From Cheese To Soap: A Tour Of Scotch Hill Farm
Farm Has Been Active CSA Member For 15 Years
Posted: 1:15 pm CDT May 23, 2009
By Anna Speaker
Madison Magazine
Special To Channel 3000"Oh, that's the dog soap," Dela Ends says from behind the refrigerator. The mottled bars are drying in the factory off the family's machine shed and have been imprinted with the likenesses of English Bulldogs and Great Danes. Today, she's searching for a bar of soap (they make soap for people, too) as she rifles past the translucent brown bottles labeled sandalwood vanilla and lavender. She tells me the tea tree with comfrey bar will be "just the thing" for my sensitive skin.Ends and her husband, Tony, make the soap from the milk of the goats that can be heard bleating on the other end of Scotch Hill Farm. The lip balm, lotion butter and bar soap business is one of the ways that the Ends supplement their income at their community supported agriculture (CSA) farm on the outskirts of Brodhead, Wisconsin.Prior to their life in the country, Tony worked as a journalist and Dela went to school to become a teacher. Their shared passion for healthy living brought them to Scotch Hill Farm, where the two work from sunup to sundown delivering produce, farming, making soap and keeping books for the business."CSA farming is very hard manual physical work. It is long hours, and it's a lot more than the twenty weeks that you get vegetables for," Tony says. "It's a good forty weeks of planning and preparing and building and repairing and getting land rented and financed and cared for and tended, then tending all these crops and delivering them for twenty weeks. It's a year-round job."Over one hundred different varieties of vegetables are grown at Scotch Hill Farm each year, which are then distributed to customers through the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (MACSAC). The Ends have been members of the coalition for fifteen years, and Dela serves on the board. As part of the program, the couple delivers boxes of assorted produce to drop-off sites both in their area and in Chicago where subscribers pick up the produce.To continue reading, visit MadisonMagazine.com.
Madison Magazine
Special To Channel 3000"Oh, that's the dog soap," Dela Ends says from behind the refrigerator. The mottled bars are drying in the factory off the family's machine shed and have been imprinted with the likenesses of English Bulldogs and Great Danes. Today, she's searching for a bar of soap (they make soap for people, too) as she rifles past the translucent brown bottles labeled sandalwood vanilla and lavender. She tells me the tea tree with comfrey bar will be "just the thing" for my sensitive skin.Ends and her husband, Tony, make the soap from the milk of the goats that can be heard bleating on the other end of Scotch Hill Farm. The lip balm, lotion butter and bar soap business is one of the ways that the Ends supplement their income at their community supported agriculture (CSA) farm on the outskirts of Brodhead, Wisconsin.Prior to their life in the country, Tony worked as a journalist and Dela went to school to become a teacher. Their shared passion for healthy living brought them to Scotch Hill Farm, where the two work from sunup to sundown delivering produce, farming, making soap and keeping books for the business."CSA farming is very hard manual physical work. It is long hours, and it's a lot more than the twenty weeks that you get vegetables for," Tony says. "It's a good forty weeks of planning and preparing and building and repairing and getting land rented and financed and cared for and tended, then tending all these crops and delivering them for twenty weeks. It's a year-round job."Over one hundred different varieties of vegetables are grown at Scotch Hill Farm each year, which are then distributed to customers through the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (MACSAC). The Ends have been members of the coalition for fifteen years, and Dela serves on the board. As part of the program, the couple delivers boxes of assorted produce to drop-off sites both in their area and in Chicago where subscribers pick up the produce.To continue reading, visit MadisonMagazine.com.
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