Schumacher Farm Park is a 116-acre outdoor museum representing local farm life during the 1920-30s and features a 10-acre prairie restoration, farmstead, and the Center for Rural History. The park is open year round for social and professional gatherings. Programming is sponsored by the Friends of Schumacher Farm Park and includes heirloom gardening, educational field trips, prairie tours, historic farm machinery restoration, building restorations, and special public events reminiscent of rural culture in that time period.
This park is supported by Friends of Schumacher Farm.
This 40-acre farmstead was gifted to the Dane County Parks Commission as a conservancy in 1978 by Marcella Schumacher Pendall, the only child of Henry Schumacher. The original farmhouse and barn built by Henry Schumacher in 1908 are accompanied by outbuildings of the same era, donated to the park from local farms.
In 1986, Marcella established the Friends of Schumacher Farm to create and operate a living history farm museum. She also left a trust account to provide major funding for Friends' activities. Schumacher Farm consists of a triad of Dane County, the Friends, and the Trust--the first such collaboration in the county park system.
A Center for Rural History Visitor and Education Center was completed at the park in 2020.
Learn more about the park’s history and the historical buildings on the Friends of Schumacher Farm’s website or on the historical marker at the park.
