This Is How You Serve Pizza Down On The Farm

On this Wisconsin farm, pizza night begins in the fields.

- Katie Bandurski & Rachel Bernhard Seis

It’s Friday evening at stoney acres farm in Athens, Wisconsin, where dozens of friends and neighbors are settled on a collection of patio and picnic tables corralled between a farmhouse and a large white barn. Three stone ovens sit at the center, plumes of smoke rising from each, with the scent of fresh-baked pizza wafting through the air. Tony Schultz, the farm’s owner, grabs a paddle and thrusts it into the fire blazing on the hearth, pulling out a bubbling pie to serve up to his next hungry guest. Hours earlier, he was grinding freshly harvested wheat into flour that would go into the dough for tonight’s pizza crusts. Topped with just-plucked ingredients from the field mere footsteps away, the pizzas at Stoney Acres Farm couldn’t get much more farm-to-table.

Founded in 1948 by Tony’s grandfather, Stoney Acres Farm has been in the family for more than 70 years. It began as a dairy farm, but in 2006, Tony bought the farm from his parents and began growing organic produce. In 2010, he built a stone oven after visiting another midwestern farm that had just started hosting pizza nights of its own.