A Juneau man has repurposed his family’s barn into a unique shopping experience for patrons, including locally made foods and deals on merchandise, giving Juneau its own little superstore.
Jim Selchert grew up on the dairy farm at N5410 Highway DJ, Juneau. The barn had housed his father’s cows. But in the 1990s, when his father stopped farming, the barn lost its purpose, but not its significance.
“Mom and dad in the ’80s had one of the top dairy farms in the state,” he said.
After his father’s death in 2022, Selchert began focusing on how to use the barn.
“I didn’t just want to leave it sit,” he said. “You see so many of these nice old farms. My mom and dad were impeccable about the maintenance of how things were, and a lot of the old farms were like that. Once they quit milking in them, then everything just falls apart, and then the barn falls down. And I didn’t want that to happen to this place.
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Selchert had been a truck driver and brought produce to farmers markets, which gave him the idea of doing something similar at the farm.
Jim Selchert looks at a product in his new store Jimz Farmstand, N5410 Highway DJ, Juneau, on Monday. The store opened on May 1 and has its grand opening this Friday.
The result is Jimz Farmstand, a barn-turned-store that opened on May 1 and will have its grand opening celebration on Friday. The store is open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week. The store provides fresh produce, freezer-ready meats, cheese trays, Amish furniture, liquidation finds, pantry favorites and seasonal specials.
“One of my focuses here is on local,” he said. “I have a lot of local Wisconsin-made items. A lot of stuff from here in the county. There are some local artists here. My beef and my pork are locally sourced and processed.”
The store has products from LeRoy Meats, Horicon; Weyauwega Star Dairy, Rosendale; BelGioioso cheese, Green Bay; and CBD products from Stanton Legacy Acres, Reeseville.
There is also Amish-made candy from Reeseville, Door County Jams, Old Fashioned Cheese out of Mayville, PS Seasoning from Iron Ridge, and more.
Cheese trays and large meat orders are available online at jimzfarmstand.net.
Peppers for sale at Jimz Farmstand in Juneau are among the 50-plus kinds of fruits and vegetables in the store.
There are more than 50 kinds of fruits and vegetables in the store, he said. The fruits and vegetables are commercially grown at this time of the year, but as the season progresses, the store increasingly will have locally grown products.
One special the store has is filling a quarter-bushel container for $25 and getting as much produce as will fit, for a penny.
The liquidation area has products sold at about 50% of what they would be priced commercially, he said. There are diapers and baby items, hygiene items, electric toothbrushes, bedding, toys, household products and medical supplies.
Amish lawn furniture is there, too, Selchert added.
The grand opening on Friday will feature samples in the store while Daily Dodge does a brat fry from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m.
“We even got a solar panel,” he said. “We even got a little bit of cabinetry. There is a little bit of everything.”
Jimz Farmstand is open from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m., seven days a week.
