Kinstone Applied

11/18/2025

2025-NOV-17. Hello Kinstone Friends! Winter is coming! Kinstone is now closed for the regular 2025 season. Watch our social pages () and our website (www.kinstonecircle.com) for special events in December and March. REMEMBER that off-season visits are possible when arranged and approved in advance! Inquire via email at info @ kinstonecircle.com. We will open again with regular hours on May 1, 2026. Happy Winter to you all!

11/18/2025

2025-NOV-15. The Kinstone goats have gone to their winter home. They will spend the winter months with Kristine's niece who has a herd of goats just a couple of hours from here. Additionally, we hope to breed Sadie (the one in the middle in the first and second photos) to one of the bucks there. Maybe we'll have baby goats in May! That would be so awesome! We have not had baby goats for a couple of years now. It would be awesome to have some fresh goat milk for cheese and yogurt, too. I miss that a lot!

Jade and Jelly are aging and will not be bred again. All will return in the spring where they can regularly chat with Kinstone visitors and enjoy their best lives here. ❤️🐐❤️🐐❤️🐐❤️

10/30/2025

There is still time to visit Kinstone this season!!

10/30/2025

2025-OCT-30. Kinstone is featured in an article today in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Big thanks to all who made this happen. What an honor!

2025-OCT-30. Kinstone is in the news! Big thanks to writer Madeline Heim and photographer Hannah Schroeder of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for creating a wonderful article and photo gallery for their newspaper. The article was published today!

Here is a link to the photo gallery
https://www.jsonline.com/picture-gallery/news/2025/10/29/kinstone-a-modern-megalithic-wonder-overlooking-the-mississippi/86944515007/

For those with subscriptions to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - here is a link to the article (sorry I don't have an open link!!):
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2025/10/30/the-history-mystery-and-spirituality-behind-wisconsins-kinstone/86851801007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z114949p000350c000350e003400v114949b0052xxd005265&gca-ft=170&gca-ds=sophi

And another link!
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/environment/2025/10/30/kinstone-a-mysterious-stonehenge-like-place-in-western-wisconsin/86968244007/

Or, another way to find it all is to go to the Journal Sentinel's online site and search for Kinstone at this link: https://www.jsonline.com/search/?q=kinstone

Photo credit: Hannah Schroeder, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

09/19/2025

I found a Wisconsin Threatened Plant at Kinstone yesterday in the Kinstone Prairie. A 1.5 - 2 acre section was planted in native prairie in 2013. It is so exciting to see newcomers showing up in the prairie still. 🩷

"There are gems of wondrous brightness
Ofttimes lying at our feet,
And we pass them, walking thoughtless,
Down the busy, crowded street.
If we knew, our pace would slacken,
We would step more oft with care,
Lest our careless feet be treading
To the earth some jewel rare." -Rudyard Kipling

2025-SEP-18. WI Threatened Plant Found at Kinstone. Each year when I walk the Kinstone Prairie I look for newcomers. The complex native seed mix we planted in 2013 has so many species and some of them take years and years to show up! Today I found this lovely Slender Bush Clover (Lespedeza virginica) who I had never seen before in this Kinstone Prairie! This one is growing very near the woods. I looked her up and found that Slender Bush Clover is a Wisconsin Threatened plant. According to the WI DNR, this plant is is found in dry prairies and open upland woodlands... so it is right at home here! I have sent in a photo and my observation details. It seems it has only been seen in a handful of counties in Wisconsin. Further, this particular date is my mother's birthday; she passed from this world in 2022, but her presence and spirit live on. She led me right to this, I know it! Wow. I love this!

09/15/2025

2025-SEP-13. Students from IHM Seminary in Winona, MN came by to give us a hand with picking pears and apples. These young folk are the best and we are so very grateful for their help! We now have soooo many apples to process!! We put apples on the picnic tables on the porch of the Visitor Center where we sorted them. Ember the cat decided she needed to get into a box before it was filled up with apples. We actually had to move some apples to the side so she had room to stretch out. What a cat! 😹😽🍎

If you are interested in some apples for baking or sauce or cider, please let us know! We picked HoneyCrisp, Red Regent, Starking Delicious, and Gold Rush. These apples are not sprayed nor treated in any way, so they have blemishes and are less than perfect, but they are delicious!!

We also have MANY apples and windfalls that may be only good to feed to animals - if you have some cows, horses, pigs, or other apple-loving animals and could use some apples to feed to them, please contact us - they are picked and ready to go.

09/05/2025

2025-AUG-31. High summer and there are many awesome things in the gardens and orchards at Kinstone. The plums are so delicious but we only got a few. If you have extra plums, let us know - we could use some more.

Not pictured, there are TONS of apples this year but not ready to pick yet. Also not pictured - Aronia berries - we did not get many this year. If you have any extra, we could use a few more!

07/18/2025

2025-JUL-17. I went to Rush River Produce in Maiden Rock, WI to gather berries that will become part of my homemade, local jams and jellies at Kinstone. My sister and I picked Blueberries, Black Currants, Red Currants, and Gooseberries.... they are so abundant! If you want a great place with super friendly staff to get lots of fresh berries - check them out https://rushriverproduce.com/ !

11/25/2024

2024-NOV-10. The last kohlrabi of the season - the variety is called "Kossak". It took some work to get this 15.5lb monster peeled, cut up, and shredded. But wow - what a wonderful fermented treat it makes! This vegetable's odor was a bit overpowering - kind of like cooking cabbage or broccoli all day - but a little simmering fruit/spice concoction counteracted it nicely. Have you tried fermenting kohlrabi or any other veggies?

11/24/2024

2024-NOV-10. A persimmon variety has grown at Kinstone and produces these small fruits... they are one of the more interesting fruits I have tasted. I do not know the variety and cannot find any documentation about what I may have planted years ago. They are wonderful. When I visited a local grocery and asked about persimmons, they called them one of their "freaky fruits" 😆 and did not know much about them.

Buffalo County, Wisconsin

11/12/2024

Thank you all for supporting Kinstone in the 2024 season! We are moving into the off-season now. We will have a few open days yet before Christmas 2024, so keep an eye on our website and FB/Insta pages for information on that. As always, we are happy to accommodate off-season visits that are arranged in advance. We are happy to open the Gift Shop by appointment as well! We will leave this post pinned to the top of the page for the winter as a reminder. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your love and support. ❤ Also - we will still be posting photos and inspiration from Kinstone throughout the winter - so stay active on our pages. We love sharing the beauty of Kinstone with you all - no matter the season!

10/25/2024

"A garden without cats, it will be generally agreed, can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all...much of the magic of the heather beds would vanish if, as we bent over them, there was no chance that we might hear a faint rustle among the blossoms, and find ourselves staring into a pair of sleepy green eyes." ~Beverley Nichols

2024-OCT-25. I took a walk with my camera through the garden to see what's still there on this fine fall day. Driftless, the black and white cat, joined me for a bit. There is much work to do to clean the gardens up for the winter - but they are still producing so much that I have a hard time warming up to the task. Enjoy these October photos of things seen in the gardens at Kinstone today.