Paul and Shannon Holder live in an urban area but they share an interest in the country way of life. This week they are the guests of Barton County Farm Bureau for a new program called “Country Connections.” They watched a harvest in progress and more during their four-day adventure.
“It’s like summer camp for grown-ups," Shannon said Wednesday evening as they met some of their hosts at the home of Terry and Jerry Esfeld in Great Bend.
Roger Long of Barton County is with Kansas Farm Bureau’s Leadership KFB. He explained the purpose of Country Connections.
“One of our themes is ‘Advocates for Agriculture,’” Long said. “We need advocates in urban settings.” There’s no replacement for people like the Holders, who are active in their communities and can take the rural message to civic groups and friends.
“We’re not influencers by any means,” Paul said, prompting Shannon to joke, “I think I might be an influencer.” She suggested this week’s trip might be worth a post on TikTok.
All kidding aside, Long said the Holders are just what Barton County Farm Bureau was looking for to launch Country Connections. He met them by networking with people in church and they got together in Salina for an interview before scheduling their trip. The Holders are members of the Osage Trails chapter of Missouri Master Naturalists. They recently moved from Missouri to Basehor (near Bonner Springs), which is considered part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. They’ve joined Basehor’s new Kiwanis Club.
Their Missouri Master Naturalist membership puts them in contact with 25 other conservation groups, Shannon noted.
“We may go out to a ranch and collect seeds one afternoon, and then we would have conversations with those folks.” They were curious to have similar conversations with farmers and learn their perspective.
Farm visits
The Holders visited relatives’ farms when they were young but that wasn’t the same as experiencing farming, Paul said. He remembers watching an uncle milk cows by hand for a dairy farm, and Shannon recalled gigging frogs and playing in a creek on her grandfather’s farm.
Before coming to Barton County, the Holders filled out a “priority list” of things they hoped to see and the itinerary was crafted with that in mind. They are staying at a rural guest house on a farm. On Thursday morning, they traveled to Hudson to tour the Stafford County Flour Mills and ate lunch at Mom’s Cafe in Seward. They joined combines harvesting wheat in a field and watched TR Esfeld processing cattle.
The Great Bend Tribune caught up with the Holders again on Friday morning as they ate breakfast at Great Bend Coffee. Paul described the experience so far, “In one word, superb.”
“What we’re certainly seeing is the complexity of the start-to-finish process,” Paul said. “We started with the flour mill, we’ve been to the wheat harvest, we’ve been to the grain elevator. We’ve been to the (Long) Pumpkin Patch.”
They’ve toured BTI with its acres of equipment and Performance Crop Research. They learned that farming is complex, and has a very low profit margin.
The scheduled programs have been informative, from growing food to processing. But even better was the time spent in conversation.
“Having two hours in a combine isn’t sitting and listening to somebody talk about combines. You’re forced to have a conversation,” he said.
What will they take back when they return to Basehor and what do Farm Bureau members want folks in the city to know?
“I’ve gotten different answers, but they’ve all kind of been the same,” Paul said. “I guess the simplest and funniest answer yesterday was ... people need to know chocolate milk doesn’t come from brown cows. In a nutshell, that’s kind of been the message, even though it’s oversimplified.”
They also have a more nuanced understanding of agriculture. They enjoyed a trip to Larned on Thursday evening, where they ate at Edwards Street Brew and Bites and heard some of the controversy over plans for a new feedlot. They learned that agriculture, like all things, has an element of nostalgia but has moved forward with the times. Farm Bureau member Keith Miller not only drives a combine, he’s a past chairman of the American Farm Bureau Federation’s International Trade Advisory Committee. Paul asked Miller why he relies on a crop consultant.
“I mean, he’s a very smart man with a lot of experience. He’s been doing this a long time, but he recognizes the science is always changing and brilliant people at K-State and Iowa State are researching better ways to do what you do. Your yields are better, the environment is better or it’s more sustainable.”
When the Holders leave Barton County, they’ll have a lot to share. If they’re lucky, Shannon said she hopes she will get to see a badger before they leave.
Long said he thinks he knows where they can find one but as of Friday they’d been “skunked" by the badger.
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