If you drove past Arnold Larson Park on a Thursday evening this summer expecting the gazebo lit up, a line for root beer floats, and someone's kid running around with sprinkles on their shirt, you were operating on old information. That tradition is real. It ran for more than three decades. And it isn't there anymore.
Here's what actually happened, and where the name went.
The Tradition That Officially Ended in 2022
For over 30 years, McFarland United Church of Christ ran Sundaes on Thursday out of Arnold Larson Park's gazebo: ice cream sundaes and root beer floats for a suggested $2 to $3 donation, live music every week through the middle of summer, and proceeds split among local causes like the McFarland Food Pantry and McFarland Youth Center. It was the kind of low-key, church-run fundraiser that becomes part of a town's rhythm without anyone deciding it should.
Then, in 2022, the church held what its own event listing called the Final Sundaes on Thursday. The post described it as a celebration of "this wonderful ministry," a chance to recognize the volunteers who had kept it going, and a last round of sundaes before the tradition wrapped for good. No ambiguity there. It ended.
The Same Name Turned Up Two Doors Down
Here's the part that a lot of longtime residents seem to have missed: the name Sundaes on Thursday is back on McFarland's summer calendar in 2026, and it's not the church running it.
This year's version is hosted at McFarland House Cafe, at 5923 Exchange Street. Arnold Larson Park sits at 6002 Exchange Street. That's not a different part of town. That's the same street, practically the same block. If you're still parking at the park out of habit, you're one address away from where the music actually is.
The 2026 lineup has run weekly on Thursdays starting at 6 p.m., including:
- The Driftless Plowboys (June 25)
- Northern Comfort (July 23)
- Ken Fitzsimmons and Kevin Youngs of the Kissers (July 30)
McFarland House Cafe is a fitting new home for it. The building dates to 1856, and the cafe operates as a neighborhood coffeehouse with deli fare and ice cream in a garden setting, which is close enough to the original spirit that it's easy to see why the name carried over. But make no mistake about what changed: this is a cafe business booking live music on its own patio, not a church youth group scooping sundaes for donations. The format shifted from charity fundraiser to dinner-hour concert series, even as the name and the night of the week stayed the same.
Wednesday Nights Never Left the Park
While Thursday was relocating, Wednesday stood still.
Food Truck Frenzy, run by the McFarland Lions Club, has anchored Arnold Larson Park on the third Wednesday of the month from June through September for years, and the 2026 season is no exception, with a confirmed May 20 date kicking things off. It runs from 5 to 7 p.m., it's free to attend, and it functions as a Lions Club fundraiser, supporting the club's charitable work with local youth programs and community initiatives. The Lions Club itself has served McFarland since 1963.
The trucks rotate month to month. Past lineups have brought in Jakarta Cafe, Curd Girl, SoHo Gourmet Cuisines, Kona Ice of Madison, Cafe Costa Rica, Pancho's Tacos, RibMasters WI, and Kipper Dippers, so there's no fixed roster to memorize, just a reliable night and a reliable park.
Here's the split, side by side:
| Night | Series | Venue | Host | What You're Paying For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Third Wednesday, June-Sept | Food Truck Frenzy | Arnold Larson Park (6002 Exchange St) | McFarland Lions Club | Free entry, pay per truck |
| Weekly Thursday, summer | Sundaes on Thursday | McFarland House Cafe (5923 Exchange St) | McFarland House Cafe | Cafe menu, live music |
Two traditions, one street, and a habit worth updating if you've been treating them as the same thing.
The Rest of the Week Fills In Around Them
McFarland's summer calendar doesn't stop at Wednesday and Thursday. Friday nights this season have brought live entertainment to The Mekong, the restaurant, bar, and banquet hall on the north end of the village, including a dance night billed as Dancers' Delight with the Highlights. If you'd rather stay downtown on a Thursday instead of heading to the cafe, the WineHouse Lounge has been running its own live sets the same night, so Thursday now offers a genuine choice of venues rather than a single default.
Daytime and weekend options round things out. Farm Days at Vitruvian, held at the farm on US Highway 51, gives families a Saturday morning outing built around the working farm itself. The Larson House Museum has hosted seasonal gatherings like its Strawberry Shortcake Social, a reminder that McFarland's oldest buildings are still doing double duty as community space. And the season closes the way it usually does, with the McFarland Community Festival in late September, live music included, capping a summer built less around one big event and more around a string of small, recurring ones.
Where the Week Points on the Weekend
If the weeknights are about where to eat and who's playing, the weekend in McFarland tends to point toward the water.
The Lower Yahara River Trail is the piece of infrastructure that makes this possible without a car. Its centerpiece is a boardwalk bridge across the north shore of Lake Waubesa, built as the longest inland boardwalk constructed solely for non-motorized transportation in North America. It opened in 2017 and runs roughly 2.5 miles one way from McDaniel Park in McFarland to the Capital City Trail near Madison's Lake Farm County Park, which makes it a legitimate connector rather than a dead-end path. One caveat if you're bringing a dog: pets aren't allowed on the boardwalk itself, so plan accordingly if that's part of your usual route.
For a lakeside meal to bookend a walk or a bike ride, McFarland's longest-standing option remains the Green Lantern Restaurant, sitting directly on Lake Waubesa with a history tied to the ice-cutting trade that once ran along those same train tracks.
What This Means If You're Still Driving to the Old Address
The short version: McFarland's summer didn't shrink, and it didn't move across town. It re-sorted itself onto the same two blocks it's always occupied, just not in the configuration longtime residents might expect. Food Truck Frenzy is exactly where it's always been, run by the same club, on the same schedule it's kept for years. Sundaes on Thursday is a different organization, in a different building, doing a different thing, but it inherited the name and the night from a tradition that genuinely ended in 2022.
If your mental map of McFarland still has both events happening at Arnold Larson Park, it's worth updating one line of it. Everything else about the week held steady.
Small details like this are exactly why local knowledge matters when you're trying to understand a place beyond its listing photos. If you're curious about what a home near Exchange Street, the Lower Yahara Trail, or Lake Waubesa actually costs right now, or you just want to talk through what living in McFarland is really like week to week, Josh Brost would love to connect. Let's Connect and figure out your next move together.
