Thursday, September 10, the gates at 802 South Century Avenue stay locked to the public. Anyone driving past that night could be forgiven for assuming the festival just hasn't started yet. It has. The tents are up, the lights are on, and Endres Manufacturing is holding a private party to mark a hundred years in business on the same lot where, about eighteen hours later, a few thousand people will pay for wristbands to watch a sauerkraut eating contest and a dachshund race.
That's the first hundred. The second one shows up eight days later, a few miles down the road, when Schumacher Farm Park asks Heritage Fest visitors to spend a Saturday morning finding out what it felt like to be a kid doing chores on a Wisconsin farm a century ago.
Nobody put these two events on the same flyer. But lay them next to each other on a calendar and Waunakee's early September turns out to be built, almost by coincidence, around the same span of years told from two very different vantage points: one from a factory floor on Century Avenue, one from a hayloft off Highway 19.
The Party Most People Never Notice Is Two Parties
Wauktoberfest runs September 11 through 13 this year, on the grounds Endres Manufacturing donates for the weekend every year. What's easy to miss is that the festival's own footprint actually starts a day earlier, on Thursday night, when the same grounds host a private event honoring the company's hundredth year in business. The public doesn't see that part. What the public sees starts Friday at 4:30 p.m., when the gates open and 2/5's Party Band takes the stage, followed later that night by VO5.
Saturday is the day the festival earns its reputation. Copper Box plays the afternoon slot, the Best Dressed Mann, Frau & Kinder contest runs at 1:30, the Limburger cheese eating contest follows at 2:45, the Dachshund Dash goes off at 3, and by 4 o'clock teams are lobbing bratwurst at each other in the brat toss. Madison County, a seven-piece country showband, closes out the night. Sunday winds down slower, starting with beer yoga at 9:30 in the morning and ending with the Sausage Shuffle around noon.
All of it, the polka, the sauerkraut, the beer tent, benefits five local organizations directly: the Waunakee Community Foundation, Waunakee Rotary Club, Waunakee Lions Club, Knights of Columbus Council 6371, and Waunahops. That's the part that doesn't change year to year. What's different in 2026 is the reason the gates stay shut on Thursday. Endres Manufacturing has been operating in Waunakee long enough that a hundred years feels like the kind of milestone worth closing the grounds for, even if the guest of honor at that private party is the same company that spends the rest of the weekend letting strangers throw sausages across its parking lot.
The Practical Version
If you're planning around work or kids, here's what actually matters:
- Wauktoberfest: Friday, Sept. 11 through Sunday, Sept. 13, at the Endres Manufacturing Grounds, 802 S. Century Ave. Public hours start Friday at 4:30 p.m.
- Heritage Fest: Saturday, Sept. 19, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Schumacher Farm Park.
- Both events are free to enter, though Wauktoberfest sells wristbands for the beer tent and Heritage Fest asks for a small donation that goes straight back into the park.
A Week And A Day Later, On A Different Hundred
Heritage Fest, the following Saturday, is a quieter kind of event, and it's built around a different question entirely: what did it actually feel like to be a kid growing up on a farm a hundred years ago. Visitors can take a horse-drawn wagon ride, pet goats and donkeys, and watch (or help run) a corn sheller, one of the volunteer roles the Friends of Schumacher Farm Park still need filled every year alongside admissions and parking. Crafters from around Dane County set up alongside the animals, and concessions are available if you're staying for the full four hours.
Schumacher Farm Park itself is the reason the date feels earned rather than arbitrary. The farmhouse on the property was built in 1908 by Henry Schumacher, and the land stayed in his family until 1978, when his only child, Marcella Schumacher Pendall, gave the 116-acre farmstead to Dane County to keep it as a working memory of what that stretch of the county looked like before the subdivisions arrived. Ten of those acres are now restored prairie sitting on a hilltop, with a view back toward the village and, on a clear day, a glimpse of the State Capitol dome. Every dollar raised at Heritage Fest goes back into that prairie restoration and the park's other educational programming, run entirely by the Friends of Schumacher Farm Park.
Two Ways Of Being A Hundred Years Old
What makes the pairing worth noticing isn't that both numbers happen to be the same. It's that they're pointing in opposite directions. Wauktoberfest's hundred is a manufacturing story, one employer's century of staying in business on a piece of land it still owns and still opens up once a year for a festival that funds five different community organizations. Heritage Fest's hundred is an agricultural story, a farmhouse and a prairie preserved specifically so a kid in 2026 can find out what farm chores felt like before tractors did most of the work.
Waunakee doesn't market itself as a village split between an industrial identity and a farm one. Most days it doesn't need to. But for nine days in September, both stories surface on their own, a week and a day apart, without either event referencing the other. That's a fair description of what the village actually is: close enough to its agricultural roots that a working farm museum still draws a crowd, and far enough into its manufacturing present that a hundred-year-old company can quietly outlast several generations of the festival it hosts.
If you only have room for one weekend, Wauktoberfest is the louder, easier entry point, and it's the one most newcomers hear about first. But Heritage Fest is the one that explains where the village came from, and it's worth the trip out to the park even if you've lived in Waunakee for years and never made it past the Wauktoberfest beer tent.
For more on what makes this village tick day to day, the Waunakee neighborhood page has a rundown of local parks, schools, and amenities worth bookmarking.
If any of this makes you curious about what it's actually like to live here year-round, not just during festival season, Beth Baty has spent years getting to know Waunakee block by block. Let's Connect anytime you want to talk through the neighborhood, the market, or just where to grab a bratwurst that isn't being thrown at someone.
