“What is that beautiful gold stuff in the field over there?” I asked my wife as we drove over a bridge on Highway 50 between Burrton and Hutchinson. “I’ve lived in Kansas all my life and have never seen a crop so vibrant and beautiful.”
We ran through the checklist of what crop it could be and finally settled on canola. I asked around to see who raises it and met the delightful farm family of Cameron, Jeanne, Connor and Hayden Peirce of Hutchinson.
I recently had the opportunity to represent Shop Kansas Farms (SKF) on a panel at the Agri-Pulse National Ag and Policy Summit in Washington, D.C. The conference theme was “Revitalizing Rural Revenues.”
The Shop Kansas Farms’ Market of Farms held in Caldwell on Saturday, March 9, was a glowing success. Consumers as far away as Kansas City came to purchase food products from vendors as far away as Seneca. The Market of Farms brings vendors and consumers from all over the state together to make local foods available for purchase. This event was the rollout of the Border Queen Harvest Hub (BQHH).
“Our communities need us to dream for them.”
-Marcia Taylor-Trump
As I traveled to Howard down the undulating two-lane road sandwiched by sienna-colored prairie grasses of the Flint Hills, I reminisced about previous trips there. In my high school football days, I bounced along these same roads in big yellow buses from Rosalia when our Flint Hills Mustangs endured repeated beat-downs by the West Elk Patriots on the football field in Howard. My dad referred to their victories over us as shellackings.
When I launched the Shop Kansas Farms (SKF) Facebook group during the pandemic, I had one purpose: To connect you to the wonderful farm and ranch families of Kansas so you can purchase the food they raise.
Facebook required me to list at least one rule, so I made one: Be nice and share or else you’ll end up in timeout.
When Katie Carothers accepted the challenge to write and speak her dreams at a small business retreat, she knew exactly what she wanted: to expand her direct-to-consumer sales of beef, pork and chicken to restaurants wanting to buy local.
One unique quality of farmers and ranchers is they work together as a family. Taking care of livestock and crops requires everyone in the family — even small children doing chores like feeding bucket calves, collecting eggs and feeding chickens — to be a part of the work.
Are you looking for fun, educational and outdoorsy ways to spend time with your grandkids? Although you might have grown up on or around a farm and have your own garden, there are a surprising number of children who don’t know where their food comes from.
My wife, Christine, and I began taking our grandchildren on farm tours around Butler County a few years back. We even had t-shirts made that read, “McNary Cousins Farm and Ranch Tour.”
Below are ten tips you can use to show your grandchildren how their food is grown.
Thanks to a generous Thriving Rural Grant from the Patterson Family Foundation, Vision Caldwell and Shop Kansas Farms are partnering together to launch the Border Queen Harvest Hub. The Harvest Hub is a community-based approach that creates economic opportunities for farms and ranches by establishing a physical system of production, processing and distribution of local food that can be purchased by local, regional and national consumers.
I have been fascinated by the direct-to-consumer model of selling products from the farm since 2011. I learned the concept after asking a person at an agricultural conference to explain the sign, “A Kansas farmer feeds 155 people plus you,” since I had never purchased any food directly from a farm or ranch.