Ope! Publishing.

Wormfarm’s programs mature through multi-year cycles, giving time for experiments to lead to new discoveries, build community friendships, and spark conviviality & joy as we gather artists, farmers and community leaders from southern Wisconsin and further afield.

Artists in bubble costumes dance at Witwen Park during the 2021 Ferm Fest.
Ellie Erickson carving wood with a chainsaw for the DISCover Art Golf Disc Golf course in Reedsburg, WI.
Sauk County ARK is an artwork by Tory Tepp installed in Sauk County, Wisconsin. Kernza, a perennial grain, radiates from an earthwork in the shape of a landlocked ship: a field station for scientific research, meditation & agricultural play.
Artists installed wood carvings made with natural fibers in a disc golf course along the Baraboo River in downtown Reedsburg, Wisconsin.
Witwen Park Tabernacle Caitlin Vitale-Sullivan music performance presented by Wormfarm Institute at the 2021 Fermentation Fest
collaboration between artist Tory Tepp and a local farming family to plant & harvest Kernza, a new perennial grain, in a field anchored by evolving earthworks created with students from a local school.
Large letters in a farm field spell out H E A L T H a person is holding a sign that reads "Human".
Witwen Park tabernacle along the river at sunset.

Previous Test Plots have included:

  • IMAGINE: Wormfarm invited writers, artists and community voices to imagine thriving rural places 50 years into the future. We gathered 60+ essays, artworks, poems, and speculative fictions into two zines. Volume 1, Volume 2.
  • Seancesorium: a guided experience that drew upon 19th Century spiritualist, French surrealist, and Andean and Amazonian plant traditions, led by the art collective Plant Contingent.
  • Singing in the Country: a shape-note signing event that responded to the site’s history and explored the connections between singing and democracy.
  • Sauk County ARK: artist Tory Tepp and a local farming family collaborated to plant & harvest kernza in a field anchored by evolving earthworks created with local students
  • DISCover Art Golf: nine artists installed temporary artworks in a disc golf course along the Baraboo River in downtown Reedsburg
  • Rural Urban FLOW seed exchanges, shared meals, and a zine that invited poets to write odes that were composted and planted with seeds grown by CSA farmers
  • Fermentation Fest: including a Grassland Edition and a Spirits Edition, teamed up with local partners for rural revivals welcoming 2,000+ visitors to the historic Witwen Park for delicious food, music in the tabernacle, dance, art, educational classes and fermented concoctions.