Rick McNary

While many know Frederic Remington as a famous painter and sculptor of the West, few know he was once a sheep rancher in Kansas a few miles north of my home in Butler County.

Remington was born in New York and, when he turned 17, went to Yale where he played football and studied art. After his father became ill, Remington returned home where he met, and fell in love with, Eva Caten. After his father’s passing, they hoped to wed but her father would not permit her to marry Remington.

Early on a summer morning, Wanda Esping gazes out her second-story window over a field of sunflowers. Acres of yellow globes splash across land homesteaded by her ancestors along the Smoky Hill River near Lindsborg.
“Oh, Karl,” Wanda says to her husband. “Look at our girls this morning. Aren’t they beautiful? Look at the way they dance with the sun!”

Karl and Wanda began growing sunflowers shortly after the Easter Freeze of 2007 wiped out their family’s wheat crop.

One of the biggest questions I’ve been asked since I started Shop Kansas Farms (SKF) during the pandemic after discovering local grocery store shelves were empty, was whether the trend of people buying locally would continue once the pandemic restrictions eased. 

The initial rush of tens of thousands of people to our Facebook group, then our website once we launched it, gave consumers a new way to directly purchase food raised on Kansas farms. 

“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.