Optional Events
Wednesday Evening Tours
Urban Agriculture Tour
Growing Power, Alice’s Garden and Walnut Way
Growing Power
Growing Power transforms communites through development of Community Food Systems. These systems provide high-quality, safe, healthy, affordable food for all residents in the community. Growing Power develops Community Food Centers (local places where people can learn sustainable practices to grow food), as a key componet of Community Food Systems. Growing Power's Milwaukee operation includes six greenhouses, three hoop houses, an aquaponics house, a worm depository, an apiary, three poultry houses, livestock pens, a composting operation, and a small retail store. The Growing Power Community Food Center is the first of its kind in the nation.
Alice's Garden
Alice's Children's Garden is a community garden program sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Extension 4-H and Youth Development, SeedFolks Youth Ministry, and the Greater Johnsons Park Health Coalition. The garden welcomes neighborhood and community children, April thru October, for various gardening programs and projects. Classes from neighborhood schools come to the garden for hands-on environmental learning and gardening. The garden program also implements the Garden Mosaics curriculum, and takes interested children through the Junior Master Gardeners training for national certification.
Walnut Way
Walnut Way Conservation Corp. is a grassroots, community development organization whose mission statement is "...to sustain an economically diverse and neighborly community through civic engagement, environmental stewardship, and economic enterprise." In the past seven years engaged residents in collaboration with academic institutions, businesses, public agencies, and neighborhood associations have transformed vacant, debris-filled lots into productive gardens and orchards, significantly reduced crime through neighborhood connections and collaborations with police, provided educational and recreational programming to local youth and job training to local adults, and documented the oral traditions of resident elders, to name only a few of their accomplishments.
4:00 - Departs hotel
4:30 - Arrive for Growing Power Tour
6:30 - Depart Growing Power (small snack available on the bus)
7:00 - Arrive Alice's Garden for short talk
7:10 - Depart Alice's Garden
7:15 - Arrive Walnut Way for short talk
7:45 - Arrive back at hotel (estimated return)
Dinner is not included in this tour, please plan ahead
Minimum: 35
Maximum: 40
Fee: $25.00 per person
Milwaukee Ale House & beer tasting with Robin Shepard
No two words go together more naturally than Milwaukee and beer. This is your chance to taste some of the beers that made Milwaukee famous. Join us on a pub crawl with Robin Shepard, Executive Director of the North Central Cooperative Extension Association, and nationally renowned beer aficionado, author and historian. During this Wisconsin beer and dinner experience, you will get a chance to enjoy an historic walk through Wisconsin and Milwaukee's beer history, learn the secrets of the brewing process, and the growing variety of beer styles. Robin will guide your taste buds through a variety of locally brewed beers including Louie's Demise, Sheepshead Stout, Pull Chain Pale Ale, Solomon Juneau and the brew masters seasonal special.
While sipping at the award winning Milwaukee Ale House, located on the Milwaukee River in the Historic Third Ward, your taste buds will be treated to a dinner buffet of a famous Milwaukee Fish Fry, Stout Beef Roast, Roasted garlic mashed potatoes, Ale House Salad, and Roasted Sicilian Vegetables. The $40.00 fee will cover the program, dinner and beer tasting.
5:30 - Depart (walk to the Milwaukee Ale House)
6:00 - Arrive/start time at the Ale House
6:45 - Buffet dinner
8:30 - Arrive back at hotel
Minimum: 25
Maximum: 35
Fee: $40.00 per person