Nectar: a scratch-made bakery in Spring Green, Wisconsin
While there are many bakeries in the Wisconsin Driftless, each has its own story behind them. Whether a new bakery, legacy, or under new ownership, each are unique.
My wife Amanda brought Nectar Scratch-Made Bakery to my attention and asked me to check it out and think about writing a story on the bakery.
As I looked through Nectar’s website, I read an intriguing statement. It read, “We aim to bring you quality products with as little harm possible done to our home and those that steward it. We recognize we are on stolen land and aim to increase our involvement each year in reparations for the indigenous communities who are past, present, and future.” A bona fide Native American myself, it was a done deal. I would write a story if Nectar would have me…and they did.
Nectar opened its doors about a month ago. The story of Nectar’s creation goes back a bit further. So, here we go.
Located in the ever-popular village of Spring Green, Wisconsin in Sauk county’s southern boundary, Nectar, not to be cliché, has an amazing and humble beginning.
Founder and owner of Nectar, Janco, has a deep background in theatre. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point with a degree in theatre, Janco soon started working in Milwaukee as a dresser. “I just really sort of fell in love with that kind of a job. It's a service industry job, which is what I'm doing now in the food industry”, she said. Janco said it was nice in the dresser wardrobe career to feel she was needed and explained there was a really great connection with the actors she worked with and acknowledged the relationship was special.
Janco came to Spring Green for her first time to do wardrobe at the American Players Theatre (APT) and fell in love with the area. “They're one of one of the best theatre companies I've ever worked for in terms of like, a feeling, just a genuine feeling of community, and the way that we sort of fit ourselves into the community here. With some theaters in the city, in a city setting. you can kind of feel a separation between the public and the theater people. It's like everyone's lives are only theater. But out here, it really felt like everyone had their own interests and involvement in the community outside of APT. So that was special to me.”
Almost immediately, Janco knew that she would want to live in Spring Green permanently. “I had several theater contracts to finish up in Chicago and Milwaukee, and so I finally got out here in May of 2020 after the pandemic had already started. Thankfully, APT let me stay in their housing during the worst part of the pandemic.”
Admittedly, towards the end of Janco’s theater career, she realized that the job she enjoyed doing most was an evening job, the dressing, the running of the shows. But she didn't necessarily like living the lifestyle of someone who works nights.
“So, I always knew that I would be leaving the theater eventually. I had found the most fun job but it didn't fit with my life. I swore up and down when I was in school, that I wouldn't get into the food industry because everyone always says how hard it is. But this was kind of inevitable.”
Janco recalled in middle school, she would read recipes during recess. “As a child, I had like fake menus all over the place and little, like my Barbies had a lot of food theme sets,” she said laughing.
While in college, Janco did a tour of a culinary school just to see what it was like, as she put it, “just in case”.
It was inevitable that Janco would have a bakery at some point or other, and Spring Green not only being the place where she truly wanted to live, she felt it was the perfect place to start one. She noted that Spring Green hasn’t had a dedicated bakery for a few years. “There are a couple now. There is another place called Sidney Bakes who makes cakes and cookies and stuff.”
Janco said it's been partly out of necessity for finding a new career but also partly because she felt like she was always going to end up opening a bakery someday. “At some point or another, it just felt like this is what I'm supposed to be doing,” she said smiling.
Nectar, in its humbling beginnings, started as a cottage food business out of Janco’s APT apartment at the time. She was selling at the farmers market, and when that became too much and APT needed to rearrange some housing, she started renting space in a commercial kitchen from her friends at Enos Farms and Catering in Spring Green. “I rented space in their kitchen and continued to sell at the farmers market because they didn’t have a storefront, it was just a commercial kitchen.”
Janco was baking at Enos for about a year and a half when Kyle Adams, owner of Wander Provisions whose store was in what is now Nectar said, “Hey, I'm moving to a bigger unit. This is already outfitted with the kitchen. Do you think that you would want first dibs on the place?” Janco replied, “Yeah, storefront sounds like what I've been working towards these past almost two years, the future, I mean, the future of business. I'd love to.”
