Farmhouse / Vol. 6

FARMHOUSE // Volume 6

“...freshly cut Christmas trees smelling of stars and snow and pine resin - inhale deeply and fill your soul with wintry night.� // John Geddes

FARMHOUSE Volume 6 // CONTENTS GOOD FAMILY FARM TALLGRASS NATIONAL PRAIRIE PRESERVE LADYBIRD DINER STRAWBERRY HILL CHRISTMAS TREE FARM

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all content by Four Birds Media except where noted (785) 766-5669 info@fourbirdsmedia.com Lawrence / Kansas

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GOOD FARMS Olsburg / Kansas

There are some people that really love their work.

They move about their day with a purpose and distinct energy. When they describe their process, they speak with an enthusiasm uncommon to most people.

Craig Good is one of those people.

“I really don’t think there’s anything else I’d like more to do,” Craig says as he smiles at Amy, his wife. “It’s not a stretch to say our blood is in the land. It’s family.”

Craig has worked with livestock on the same property on the northern edge of the Flint Hills near Olsburg, Kansas for more than 50 years. His father Don, a nationally recognized authority on beef cattle and former Head of the Department of Animal Sciences and Industry at Kansas State University, started the operation in 1961. While his father built his business and made a name for himself with Angus cattle, Craig has made his way mainly with hogs.

“I don’t think it was any sort of me trying to do my own thing,” Craig says with a laugh. “I’ve always enjoyed working with hogs. We still work cattle, but our major focus is our hogs.”

The Good Farm is diverse – raising various crops and 100% Angus cattle - but their main focus is Old Spot and Duroc hogs. Because the couple intentionally keep their operation modest, they are able to focus on quality, rather than quantity, and the enhancement of their livestock’s genetics.

The Goods raise about 500 hogs on their property, which features indoor areas for piglets to wean and multiple outdoor pens. Craig takes great care to keep outside germs at a minimum. Guests wear two layers of footies to ward off unwanted germs.

“We have to keep the pigs healthy, you know.”

The quality of pork produced on the Good Farm is so high, Craig and Amy have, essentially, one customer.

Heritage Foods USA buys about 95% of the Good’s hogs. The couple also sells a select number of hogs to local shops, like Hank Charcuterie in Lawrence (“Best pork I’ve ever worked with,” say Chef Vaughn Good).

The relationship with the national company has challenged the couple to maintain quality and rewarded them with sustainability. Working with Heritage Foods USA has allowed the Goods to make a living without converting into an industrial-sized farm.

“We really value our relationship with Heritage,” Craig says. “We know that they will give us a fair price for our product and they know we will give them the highest quality pork we can.”

The relationship is based on mutual respect.

Craig and Amy are kind, gentle people. They speak generously about the scores of people they credit with their success. When one is talking, the other listens and often adds to their thought. They make it clear that building their business, and getting through the stress of raising a family and running a farm, has been a team effort.

“We work very hard,” Amy says with a soft smile. “But we know we couldn’t have made it alone.”

“Of course we appreciate knowing where our hogs are going and that they are being treated with the same respect we have for them,” Amy says. “And we know they appreciate our product, because they bring staff and chefs out almost every year. They want their people to know us and understand how we treat our hogs. That means a lot to both of us.”

FM

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TALLGRASS PRAIRIE NATIONAL PRESERVE photos by Robert C Kingsley III

Meet us at the Market.

Fall is here and we’re busy on the farm. We’d love to see you at our place. Please join us at our annual Holiday Open House the last two weekends of November (21-22 & 28-29). We’ll have all the goods you’ve come to expect to help make your homes even more beautiful and your meals even more delicious.

And don’t forget to put the Annual Farmers’ Holiday Market on your calendar! Join us Saturday, December 12, at the Lawrence Holiday Inn. - Karen & John Pendleton

1446 E 1850 Rd / Lawrence, Kansas

(785) 843-1409 / www.Pendletons.com

LADYBIRD DINER Lawrence / Kansas

Lady Bird Diner began in the kitchen of another restaurant, just down the street. Actually, it got its start somewhere along the road between bars. Or maybe it was at a grandma’s worn kitchen table.

A few years ago, when Meg Heriford was working at 715 in Lawrence, she had the idea to try selling slices of pie on the weekend.

“It wasn’t a ground-breaking idea,” Meg says with her omnipresent grin. “I mean, it’s pie. Who doesn’t enjoy a good piece of pie?”

The first pie Meg baked at 715 sold in a few hours.

The following weekend, she baked more pies, which also sold out. It wasn’t long until Meg’s idea of an entire restaurant based around her home-style, grandma’s-house cooking gained support from the partners at 715. When a building down the street became available, the group got busy.

