On five acres of a 10-acre farm west of Americus, one Lyon County farm couple grows the food to supply 50 families and themselves with vegetables, eggs, honey, fruits, berries, garlic and other herbs, broilers, turkeys, lamb and wool.
Shepherd’s Valley is part of a growing Community-Supported Agriculture movement that brings members fresh foods that are free from the pesticides, herbicides and hormones that often are used to increase production and profits at larger operations.
John and Ramona Crisp are part of a local food-discussion group that organized late last year to bring more locally grown food choices to area residents; they also hope to work out details to supply local groceries and restaurants with their products. In the interim, they are providing food on an individual basis to their customers.
“We need about 12 more farmers doing what I do,” said John Crisp, a sixth-generation farmer who with his wife keeps the 50-member CSA supplied with seasonal produce and other foods.
Shareholders can buy full or half-shares, depending upon family needs. Shareholders often take turns bringing food boxes to a central location for other members to pick up. Crisp estimated the cost of shareholder food as ranging between the prices at grocery stores and health-food stores.
Shepherd’s Valley has about 50 shareholders, not only in Emporia, but in Council Grove, Manhattan, Junction City, Topeka and Lawrence. About 50 to 60 non-CSA members buy foods occasionally from the farm.
“So, we have people coming from quite a distance away to get fresh (foods),” he said. “Everything that we do here is above and beyond organic. We’re above that standard by quite a ways. We are not certified, but we follow that practice.”
The Crisps have packed a lot of food production into a relatively small space. It was something they researched and studied before taking their operation to the public.
“We tried it, and it was super-successful for us,” Crisp said. “If we were just trying to sell to people who just came down the road, we wouldn’t sell very much.”
The laying hens are kept inside large portable chicken coops that Crisp and the apprentices who work there move by hand from the barn to a nearby pasture and back to the barn each day. The chickens eat both grass and grain and perform pest control duties while they’re at it.
“The chickens, they will take care of the grubs and the flies,” Crisp said. “The sheep will do the mowing ahead of them. They are the pasture sanitation crew.”
The symbiotic relationship between the animals is another example of following nature rather than working against it. And in the end, Crisp said, the products are better.
“They are healthier,” Crisp said. “They have better nutrition; they have better taste. … The pasture grass makes those egg yolks nice and orange. They stand up real nice.”
The coops hold several hundred hens in a variety of colors, from the sandy-red buff Orpingtons, to the striped barred rocks and the dark Rhode Island reds. The copper black maran eggs are “Hershey chocolate brown,” and the American hens lay eggs with a distinctly greenish color.
All of them average about two eggs every three days, with a slow-down during the cold weather.
The Crisps also will grow broiler chickens — about twice the size of fryers — and, during the holiday season, turkeys. The turkeys, he said, are not stupid as often depicted, but are quite fragile for the first few weeks of their lives.
“About six weeks old they turn the corner and they get very hardy,” Crisp said.
The poultry are butchered, scalded and plucked at a processing station the Crisps built not far from the barn.
Because meats from larger animals must be inspected by the United States Department of Agriculture representatives, the lambs are taken to approved meat lockers to be butchered and processed.
The 17 ewes and their lambs graze on grass in season and are supplemented with hay, but no grain, when cold weather sets in. The lambing began in December, and a few pregnant ewes on Saturday showed there’d be more lambs any time. With a five-month gestation period, the wait for the babies is not long and bonus babies are part of the routine.
“We get about 150 percent lamb crop,” he said. “About every other year, they have twins.”
The ewes, who all were born in the barn and are called by their names, return to their birth spot to give birth to their own lambs.
“It’s like a salmon swimming upstream,” Crisp said of their return to the northwest corner of the barn.
Often, they nudge Ramona Crisp and grunt to let her know the time has come for her to be midwife for the births.
Across the driveway from the sheep, the Crisps are building a 96-foot by 20-foot “high tunnel,” with two layers of heavy film that provide enough insulation to plant early crops — lettuces, spinach, cabbage, carrots and the like — before the threat of freeze ends. The tunnel should add several weeks and more pounds of vegetables to the growing season, without adding the cost of fuels that traditional greenhouses require.
Near the tunnel, rimming part of the driveway, Crisp has rhubarb planted inside tires.
“Those black tires heat up that soil in the spring and makes that rhubarb just jump out of the ground,” he said.
The vegetables cultivated at Shepherd’s Valley are about 80 percent “heirloom,” which are open-pollinated and grown from seeds collected each year, rather than from hybrid plants. Crisp said the harvest period is longer, and the taste is better, though the produce lacks the uniformity and shape of the hybrids. The latter are traits Shepherd’s Valley customers are willing to forego.
“The average vegetable travels 1,500 miles from when it’s picked before the customer gets it,” Crisp said; eggs can be several weeks old before they are sold on grocery shelves.
Shareholders also get opportunities to try out foods they might not have seen before — purple green beans, green cauliflower, and other varieties of vegetables not commonly displayed at most stores.
After four years of operating CSA, the couple are pleased with the results their efforts have brought. And, in addition to the labor and sales aspect of the farm, they also provide a recreation site for their shareholders at no extra charge.
On the west side of the property, they have equipped a wooded area with a horse swing, hammocks, ladders, a tree house and a rope slide for shareholders’ enjoyment. The area, surrounding a dry creek bottom, is open for short play periods or for overnight outings in a cargo-parachute tent.
The area once was home to the Kaw Indians encampment, Crisp said, and visitors sometimes find arrowheads as they enjoy the outdoors.
“They get some of the history while they’re here,” he said. “This is a whole experience thing here. … It’s an opportunity to create memories for families of a simpler time (and) learn where food comes from.”
The couple also have camps for kids and classes from Flint Hills Technical College that come out for tours of the farm, as do individual families, garden club members and others who want to learn how to raise food for themselves.
“We do try to make it a teaching tFing as much as people want to learn,” he said.
• Shepherd’s Valley is listed on the Internet at www.localharvest.org/farms/m11802.
ZaneRokklyn (anonymous) says...
Thanks to Ms. Mlynar and the Gazette for covering this story! We do need 12 more farmers like the Crisps!
February 3, 2009 at 9:49 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Absolute (anonymous) says...
This farm is a huge benefit to our community!
February 3, 2009 at 9:44 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
seriouslyfolks (anonymous) says...
Ironicallly my nickname in highschool was "organic and local". I'm still not sure what that meant.
February 3, 2009 at 9:56 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
neighbor (anonymous) says...
You werent hybrid and didn't use steroids?
February 3, 2009 at 11:38 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
seriouslyfolks (anonymous) says...
I am a hybrid of my mom and dad and I've neber used steroids. So maybe that's it.
February 4, 2009 at 9:32 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
neighbor (anonymous) says...
I'd like to hear more about the organic farmers and ranchers in the area. I remember the Gazette doing a story about a family that were raising/selling organic beef East of Emporia a few years ago. I have considered trying truck gardening and offering products raised without chemical assistance, don't like to eat those things myself.
February 4, 2009 at 12:23 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
admireed (anonymous) says...
Nice promotion! Whatever it takes to make a business work...good servce...good products = profits
February 4, 2009 at 9:54 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )