Make-A-Wish: ‘Dreams really do come true’
Firm roots in the past, with an eye on the future
December 23, 2024
CASHTON – Though he wasn’t raised on a farm himself, Chad Forsberg – owner of Footjoy Farm & Brewing – said he was surrounded by them growing up south of Minneapolis and has family who farms in North Dakota.
“My mom came from a farming family in North Dakota,” he said. “(Her) family continues to farm there. My great-great-grandfather homesteaded there, too. They have been farming for more than 160 years in that area.”
Inspired by his farming heritage, Forsberg said he has always had a passion for food security and living off the land.
“(From a young age, I knew that) I wanted to be self-sufficient,” he said. “I was really into heirloom vegetables and saving seeds.”
Forsberg said for him, gardening was a better alternative to summer jobs as a kid.
“In my first garden, I thought it would be a good idea to grow melons or some other veggies and sell them at a farmers’ markets to make some money, instead of getting a summer job that I didn’t like,” he said.
As he got older, Forsberg said that passion eventually inspired the launch of Specialty Produce – an agricultural business that supplied chefs and restaurants in the Twin Cities with heirloom vegetables.
“I started to develop relationships with restaurants in the Twin Cities just by trying to find a place to market my produce,” he said. “I started calling on different restaurants and talking to chefs, and bit by bit, I found chefs in the cities who were interested.”
In the early days of the business, Forsberg said he didn’t own any land of his own.
“I kind of squatted in various locations – people would let me use their land,” he said. “Sometimes I lived there and sometimes I didn’t. However, it worked out, and the yield grew.”
At his peak, Forsberg said he had about 60 restaurants that “I’d sell to on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.”
Finding new footing
Eventually, he said he found land to purchase in Wisconsin and made the move.
Forsberg said he continued Specialty Produce – shipping produce to the cities as the business continued to grow.
However, the timing of crops and the challenge to find labor, he said, made the produce business grow increasingly difficult.
“If the people aren’t there to pick beans or zucchini when they need to be picked, then your crops are done,” he said.
Forsberg said the need to make a change grew evident.
This realization, he said, led to him pivoting away from produce and instead growing a variety of grains and malt barley.
“I wanted to get out of produce, as it was a lot of work with minimal return,” he said. “I teamed up with my cousin, Ben Wenzel, and we began growing grains in North Dakota… We ended up growing hundreds of different varieties of grains, trialing them with the goal of selling malt barley to breweries.”
This partnership, Forsberg said, eventually led to the idea behind Footjoy Farm & Brewing (407 Central Drive) – which he said was a natural evolution of his farm.
Footjoy Farm & Brewing is a brewery, a specialty produce farm and a restaurant, featuring a wood-fired pizza oven.
“The restaurant was turnkey,” he said. “All the equipment was in there with very few renovations. I needed to retrofit the brewing area to make it all work. My brewing equipment is all repurposed tanks and miscellaneous equipment.”
Forsberg said he creates brews for Footjoy customers, as well as sells “a few kegs here and there” to other bars and restaurants.
“We grow 100% of all the grain – with a focus on heritage, landrace, ancient grains and old-time barley varieties – in every beer that we brew,” he said.
Forsberg said part of the business name – Footjoy – is a play on words as he said he is a guy who is barefoot most of the time.
Pizza concoctions
Forsberg said the pizzas available at Footjoy are what he’d call “inventive.”
“Ideas for pizza combinations come to me in dreams, but the real truth is, (the combinations) are out of necessity,” he said.
Forsberg said he always has to keep an eye on inventory and product freshness as sometimes (pizza creations) are born out of an abundance of something.
“For example, I may have a ton of tomatoes that are in season, or extra mushrooms that just came out of the woods or extra squash that I need to use,” he said. “It’s important that they all work together.”
When it comes to developing unique pizzas, Forsberg said he seeks out flavors and themes that complement one another.
“The most important thing is to find flavors that pair well together and then balance them so that they are complimentary of one another,” he said.
The Butternut Squashzilla ‘Za, he said, is a prime example.
The concoction, Forsberg said, includes butternut squash, ricotta cream sauce, mozzarella, red onion, mushrooms, shallot-infused chèvre, bacon, venison salami and cranberries from Tomah’s Bosshard Bogs, and is garnished with an apple cider reduction and candied pecans.
Last month, Forsberg said he felt compelled to create a Thanksgiving/deer hunting-inspired signature pizza.
“I had some butternut squash that I purchased from the Amish,” he said. “I threw some venison sausage on there, too, because it was the opener for hunting season.”
Armed with ideas that he said are always churning, Forsberg said if he goes three weeks without a new inventive pizza special, “I start to feel bad.”
Supporting local vendors, Forsberg said, is the backbone of the business – sourcing produce from the nearby Amish community; bacon, sausage and venison salami from Driftless Provisions in Viroqua; and grass-fed beef from the Bergen Farmers’ Market.
Forsberg said Gov. Tony Evers paid a visit to Footjoy Farm & Brewing in the fall to celebrate agritourism in Wisconsin.
“He was rallying support for small farms and businesses that connect people to the land that feeds us,” he said. “Though he said ‘no’ to trying mushrooms, he enjoyed making and eating our pizza.”
Music scene
Forsberg said in addition to the brews and pizza, Footjoy’s music scene – from polka to metal and everything in between – also attracts crowds.
Many of the musicians, he said, reach out to him asking for a slot.
“The musicians have heard about us or have seen other musicians from the area and beyond perform here (and want to as well),” he said. “I really don’t have to seek them out.”
To learn more about Footjoy Farm & Brewing and Forsberg’s latest pizza creation, check out its Facebook page.
