On a Wednesday evening in mid-October, the pavilion at Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery will fill with the sound of a local band. The Merry Travelers will play from 5 to 7 p.m. on October 14, 2026, as part of the farm's Goats & Grooves series. Admission is free. Cheese boards and drinks will be for sale.
The billing is a little unusual: a band playing under a farm pavilion, with a herd of dairy goats as the nearest audience. But that juxtaposition is exactly the point. Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery has spent years turning a stretch of former row-crop land into something closer to what this part of Illinois looked like before the plow — and inviting the public in to see it.
The farm's origin story begins with a career change. Leslie Cooperband and Wes Jarrell were professors in Madison, Wisconsin, when Cooperband fell for the French-style goat cheeses sold at the city's downtown farmers market. She was particularly taken with the work of Anne Topham of Fantome Farm, one of the women who pioneered French-style cheesemaking in the Midwest in the 1980s. Cooperband, by her own account, "came to cheesemaking through my love of cheese eating," and she peppered Topham with questions, filing the answers away for later.
Later arrived in 2003, when the couple moved to Champaign-Urbana and bought a small farm. They began converting cash-grain ground to perennial production, planted an organic fruit orchard, and bought their first Nubian goats — three does and a buck. In 2005 the farm was licensed as a Grade A goat dairy and farmstead creamery. It was also the first operation in the state to produce French-style goat cheeses, which meant charting new territory not just for the farmers but for the regulators who had to figure out how to inspect them.
The herd grew to more than a hundred animals, certified Animal Welfare Approved since 2010, grazing rotational pastures of grasses, legumes, and shrubs. The land itself changed: what had been conventional farmland became a mosaic of goat pasture, orchard, gardens, pollinator habitat, and restored tallgrass prairie. The cheeses — mostly French-inspired, made from the milk of Nubian and La Mancha goats — began winning national awards.
In February 2024 the farm changed hands. Cooperband and Jarrell sold it to Lauren and Jeffrey Brokish, the owners of Salt Fork Foodworks, the local hospitality group behind Martinelli's Market, Central Illinois Bakehouse, Pekara Bakery & Bistro, and Espresso Royale. Neither Brokish came from a farming background, but both came from food. Under their stewardship the farm added Caprae, a farm-to-table restaurant named for the Latin word for nanny goat, serving grilled flatbreads, sandwiches, salads, and the cheese and charcuterie boards that will be on offer at the October concert. The farm also runs a cheese club, a farmstay, tours, and a steady calendar of workshops — tamale classes, fire cider workshops, sound baths, paella dinners — that has made it one of the region's more unlikely cultural hubs.
Goats & Grooves is part of that programming: a recurring live-music series held under the pavilion, typically on Wednesday evenings. The series is designed as an easy midweek unwind — you can walk the farm's nature paths, visit the goats, watch cheesemaking through the viewing window, and settle in with a drink while the band plays.
The band itself is worth the trip. Merry Travelers formed around Monet and co-founder Charlie Harris and have been touring the Midwest since 2022, appearing at the Peoria Blues Festival, Moccasin Creek Festival, the CU Folk & Roots Festival, and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, where they played a free Krannert Uncorked set in June 2023. Their lineup — Monet on lead vocals, Harris on bass, Cody Jensen on keys, Louie Pappas on sax and flute, Adiare Thomas on drums, and Mark White on guitar — gives them an unusually broad palette for a local act.
Their album Golden Daze drew a warm review from Smile Politely, which described it as "a delightful, psychedelic romp" that folds jazz, folk, rock, soul, and blues into a psychedelic-rock frame. Harris has described the band's process as fundamentally collaborative: "The skeleton of the music we write together, but the color, the intrigue, and little sprinkles are everyone." Krannert Center's listing called their original material "a genre-bending, bewitching vibe," built on a "groovy, feel-good sound inspired by soul, R&B, blues, and 70s psychedelic rock."
For the farm show, the band is billed as playing covers that range from Norah Jones to Otis Redding alongside their own songs. That's a fittingly wide net for a venue that has spent years arguing, in its own way, that a working farm can also be a place to gather, eat, and listen to music.
The event runs 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, at 4410 N. Lincoln Ave. in Champaign. It's free, and open to anyone who wants to wander in, buy a cheese board, and watch the sun go down over the goat pasture with a band playing underneath the pavilion.