“I like to think of my pies as very welcoming,” Meg explains. “I want you to feel joy and happiness when you’re eating. That’s the approach I take with all the food we serve here at the diner. I knew if we executed the idea well, Lawrence was the type of place that would embrace a good ole’ fashion diner.”

Ladybird Diner is an idea as much as it is a restaurant. The building is busy at all times. Waitresses move quickly from table to table and cooks shout orders from behind the tiny grill station. Customers are greeted not with a generic hello, but with a genuine “welcome!” The space recalls the feeling of both the great American Diner and your grandmother’s house. And music is always playing and it’s generally playing loud.

“I always have to have some rock ‘n’ roll around me,” Meg says emphatically. “Always.”

Though she claims to be “a student of grandma’s best dishes,” Meg is no slouch in the kitchen (just

Google “Mama Meg Food Network”). The idea, however, of fusion cooking and meticulously plating every ingredient of each entrée is not her style. For Meg, diner food is its own culinary art. A well-cooked plate of meatloaf is an offering from her to you. Her food is about the heart.

“I’ve travelled a lot of this country,” Meg explains.

“Whenever we get to a new city, I don’t look for the 4-star restaurant. I look for the diner. That’s how you get to know a place. Eating good food at a diner and being around the diner crowd in a city is a great way to experience the real heartbeat of a place.”

A few months after Ladybird opened, a kitchen fire in an adjacent building caused excessive smoke damage to the restaurant. The diner had to shut down for five months.

“Ugh, that was a punch in the gut,” Meg says, still with a pain in her voice. “At the time it was devastating. We had just started to get our feet under us, and we had to close for five months. But, in hindsight, it gave a chance to catch our breath and really get our act together. I think we’re a better restaurant now.

Oh, and we started making donuts. So that’s a good thing.”

The diner reopened in August to a fury of community support. And, as Meg says, adding morning donuts to their classic American Diner menu didn’t hurt.

“The goal here is simple’, Meg says. “If you walk through our doors, you are a guest and a friend. We will serve you a hardy meal, poor you a hot cup of coffee or a cold beer and do our part to make your day just a little bit better.”

FM

STRAWBERRY HILL CHRISTMAS TREE FARM Lawrence / Kansas

People ask Eric Walther when he’ll stop working his Christmas tree farm west of Lawrence. “Well,” he says with a sly grin. “We harvest seven or eight years after we plant, and we planted 1000 trees last year. And we’re ordering trees to plant this spring.”

With his wife, Lyn, the 84 year-old has operated Strawberry Hill Christmas Tree Farm for 31 years. The end is nowhere in sight.

“We love this,” the former Air Force pilot and meteorologist says. “And once we plant a tree, it’s our job to see to it that tree ends up in someone’s house. So, yeah, this time of the year is the best.”

Eric and Lyn married in 1952 while students at Central Missouri University and traveled throughout the U.S. with their four sons through Eric’s Air Force duty.

Throughout the travels, Eric kept an eye on the future.

“I grew up spending weekends on my Aunt and Uncles farm south of Kansas City,” Eric explains. “I always wanted land I could use to grow something that would help our family be self-sustainable. While in the Air Force I met a fella that grew Christmas trees. I couldn’t shake that idea.”

After Walther retired from the Air Force, he began working for TRW and was soon transferred to Lawrence. Eric was looking for land outside of town to build an airstrip and a garden. When they settled on the current property on US 40, it was clear he wasn’t building an airstrip.

strawberries grew here,” Lyn says. “Our son had the idea to name it Strawberry Hill and Eric and I loved the idea. So before we ever sold a tree, we had our name.

It has always been a seven-year cycle. At this point, it’s almost like clockwork.”

The crew plants trees in the early spring, replacing the nearly 700 sold each holiday season. Once the arduous process of planting is done, most of the work is left to Mother Nature.

“We’ll give ‘em a bit of water in the early days,” Eric says. “But after that it’s all up to the weather. If it doesn’t rain, we’re in trouble. A few years ago we had that real dry summer and we were almost wiped out. But these Scotch pines take real well to our land and the Kansas weather.”

The hard work of harvesting 600-700 trees per season is not done by the Walthers, or their evolving crew of young help.

“Well, people sure love to come out to the field and find their perfect Christmas tree. Half of the experience finding the tree is cutting it down, so that saves us a lot of work,” Eric says with a big laugh.

Eric and Lyn planted their first patch of Scotch pines in 1977. They sold their first tree in 1984.

While Eric spends most of his time in the field mowing and tending to the trees, Lyn curates an adorable gift shop on the property’s north end. Complete with hot cider, cookies and an impressive ceramic North Pole village, Lyn sells crafts from local artists and dozens of her own wreathes.

“Before the majority of the property was dedicated to rows and rows of pine trees, a good patch of wild

“We do this for the families that make us part of their traditions,” Lyn says. “We love seeing the families.” FM

“After we got the land cleared I started thinking about Christmas trees.”