Andrea de Jesus looks out over a storm-ravaged apple orchard on her A&H Farms near Manhattan. She planted the trees four years ago and hoped this year would finally be a bountiful harvest.
However, in early May of this year, a storm with winds gusting up to 70 mph did the first round of damage. Another storm in early June brought even more destructive storms with winds from 80 to 90 mph, golf ball-size hail and torrential flooding.
Imagine being stopped at a railroad crossing and counting 108 railcars filled with sorghum grown in Kansas slowly rumbling by, headed to hungry people around the world through a Kansas-based program called Food for Peace. Thanks to the National Sorghum Producers (NSP) and their chairwoman, Amy France of Marienthal, those 108 railcars held 400,000 bushels of Kansas-raised sorghum headed to various destinations around the world where people suffer from acute hunger.
We are excited to announce a new membership benefit program to offer you perks for supporting your Shop Kansas Farms farmers and ranchers. We call it, “Riding for the Brand.”
The practice of branding cattle and the American cowboy has deep roots in Kansas from the early cattle drives to Abilene to the cattle trucks backing up to the Bazaar Cattle pens along the Kansas turnpike. It is common to see the entrance to a farm or ranch with the cutout of a brand in an arch over the drive or mounted to posts along the side.
When Angela married RJ Dake in 1993 at the end of his military career, they both shared the dream of farming, which had been in RJ’s blood since he was a child. However, California land prices near their home in Sacramento made it cost-prohibitive to begin a farm.
Cherie Schenker is a problem solver. One such problem was her husband, Kevin, was longing for the homegrown Kansas beef raised on their farm near McCune when he was stationed in Afghanistan. Although it took considerable work navigating the bureaucracy and red tape of international governments and working with an outside company to invent a shipping system, she was finally able to ship Schenker Family Farms beef to hungry soldiers longing for a taste of home.
Today marks the sixth anniversary of Shop Kansas Farms (SKF) and here are six reasons to celebrate!
Although Anna Tucker thinks it’s a bit corny, I agree with her: it’s pure joy to watch baby lambs head-butting each other or suddenly busting out in moves like a backup dancer for Taylor Swift
“It’s the part I enjoy most on our ranch,” Anna says. “I was raised around dairy cattle and much of my background is working with cattle, but when Jeremiah and I bought 72 acres, we realized we were limited by how many cattle we could raise to responsibly maintain our pasture ground, so we started exploring smaller livestock when we formed Diamond T Livestock.”
Shannon Kearney bought her first herd of Angus cattle while she was living in an apartment in Lenexa. How did she make the transition from city life to country life?
“I would go with my dad after work to help take care of his cattle,” Shannon says. “I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to get my own herd, so I secured a first-time farmer loan from the USDA in 2015. Land is expensive to purchase in Johnson County, but I was able to find some pasture to rent.”
Cheryl Hunsinger loved sitting in her office and looking across the road at the field of sunflowers her husband, George, had planted as a surprise for her. She’d watch them turn their heads toward the east then slowly follows the sun’s arc across the sky until the sun set in the west. He planted them so they would bloom in time for Labor Day, creating a perfect opportunity for people in the Lawrence area to enjoy their field of sunshine.
The first thing I noticed when I met Kelly Perry the first time in the fall of 2020 were all of the USPS Flat Rate boxes of Perry’s Pork Rinds stacked on her front porch ready to be shipped. But they were nothing compared to her living room, dining room and kitchen, which were lined wall to wall with even more boxes in their home in Bronson.
“This is crazy,” she laughed as she handed me a pork rind to taste. “We had no idea it would turn into this. We started doing this just to make a little cash for a long-overdue honeymoon.”