2006 Schedule of Events

June 3 Opening Day
Music – Dennis Letterman & Country Line Dancers, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

June 10 Music – Steve Hazell, Folk, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

June 17 Health & Fitness Day
Fitness Testing, by Elite Fitness &
Physical Therapy
Nutritition Presentation-Sue Mc Ilraith,
Affinity Health
Blood Pressure Screening, etc.-Paula Stevens,
Oshkosh Senior Center
Diabetes Screening, Lions Club

Market Basket Drawing

June 24 Music – Straight Up, Bluegrass, 9 a.m.-11 a.m.

July 1 Music – Tyler Ross, Folk, 9 a.m.-12 a.m.

July 4 Watch for us in the Oshkosh parade!

July 8 Music - High and Lonesome Boys, Bluegrass,
9 a.m.-12 p.m.

July 15 Music – Mueller Family Band, Variety,
9 a.m.–12 p.m.

July 22 Kids’ Day

Market Basket Drawing

July 29 Music – Geriatric Jazz Band, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Aug 5 Bring a Friend to the Market!

Music - High and Lonesome Boys, Bluegrass,
9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Aug 12 Cooking Demo-using market produce
with Ryan Nolan, Water City Grill, 9 a.m.

Aug 19 Music – Dennis Leatherman & Country Line
Dancers, 9 a.m.- 12 p.m.

Market Basket Drawing

Aug 26 Kids’ Day

Sept 2 Music – Stephen Ruby, DJ, Variety, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Sept 9 Heritage Day – Vendor Contest

Music – Steve Hazell, Folk, 9 a.m.–12 p.m.

Ayse – International Artifacts

Sept 16 Music – Railroad Ron, Variety, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Market Basket Drawing

Sept 23 Music – Mark Bradish, Variety, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Sept 30 Vendor Appreciation Day

Oct 7 Kids’ Day
Pumpkin Decorating

Oct 14 TBA

Oct 21 Market Basket Drawing

Oct 28 Kids - Trick or Treat!

Final Day of the Market!

Quality comes naturally at Gills & Beaks Game Farm

When Howard Dunham, a retired operations manager for the postal service, first established a farm in Wisconsin 30 years ago, he only had a handful of chickens on his farm. Now, decades later, flocks of people come to the Oshkosh Saturday Farmers Markets to buy Dunham’s chickens.

Dunham’s farm is called Gills & Beaks Game Farm with the slogan “Where Quality Comes Naturally.” Along with chickens, Dunham also raises sheep, emus, guinea hens, ducks, geese, pheasants and five varieties of turkeys. The farm consists of 19 acres in Winneconne, situated on Lake Poygan.

“It’s just a little farm out in the country, what they call a gentleman’s farm,” Dunham explained.

Dunham doesn’t manage his gentleman’s farm completely by himself. He has five children who help. His helpers include two of his adult children from a previous marriage, a 21-year-old stepson and two kids aged 14 and 11.

Dunham said he’s always lived on a farm. He was born in Florida and his family raised birds for family use.

“But it’s a long story how I got to Wisconsin,” Dunham said. “My dad is retired from the Air Force and he flew for Western Airlines. When my parents got divorced, my dad asked me to come up for the summer to take care of his land by Lake Tomahawk. He had 160 acres, and there was no electricity and you had to pump your own water. And I loved it.”

At the time, Dunham wanted to be a forest ranger, and he decided to enroll at Stevens Point for its program. But he then transferred to Oshkosh to get a degree in archaeology. Dunham then went on to earn a business degree.

Dunham stresses the importance of quality and natural products on his farm, stemming from his studies at UWO.

“I had to write a term paper at UWO, and I chose to do it on the Food and Drug Administration, and it came to be an eye-opening experience,” Dunham explained.

But Dunham said he has always been a health nut. He’s been running for 20 years and has two gardens at home, where everything is organically grown.

This has been Dunham’s first year selling the products from his farm, and he only sells at the Oshkosh Saturday Farmers Market.

“I started selling at the market because I wanted to generate more income and provide an alternative protein in which people do not have to worry about chemicals and additives,” said Dunham.

However, Dunham has been distributing his chickens for years.

“Before this year, I used to sell to my co-workers and I would always sell out. So before coming to the market here, I thought, ‘Gosh, what am I going to do if I don’t sell all these chickens?’”

Dunham had nothing to worry about. Although he only sold seven chickens the first week, his stand at the market has become increasingly more popular with many repeat customers. Since his first outing at the market, he has been selling out of eggs regularly and oftentimes he runs out of chickens too.

