Our Beginnings

The Driftless Folk School was founded in 2006 around the glorious masonry stove hearth in the home of Dan Peper and Ruth Kittleson in rural Viroqua, Wisconsin. The founders had a vision of a broad-based community organization dedicated to sharing the fundamental skills and knowledge on which a sustainable and vibrant rural culture could be built. This vision and the skills present in the founding group meant a strong emphasis on green building, home cooking and food preservation, sustainable gardening and agriculture, as well as traditional folk arts including blacksmithing, fiber arts, and folk music. This vision also included holding community events and seasonal celebrations and activities for children and families.

From the beginning, the Driftless Folk School [DFS] drew inspiration from the long history of folk education, starting with the Danish “folk high school” movement and the vision of N. F. S. Grundtvig, the movement’s founder, for a new form of holistic “schools for life” for adults. Starting in Denmark in the 1840s, the folk school movement put down roots across Scandinavia and around the world, often catalyzing profound civic and cultural transformation.  DFS has also drawn inspiration from the offshoots of the folk school movement in this country,  especially the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, the North House Folk School in Minnesota, and the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, which played a pivotal role in the American civil rights movement of the 20th century.

The Driftless Folk School published its first catalog of classes in the spring of 2006 and began to offer classes in multiple homes and farms around Vernon County that summer. Early on, it became clear that this school’s emphasis on practical foods and green building was unique and timely, and classes quickly began to attract students from throughout the upper Midwest. Over the next several years, DFS course offerings grew in number and scope, and one- or two-day classes continued to be held at locations throughout Vernon County and neighboring areas. DFS published two magazine-quality course catalogs each year, which eventually reached several thousand households. In addition, there were seasonal festivals and occasional community folk dances.

In 2012, the Driftless Folk School experienced a major transition after the sudden death of Dan Peper, one of the key founders, instructors, and board members. Dan was a woodworker, writer, builder, and draft horseman whose wagon drawn by his team of Suffolk Punch horses was a feature of many early DFS events. Dan’s vision, presence, and participation in the development of the school have been sorely missed in the years since his passing and he is now memorialized at the DFS Campus by the whimsical green caravan wagon he built shortly before his death.

For the past decade, the Driftless Folk School has continued to grow and develop, expanding its course offerings, pool of instructors, and variety of programming.  Since 2012, DFS has been the coordinator of the Driftless Spoon Gathering, an annual event held each fall on the second weekend of September at the LaFarge Village Park which brings together dozens of green wood carvers from all over the Midwest and their families for 2 days of skill sharing, demonstrations, and community.  DFS has also organized regular community barn dances and offered demonstrations at local events including the Viroqua Harvest Parade and the Great River Folk Festival in La Crosse.  These free or low-cost offerings are one manifestation of the Driftless Folk School’s commitment to financial accessibility, which has also produced the introduction of a sliding scale fee structure for all classes in 2022.

Throughout its history, the Driftless Folk School has been unique among American folk schools in that it has not operated out of a single building or campus site, or even a single town.  For almost 2 decades, classes have been held in public buildings, instructors’ homes and workshops, and in forests and outdoor spaces throughout Vernon, Crawford, and LaCrosse counties and beyond.  This has allowed DFS class participants, many of whom come from outside of the local area, a special opportunity to see different parts of the Driftless Region and also to experience the skills they learn in appropriate contexts.  Nevertheless, DFS has long felt a desire for a central campus to call home, even as we continue to stage classes in multiple locations.  Starting in 2014, the Driftless Folk School collaborated with a couple of local landowners to develop a campus site on Bear Creek in rural LaFarge.  This site hosted classes, staff members, and interns until 2020, when the owners of property sold the land.

2020 was a watershed year for DFS in other ways.  In the midst of a shutdown of classes during the pandemic, DFS entered into negotiations with Thoreau College that resulted in a legal merger of the two organizations on January 1, 2021.  Founded in 2015, Thoreau College was led by Jacob Hundt, who also had previously been a founder, instructor, and board member of Driftless Folk School and who then became Executive Director of the merged entity.  By uniting the residential gap year and other programs for young adults offered by Thoreau College with the folk arts and homesteading skills offered by the Driftless Folk School, this merger has created a unique manifestation of the folk school model in the United States that recalls the movement's roots in Denmark.

As the Driftless Folk School approaches its second decade in this new form, it increasingly finds that the kinds of embodied skills and communal experiences it offers are in strong demand, especially after the enforced isolation of the COVID pandemic and expansion of digital media in people’s lives. In 2023, DFS has offered over 90 courses and events which have been attended by hundreds of adult participants from all over the Midwest and beyond.  And to solidify this growth,  DFS and the Thoreau College have now begun to establish a new campus site located on 6 acres of land within the city limits of Viroqua.  This site includes a facility for housing students and staff, classroom, office, and kitchen spaces, a workshop building, an outdoor performance space, a prairie restoration site, and expanding gardens.  In July 2023, DFS welcomed community members for a Community Celebration and dedication of the Dan Peper Wagon, commemorating Dan and honoring the many people who have collaborated to make the Driftless Folk School what it is today.