Rick McNary

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.”

People who grow up on a farm like Anita Hamm seem to be at their happiest when they are growing either plants or animals. Whether it is nourishing the lives of animals on Hamm’s Homestead Farm near Minneapolis with her husband, Tim, or previously caring for surgical/trauma patients as a nurse at Salina Regional Hospital, Anita finds great satisfaction in caring for others. Lately, her role at the hospital has shifted to the quality improvement department, which gives her more free time to work on their farm.

Melissa Hildebrand-Reed of Hildebrand Farms Dairy in Junction City is proud she is the product of a long and rich history of women on the farm.

“I have great examples of women like my grandma Margaret who is still going strong, working hard alongside all of us on the farm,” Melissa says. “Women like my aunt Karen and aunt Kathy are more than “farm wives;” they are every part of the day-to-day operation. Grandma was finally able to slow down in her 70s after decades of milking cows and caring for calves.”

I have a special place in my heart for Laurie Bruce of Bruce’s Bullseye Farm. I watched her grow up in my hometown of Potwin and when she married her husband, Joel, she asked me to officiate the ceremony since I was the pastor of the Christian Church.

Cassondra Basinger told herself she would never marry a farmer. Having grown up on a farm near Moundridge, she wanted a different path for her life so she attended Tabor College in Hillsboro to study accounting. By her junior year, she realized she missed the farm life and then she met Chad Basinger on a blind date.

“And the rest is history,” she laughs. “Chad was a few years older than me and already established as a farmer near Pretty Prairie. I’m so glad I changed my mind because now we have four children that who we share farm life with every day.”

Amie Brunkow of Alta Vista doesn’t set out to shatter stereotypes on purpose, but she does.

“I grew up as a military brat and had never even been on a farm,” Amie says. “But in 2017, my husband at the time who had grown up on a hobby farm, purchased 160 acres and started our own farm. I loved the idea of growing all our own food whether it was plants or animals, so we had chickens, ducks, goats, lambs, beef and a garden. We were getting ready to take our cattle to a local locker for processing and that’s when I began to understand how difficult some processors were to work with.”

Brandi Buzzard wants people to stop blaming cows for global warming. She also wants people to not be afraid of their food. Therefore, this cowgirl from eastern Kansas has gained a national platform to clarify the confusion, myths and misconceptions about agriculture. You’ll often see her in social media posts wearing a T-shirt that reads, “Stop. Blaming. Cows.”

What do you do with 10,000 pounds of popcorn your family harvested and thought was sold to a dealer, but the deal fell through? Just ask Kim Baldwin of rural Inman: you create Papa Baldy’s Poppin’ Snacks!

Kim, originally a native of New Mexico, moved to Kansas to marry her husband, Adam, in 2010. Their children, Banks and Isannah, work alongside Adam’s parents, Dwight and Cindy Baldwin, on the family farm that raises wheat, corn, soybeans, grain sorghum and, since 2017, popcorn.  

I discovered through the years of writing for Kansas Farm Bureau’s member magazine, Kansas Living, that women comprised a majority of the farms selling their products directly to consumers. In fact, the first article assigned to me was about Valerie Visser and her “Fork in the Road” business near Riley. Valerie grew up on a farm in northwest Kansas then married Justin Visser, a farmer north of Manhattan.

Farmers and ranchers are the most hope-filled people I know. Each seed they plant and each birth of a farm animal are deliberate acts of hope put into action. They hope the rain comes at the right time for their crops. They hope their animals mature without harm or illness. They hope the harvest not only covers their ever-increasing expenses but gives them the ability to keep the farm afloat for another year.