“Recently someone came to me to buy a chicken,” Dunham said. “She said she had been at a party and people started talking about my chickens and she had to come and get some.”

A customer who was nearby when Dunham told that story said she must have been at that party.

The roasting chickens Dunham sells are what he calls “two days fresh,” meaning that they are processed two days before the Oshkosh Saturday Farmers Market. The chickens are from four to five pounds.

Along with Dunham’s popular chickens and eggs, he also sells pheasants and turkey jerky at the market.

Many of Dunham’s customers have expressed interest in continuing to have a supply of his chickens throughout the winter, after the market closes.

“I’ve been handing out cards for when after the market closes if people still want things from the farm,” Dunham said. “But I don’t have chickens year-round. It’s too hard in the snow. However, I have anticipated people wanting chickens for the winter, so I will start bringing more to the market in September and October for people to freeze over the winter.”

Dunham expressed his desire to keep his business on a small-scale.

“I want to stay small, so I can control the quality. Chickens can be messy if you let them have their way,” he said.

Dunham will also be able to supply some of his customers with Thanksgiving turkeys, sold on a first come, first serve basis. The five varieties of turkeys he raises on his farm are all near extinction, including the breeds Narragansett, Royal Palm and Bourbon Reds.

“There are only hundreds left of these birds, and I have 20 or more in those varieties,” Dunham said.

Besides those turkeys, Dunham will also provide the traditional Thanksgiving turkey for customers, which is not a natural turkey.

“I just love turkeys,” Dunham said. “But the traditional ones are not as sharp as the natural turkeys. They just don’t have enough sense. The others are descendants of the wild turkey.”

Dunham is not only concerning himself with the birds. As the name Gills & Beaks Game Farm implies, Dunham is planning to start harvesting fish at his farm, including perch, blue gills and bait fish.

“I plan on digging a pond and using water from our spring,” Dunham said. “We have an artesian spring. It’s ice cold. When you put your feet in it, your feet turn blue. We’ve been drinking from it, and it’s safe."

Dunham then added with a laugh, “And no one’s keeled over yet.”

Dunham’s true love lies with the birds, however, from “their feathers to the way they act.”
When asked if it is hard to kill the chickens for market since he loves birds so much, Dunham replied, “It is hard, but they are all white and all look identical, so it’s hard to make pets out of them.”

But he has kept pets, ranging from a flock of geese he kept for 20 years to a wood duck he called Mrs. Woody to a chicken that survived being attacked by a weasel.

Dunham cares greatly about his customers and tries to provide the best product with the best service, which is apparent by his friendly attitude and popularity.

“The big thing is to make sure that I get people no run-of-the-mill product,” Dunham said.

Steve Hazell playing Sept. 10

Folk singer Steve Hazell will be playing Saturday from 9:30 to 11:30.

Read more about Steve here.

Bluegrass music this week!

The always popular High and Lonesome Boys will be playing 9 to 11 a.m.

Couple shares stand, serenity at market

A customer at the Oshkosh Saturday Farmers Market can’t help but notice Kathy Szente and Gerald Schubert’s stand.

In one half of the stand sits Szente, 43, demonstrating how to use a spinning wheel with wool, and in the other half is Schubert, 52, talking to customers about bonsai and Zen gardens.

Szente used to be a schoolteacher in Maine. She had a large farm then, and people gave her sheep and Anwar goats. Her flock grew from two to 33 over time, and she fell in love with spinning wool.

But 15 years ago, Szente found a different love, and she moved to Wisconsin to be with her companion, Schubert. Szente had to give up the farm, but she continues to spin wool. Szente can still be found at the Oshkosh Saturday Farmers Market enjoying her hobby.

Since she no longer has the sheep farm, Szente purchases white wool, which she then dyes by herself. She spins the wool and sells the yarn at places like the Oshkosh Saturday Farmers Market.

"It’s very relaxing," said Szente. "Your mind can wander, and I have wonderful memories. When my two kids were young, they would sit in front of the wheel and watch me spin. They would start falling asleep and topple over, catching themselves with their hands."

Although Szente is a certified teacher and social worker, she no longer works outside of the home. She is a full-time stay-at-home mom. One of her children has special needs. But with the free time she has left between taking care of her children and home, she spends spinning wool. She also offers spinning lessons from her home.

Schubert has a hobby of his own. He is an electrical engineer, but seven years ago, he started looking for a hobby. He had always been interested in bonsai, which can be translated into "pot tree." Schubert bought a few of the trees and began meeting people from the Fox Valley Bonsai Society. One of the members offered to be Schubert’s teacher.

