Rick McNary

Shelby Beyer of Cheney was burnt out, exhausted and struggling with health issues. As a nurse, she saw the impacts of unhealthy food choices on her patients and wondered if altering her diet to less heavily processed foods would help her feel better.

After 20 years of working in health care, she hung up her stethoscope, purchased 20 acres, and began growing her own food not only for her family, but as a business. She worked at JAKO Farm and MG Honor Farm for a while and learned the various aspects of the business before going full time and starting Anchor Farm.

Kimberly and Bruce Ropp of Wichita might have the tiniest farm in Kansas. Rather than measure it in acres, they measure it in square feet — 110 feet to be exact; 11 feet by 10 feet.

“The person at the Farm Service Agency said we just squeaked by getting it registered as a farm,” says Kimberly “But we can grow 18 pounds of microgreens every eight to nine days. We grew 936 pounds of fresh microgreens for 2025.”

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.

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. 

As you gather for Thanksgiving this year, please pause to recognize the farmers and ranchers who grow the food you eat. Agriculture is the state’s largest industry as the production of food, fuel and fiber on farms sustains our nation, yet they are only 2 percent of the population. 

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. 

I first met Diane Kriwiel in 2007 when she, and her husband Mike, were preparing to go to Ethiopia to adopt a three-year-old and seven-year-old brother and sister from a refugee agency. At the time, they already had eight children, so it puzzled me as to why they would undertake the extraordinary effort and expense to adopt two more children. As if that wasn’t enough, they went back to Ethiopia in 2010 and adopted two more unrelated 3-year-olds. They now have 12 children: six biological and six adopted.