Janco shared that Spring Green doesn't have very many safe indoor places to just go and hang out in the evenings or a lot of bars to go to. “Of course, the pandemic played a part in that, but even before the pandemic, there was just essentially the General Store for food and Arcadia Books as a coffee shop. There are other places in town that serve food but they don't have seating. So, one of the main goals for me in having a storefront was there has to be seating because I know that I want someplace to go in like the dead of winter to go work on a project inside in the middle of the day so I don't go crazy in my own apartment. That’s what I wanted to provide for the community with this place.”
Janco will be building up her menu making it more “robust” over time and hiring more help, hopefully becoming one of the mainstays in the community.
The name of the bakery Nectar, has a practical meaning if not symbolic. When asked why name her bakery Nectar, Janco said the answer was multi-part. “First and foremost, because I really love floral flavors. I think that they are an underrated ingredient in modern society, but I really love them. Part of what I am doing, is sort of changing people's mind, the idea that flowers have to be for soap and perfume. Secondly, a lot of what I do, I try to do as sustainably as I can, sourcing things as locally as I can. It's also a nod to the idea of preserving the local food ways, preserving the lives of the pollinators and sort of paying respect to all the little critters and organisms that make food possible. And thirdly, just a silly little nod to my experience at APT. In one of the last comedy shows that I dressed for them, there was a line where they referred to somebody's lips. ‘I kissed the nectar of your lips’, is the line I think, and it was extremely funny. I wanted to add just that little easter egg for the APT people who I worked with who remember that show.”
A mainstay for any bakery, Janco sources her flours locally. “I source [get] my flours from Meadowlark Community Mill in Ridgeway, Wisconsin just a half hour (SSE) from here. The majority of grain they mill is grown right there. I've worked there and I often work there in the winter times.”
One of Nectar’s walls boasts a beautiful map of the Wisconsin Driftless area drawn by Kyle Adams. Looking at the wall, Janco said, “The majority of my sources are on this map somewhere. Sooner or later, I'm going to put little dots and do a little bios off to the side about all of my vendors.”
At the beginning of this article, I alluded to one of the reasons I wanted to tell Janco’s story, her mention of indigenous people on her website. Janco lived in the Green Bay area and while attending school she found herself attending with quite a few others from the Oneida and a few other Native American tribes. “I think after learning more of the real history of the United States as opposed to what we were just taught in school, it felt right to recognize that. Even though I feel a connection to this land having been born here, this land is not where my heritage comes from. We, as a collective white [sic] people, have sort of stripped the heritage from the people whose heritage is this area. It feels like reparations have been in order and it's about time that something happens with them. The least that I could do is acknowledge that this land that I am graciously able to live on is not mine.” Janco said as her business grows, she will be giving more to help out Native American people.
In an ode to indigenous foods and as part of this recognition, Janco has been incorporating as many native ingredients as possible, and stressed if and when she is able, sourcing those ingredients directly from Native Americans. “I absolutely plan to source from them, just little by little get more involved with learning the history of the people in this region in particular, especially if I plan on being here for a long time and just asking how I can help. “I don't think I'm that great of an activist, except in the kitchen. Because to think that food isn't political, is kind of foolish. It's always been either politicized or weaponized in some way by the dominant culture.”
I would normally tell a bit about what is on the menu, not this time. Best to travel and visit Janco at her bakery and take in the wholesome smells and good food for yourself. Of course, I did not leave without buying a flavorful Lavender-Lemon Cookie and a Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie. That is a whole other story in and of itself.
Nectar is located at 136 S. Albany Street in Spring Green, WI and open Friday-Monday 8am-3pm. Serving coffee from 8am-10pm with main menu available at 10am.
Visit Nectar Scratch-Made Bakery on Facebook, the web, or give them a call at 608-588-6363.