"The first thing my teacher told me was, ‘Do not be afraid to have the trees die on you,’" Schubert recollected.

Schubert said it is inevitable to kill some trees along the way. He buys young Japanese Garden Juniper trees between two and ten years old from nurseries. He has never been successful growing the trees from seed. But he has learned that the soil is the most important element in keeping the trees alive, so he mixes his own soil.

The trees that Schubert sell are between four and 15 years old. When Schubert sells one of his bonsai trees, he gives the customer a pamphlet with care instructions, ranging on topics from light and water to insects and diseases.

Schubert also sells tabletop Zen gardens because of a request he received at the market to create small gardens. He has a larger-scale Zen garden at home.

"When the kids come home from school, they end up spending hours playing in our Zen garden at home," Schubert said. "It’s a good way for them to get rid of the stress from the school day."

Just as Szente finds peacefulness from spinning wool, Schubert finds that great serenity comes from raking ocean waves around the rocks in the Zen garden. He wrote in a pamphlet about Zen gardens that, "We find that time disappears as we rake, and our minds are still when our hand stops."

DJ's Poultry and Rabbit Farm

Don Spoehr says his granddaughter Carol is the real boss.

No other vendor at the Oshkosh Saturday Farmers Market sells exactly what Don Spoehr sells.

Spoehr, a retired man who worked for the city of New London, sells a variety of rabbit products, including cut up rabbit and rabbit summer sausage, at the Oshkosh Saturday Farmers Market, along with the more ordinary meats of chicken, turkey, Cornish hen and duck.

Spoehr’s nephew owns the land that DJ’s Poultry and Rabbit Farm is on, but his nephew has stopped farming, and now Spoehr’s son has taken over the farm. The farm is based in Bear Creek.

Spoehr stresses that the farm is all-natural.

"There are no hormones, no MSGs, no preservatives," Spoehr said. "All natural."

The farm consists of between 300 and 400 rabbits, 200 chickens, and "a lot of ducks."

Spoehr said that when his son was growing up, he had pet rabbits.

"He took care of the rabbits as pets and just came into the business," Spoehr said.

Although Spoehr’s son has to put a lot of hours into a farm of such a large size, he does have a helper.

Spoehr said that the real boss is his granddaughter, Carol Spoehr. Even though she is only 11, she sometimes does the feeding on the farm by herself and wakes up at 5 a.m. to attend the markets. Like her father when he was younger, she also has a pet rabbit, whom she calls Buddy. Carol said that she wants to be a farmer like her dad when she gets older. Her enthusiasm and care are apparent in her cheerful attitude and bright smile when she talks about the farm.

Recently, Carol tried to rescue a duck on the farm.

"The duck got pecked on the head and it was bleeding," Carol said. "I tried to help it and take care of it, but it eventually died."

The Spoehrs also sell their products in De Pere, Green Bay and Appleton. Don and Carol Spoehr only recently started selling at the Oshkosh Saturday Farmers Market, but Don Spoehr already likes the market, saying, "The business is picking up every week."

Mother-daughter team unites at market

Mary Ellen Grahn and her daughter, Barb Tress, have been vendors at farmers markets for more than 20 years.

The mother-daughter team sells "anything in produce," according to Grahn, from beets to beans and kohlrabi to cucumbers.

The two own Grahn Arcade Gardens in Ripon, and both Grahn and Tress grew up on farming.

"We’ve always had farms," said Grahn. "And our family is all from Wisconsin, around this area."

When Grahn was younger, her family subsidized farming by catching frogs, and then they sold the frogs for money for school clothes.

Although Grahn’s family is full of farmers, Grahn first became interested in farming from the 4-H club, which she started participating in when she was nine years old. But being a 4-H leader in gardening finally convinced Grahn that she was meant to be a farmer.

According to Grahn, Tress grew up on her farm and "was naturally drawn to farming."

"I started out by picking all three acres of cucumbers," said Tress, who then glanced at her mother and added, "every day."

Along with selling at the Oshkosh Saturday Farmers Market, the two women also sell their produce in Berlin, Green Lake and Ripon. They initially started being vendors at the market in Oshkosh because of their large quantity of produce, and, as Grahn said, "Once you get going, you have to find a place to sell it."

But Grahn and Tress have now become regular vendors at the market and enjoy the farmers market in Oshkosh because of its variety of people and produce.

"We have very good business here," said Grahn. "Mostly all the people are friendly. You get your occasional grouch, but you have to take the good with the bad."