During the growing season, bees, butterflies, and buyers swarm to the rippling strips of lavender on Rick and Ingrid Elam’s farm near Winfield. “It’s pretty amazing to watch all the bees and the moths and the butterflies and all the pollinators in there,” Rick Elam says. “A lot of people just take pictures of them as they go.” The Elams have two acres of lavender and 30 bee hives, from which they derive 32 products. But they’re thinking bigger these days, thanks to the launch of the Border Queen Harvest Hub in nearby Caldwell: a commercial kitchen that can increase their product line. A harvest hub is a community-based operation that brings together producers, processors and distributors of local food. Those products can, in turn, be purchased locally, regionally, and nationally. The hub “helped quite a bit in getting our name out there,” Rick Elam says. “Now it’s up to us to fine-tune the products that we have and get those in the hands of the people that want them.” Recently launched hubs in Sumner, Sedgwick and Rice counties are thriving. A thriving food network in McCune, about 150 miles east of Wichita, is touted as an example for sparsely populated sectors of the state to emulate.
Read more: KLC Journal
