Salute to Soil Conservation
February 24, 2022 | B1
TSnews
Rooftop farm earns urban conservation award By Travis Mounts TSnews news@tsnews.com The new RISE Farm, an urban farm that sits on top of the new Fidelity Bank car park in downtown Wichita, received an urban conservation award at the recent Sedgwick County Conservation District banquet. Leah Dunnar-Garcia and her husband, Ron Garcia, own and operate Firefly Farm just east of Wichita. The have partnered with Fidelity to create RISE Farm, which Dunnar-Garcia describes as a hybrid operation. “It’s a cross between an urban farm and green roof technologies,” she said. “They knew they wouldn’t use the top floor right away.” The farm sits on the fifth floor, and is breaking ground in who it caters to and how the work gets done. Dunnar-Garcia said the first goal is to sell as much product as possible to First Mile Canteen, which will open soon on the first floor of the car park. It is owned by Nick Korbee, who opened First Mile Kitchen in early 2021 at Bradley Fair in east Wichita. Korbee was a New York City restaurant owner who relocated to Kansas to be
Contributed photo
The new RISE Farm, located on top of the Fidelity Bank car park in downtown Wichita, will supply produce to First Mile Canteen on the first floor and to other Wichta restaurants. The farm earned an urban conservation award at the recent Sedgwick County Conservation District banquet.
closer to his wife’s family. The “first mile” idea is for your dinner to be as close as possible to its sources. Dunnar-Garcia said the second goal will be to sell as much produce as possible to other Wichita restaurants. Her Firefly Farm is an organic operation that opened in 2015 with an extensive offering of heirloom tomatoes and a few other summer crops. The farm started with just three restaurant customers. The list of customers
now includes Public at the Brickyard, Vora Restaurant European, The Belmot, Napoli Italian Eatery, and First Mile Kitchen. Firefly Farms opened an online store in 2021 and now has retail offerings, too. Customers purchase online, and there are two pick-up days per week. It is not open to walk-in customers at this time. Dunnar-Garcia explained the reasoning for targeting restaurants, saying that she would prefer making two sales of 50
pounds of tomatoes versus 50 sales of two pounds each. “The scale seemed right to me,” she said. With more than 30 restaurants as customers, it is difficult to argue with the philosophy.
“Wichita is quickly becoming a food town. That is a good thing for the community,” she said. “You’re eating two-deep. I’m a big supporter of local.” There are challenges to farming on a rooftop. The
first consideration is the weight of the soil. While Dunnar-Garcia signed her contract with Fidelity Bank last October, she has been working with the bank for roughly 1-1/2 years. There was a lot of research plus visits to rooftop farms in St. Louis and Chicago. She worked with the building’s architect and structural engineer. “We had to take into account rain and snow loads, and soil weight,” Dunnar-Garcia said. The starting point is Rooflite soil, which is an aggregate blown full of air. That makes up about 70 percent of the soil, and is mixed with 20 percent compost and 10 percent sand. It is a lot different than the clay soil found on regular farms in this area. This type of soil does not have a lot of biological activity, so things high in fungi and bacteria are added in. “You needed to add in the ‘good stuff,’” Dunnar-Garcia said, adding
See ROOFTOP, Page B4
Michelle Leidy-Franklin/TSnews
Dylan Bristor accepts his Soil Conservation Award from Phil White of Impact Bank.
Bristor honored for high tunnels By Sam Jack TSnews
Dylan Bristor received a Soil Conservation Award at the recent Sumner County Conservation District banquet, recognizing his work farming produce using two high tunnels. High tunnels, also known as hoop houses, are greenhouses, Bristor explained, but unlike some greenhouses, they use ground soil and are not climate controlled. High tunnels protect produce from the wind, allow for controlled irrigation, and extend the growing season. “You don’t get too much of a head start, because they do cool off, especially like now when the nights
are really long, it will cool off down to basically the outside temperature overnight,” Bristor said. “But you get a couple of weeks, those nights when it gets chilly just for an hour or two, the greenhouse will be enough to hold them.” This is Bristor’s third year working with this kind of agriculture, and his second year with two high tunnels instead of one. His operation is on land owned by his uncle, Jon Bristor, located a few miles east of Wellington. “We do have some crops outside, and pre-COVID, we were just beginning to raise pasture-raised chickens. Then we had some laying hens, a few grassfed lambs, and we did have one beef cow. But every-
thing got out of control there with COVID, and I didn’t know if we’d get into a butcher or not, so I got rid of all the critters; we’re hoping to get back to that sometime,” Bristor said. “The greenhouses are the most profitable, really.” Bristor said he had always been interested in the outdoors. He got more interested in agriculture, and high tunnels specifically, during college, when he had a job at Britt’s Farm and Pumpkin Patch, near Manhattan. Now Bristor works as an in-home health care
Thank you!
The Sedgwick County Conservation District thanks our farmers and everyone for conserving our natural resources! Providing resources and experiences to promote conservation of natural resources
Sedgwick County Conservation District 11832 West Central, Suite 100 Wichita, KS 67212
(316) 721-6127 www.sedgwickccdks.org
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206 E. Harvey, Wellington, KS 67152 (620) 326-3361 24 N. Main, Caldwell, KS 67022 (620) 845-6444 www.Impact-Bank.com
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