Kansas Ag Connection - Final Farm Tour for Veterans Today

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Final Farm Tour for Veterans Today
Kansas Ag Connection - 08/29/2016

The final session of Summer Fun Farm Tour Series is Aug. 29. Kansas Farmers Union, Farmer Veteran Coalition of Kansas, Kansas Beginning Farmers Coalition, Kansas Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Alternative Crops, and Kansas AgrAbility partnered to present this farm tour series developed with aspiring, beginning and veteran farmers in mind.

The tour starts at the National Agricultural Center and Hall of Fame and visit the three farms below before returning the Ag Hall of Farm for a local foods lunch.

Following lunch, participants will have the chance to explore the history of agriculture with Dawn Gabel, executive director of the National Agricultural Center and Hall of Fame, and learn about opportunities with Farm Fresh HQ, a food hub recently launched in NE Kansas.

The afternoon education session with Carl Horne, program and outreach manager of the Young, Beginning & Small Producer Program for Farm Credit Services of America/Frontier Farm Credit, focuses on solid record keeping practices for your farm and developing a business plan.

Farms to tour include:

-- Green Dirt Farm makes award-winning sheep's milk cheeses and yogurt. They give rigorous attention to managing the grazing of the flocks in order to build healthy soil and grow nutritious pasture grasses. Raising sheep on carefully tended pastures not only produces happy sheep and high-quality, flavorful milk; it also prevents soil erosion and helps to build top soil. They raise their animals humanely, outdoors on pasture, and enable them to behave naturally and socialize freely and are audited yearly to ensure that they are maintaing Animal Welfare Approved's strict standards.

-- Having served 28 years in the Army with numerous deployments, 11 duty stations, and three combat tours, Ken and Cindy DeVan settled near Fort Leavenworth, Ks. With two daughters growing up as Army brats, they had sampled u-pick farms from the east coast to the southwest and throughout Europe. Upon retirement from the Army, they decided to start their own berry farm in Kansas on a quaint piece of property on Santa Fe Trail. They have enjoyed fresh fruit and vegetables from local markets and farms from around the world and wanted to bring that great experience to others here in Kansas.

-- Hillside Honey Apiary is a veteran family-owned and operated business offering unpasteurized, raw honey, creamed honey, infused honey, honey stix and a variety of all-natural, preservative-free and synthetic-free beeswax and honey skin care products. They started with three bee hives in 2006. A few years passed and with a transition from the Army the family found themselves revitalizing an old rural high school, built in 1920, in Easton, Kansas. About the time they were thinking about the type of business they wanted to open in the building, Beth Ward contacted them about continuing on the legacy of their honey business and they found themselves venturing into the life of beekeepers. They went from 3 to 40 hives overnight and have started the transformation of the old High School into an educational Apiary and beekeeping experience for all to enjoy. They are now at approximately 80 hives and have hopes of growing to 200 hives in a few years.

For more information or to RSVP, go to www.kansasfarmersunion.com/event/session-three/.

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