Linn County Farm Tour showcases production, local Ag in a day of family fun

Farm Talk Associate Editor

As the Midwest warms up to the sunshine of the 2023 summer season, it's the perfect time to spend a weekend outdoors with fresh meats and local produce to bring family and friends together.

Kansas Linn County Farm Tour was ready to meet the need with their second annual spring farm tour. Eleven county farms geared up and were ready to meet local consumers for a day of family farm fun and production to share. The tour was designed to accommodate families throughout the day and let them craft their own agenda. Three farms on the tour route shared their unique stories with the day's travelers.

Pork production was not in the cards for April Castle growing up, as she swore up and down she’d never work with pigs because of the smell. Life had a funny way of turning things around for her. Eric and April Castle have now owned and operated Castle Farms since 2018 on 25 acres of land where they rotationally graze Gloucestershire Old Spot, Duroc, Yorkshire and crossbred hogs.

Castle family: Eric, April, Bristol and Cayden.

"My husband actually grew up raising pigs his whole life," Castle said. "When he went to college, they sold everything and he worked on other people's hog farms. We got married in 2011 and moved here in 2012. Everything here is first generation."

With sustainability in mind, the family raises pasture-based pork and poultry to feed a local need in Pleasanton, Kansas. Major food markets are not close by, but Castle Farms has had an active presence in four farmers’ markets each week over the past six years.

During the tour, families could stop and visit the farm, see the pigs and have an opportunity to purchase pork products. Castle said pork jerky is one of her best sellers, an item not too common around her area. All her jerky is made with 100% pork with no beef or chicken additives, but pork jerky isn't the family's most popular product.

"It's hillbilly bacon," Castle said. "It comes from the shoulder instead of the belly where your traditional bacon comes from. It has more meat and less fat. The fat on it is just the marbleized fat versus just the standard belly fat. People really like that."

Castle had some ag background growing up through the FFA program but wasn't truly immersed in the farm until she met her husband.

"My background in ag is FFA. I grew up in concrete city world and I just showed sheep and a steer my senior year," Castle said. "I absolutely despised and hated pigs with a passion and now I’m married to a pig farmer and I like pigs."

Farm fresh love is the motto for McKee Family Farmstead just north of Pleasanton. Kodee and Hannah McKee have a passion for all kinds of poultry, from layers to meat birds. Their learning journey through YouTube has led them to homestead a variety of animals and understand how to harvest them on-site.

Growing up with laying hens, the couple wanted to experiment with other backyard livestock. Like most, the pandemic began to alter their hobbies into more of a profitable reality.

"It's just to provide some meat for our family. How this all really started is when COVID hit, we wanted to be able to provide for our family," McKee said. "We also wanted to be able to give ourselves a better meat quality. We want to make sure what we put into these animals was going to come into our body."

The couple keeps a small operation designed to feed family, friends and local consumers who want to know their next-door farm neighbors.

"I always want to make sure that when (the animal's) life is done here, it's a happy life that they lived," McKee said. "We put a lot of love and care into our animals because that's what we want to give back to our family and our customers."

When the McKees started selling direct-to-consumer poultry, they needed to truck the birds to a processor as there weren't many available close to home.

"Two years ago, we had a group of broilers. (It was) 100 that we ended up taking to town and that cost us an arm and a leg. That was super expensive," McKee said. "I told him there has to be an easier way. I don't know if it's easier, but it's definitely more cost-efficient."

After trying the commercial route, the family invested in a poultry plucker and began processing at home where they invited local community members to stop by and check it out.

"We’ve actually sold more. We sell a lot of chickens today off the farm than when we had it processed at another factory," McKee said. "We’ve had more interest. We’re seeing more people going to the whole natural way rather than the commercial way, the mass-produced way."

McKee Family Farmstead raises goats, swine and guard dogs in addition to poultry, but remains true to their roots in broiler and layer production.

"I love chickens. I think that's where it all started," McKee said.

Kodee and Hannah McKee (back right) stand with their extended family on their homestead farm in Pleasanton.

Tradition doesn't travel far for the third stop of the farm tour with Clark and Marilyn McGinnis who raise grass-fed beef cattle.

"I was raised a quarter mile east of here," McGinnis said. "I haven't gotten very far from home."

McGinnis is the third generation of his family farm on 500 acres northwest of Pleasanton. His grandfather originally owned 210 acres of land and his father went on to own the property and double it to 420 acres.

"I’m the black sheep of the family," McGinnis said. "I added the least amount of acres to it. My dad and grandpa accumulated 420 acres and I got 80 added to it. So now we got 500."

Historically, McGinnis's dad was planting row crops but found most of his ground to be highly erodible. When issues arose, he began planting grasses.

Today, McGinnis has evolved his family structure to plant an eight-way mix of grasses including perennial plantain, endophyte-free fescue, clover, triticale and rye.

McGinnis said he might be a little old-fashioned in his farming methods, but comes by in honestly. His dad was born in 1913 and was farming through the Depression. Money was tight back then.

"Dad wouldn't have built a new fence for love or money. Back during the Depression, you couldn't buy a wire and during the 40s all the metal went to the war effort," McGinnis said. "It was hard to get a hold of wire. We would carry everything as far as axes and a cross saw, and we would saw locust limbs and intertwine them in the fence to keep cattle from getting out. That was good enough for him. It didn't have to be fixed up just right."

McGinnis was taught how to conserve money from a young age and those "old-fashioned" ways haven't changed much since then. Right down to the fencing.

"I still use hedge posts instead of pipe. A lot of farmers use pipe nowadays, but I stick with hedge posts, my dad ran posts diagonally for the brace posts," McGinnis said. "A lot of them do the H brace, but I go from top to bottom, which is a lot harder to do. He (dad) just believed that the fence was tighter, longer doing that."

With 500 acres and 100 head of cattle, the couple started selling direct eight years ago promoting all-natural, grass-fed beef for its health benefits. It all comes down to family tradition and personability for McGinnis.

"Basically, what we’re doing is we’re feeding the life under the soil. Then that takes care of what grows on top of the soil," McGinnis said. "That's kind of our thing is to take care of the soil and that’ll take care of the plants that our animals consume. Then those plants and animals that eat those good plants will take care of the people we sell meat to. Let's take care of animals under the ground which ends up taking care of us above the ground, so it's kind of cool."

Clark McGinnis stands in his pasture of an eight-way mix of grasses for his beef operation.

The Linn County farm tour started in the spring of 2022 after local producers took notice of a neighboring county's farm tour and decided to replicate the idea. The Facebook group gained fast popularity to showcase Linn County's locally raised protein and produce. Bringing awareness to small family farms and promoting agritourism is a definite bonus for the farms and Southeast Kansans who may not realize what's available around them.

"It's pretty exciting," Castle said. "I hope that it continues to grow because it's really nice just to get the community out and also bring people further knowledge to just be able to experience agriculture and the local food that's around them."

Farm Talk Associate Editor

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