HOME -- It was springtime a few years back when Nancy Vogelsberg-Busch took the phone call.
Her former mentor Wes Jackson, president of the Land Institute at Salina, was on the line. He wanted her to join him at a panel discussion.
Just a gathering of like-minded folk, including acclaimed writer Wendell Berry, at Yale University, he said, to talk about what Vogelsberg-Busch has spent her life learning: the role of farms in nature.
But the phone rang just as she was fixing to plant.
Vogelsberg-Busch markets her organic beef products under the "Bossie's Best" label.
Mike Shepherd/The Capital-Journal
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"I was fitting real nicely in my tractor seat here. I was plowing under hay -- we call it green manure -- and I was rather upset he asked me to, you know, pick up and leave all this critical work I had to do."
But then the quote by populist Mary Elizabeth Lease occurred to her -- "Raise less corn and more hell."
She parked the tractor and planned to head east.
"It was kind of fun," she said later of the panel's discussion with three other farmers, including Berry. "Everyone had so succinctly prepared their speech and talked very eloquently about saving the land and all."
The sun brightens as Vogelsberg-Busch carries feed to the cattle on her farm.
Mike Shepherd/The Capital-Journal
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She decided to wing it.
"I felt that the most important thing I could talk about was saving not just the soil but the souls of my children. They are the most important crop that I raise. I talked about mainly being a mom."
In the audience, student Curt Ellis listened intently.
"Nancy shared her story proudly -- a rich family history of farming and land stewardship, a brave effort on her part to keep that life alive as a single mom, and a simple commitment -- 'I wanted my children to grow up in the crick,' " said Ellis, now a documentary filmmaker.
Vogelsberg-Busch tends to a baby calf born recently on her farm.
Mike Shepherd/The Capital-Journal
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By the end, he said, her comments had "captured the essence of what we all were looking for -- a sense of place and belonging, the freedom of youthful discovery and the simple joy of family."
"More than that, I was struck by what happened next," Ellis said. "A dozen audience members stood up in turn to ask a question of the panel or make a comment, and each of them started their statement with the same words -- 'I grew up in a crick, too.' "
Making it on the farm
Maybe because Ellis grew up in a crick himself, he said he has held onto Vogelsberg-Busch's idea as a real sign of hope -- "that if we all could give our children a crick to grow up in, the world might become a little more humble, a little more forgiving and a little better cared for."
Vogelsberg-Busch uses a tractor to take feed from a storage area to the cattle pens.
Mike Shepherd/The Capital-Journal
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Today at her small farm in Marshall County, Vogelsberg-Busch remains dedicated to that end. Despite a continued drop in the number of farms in Kansas, she has managed to hang on.
"My kids have been able to play in the fields and the creek without fear of contamination," she said.
That's because as long as she can remember, her family never strayed from nature's way. They farmed without chemicals, farmed organically long before it became the buzzword of today's gourmet cooking schools.
She learned well from her father, the late John Vogelsberg, who was once the subject of a Smithsonian Institution documentary on organic farming titled "Promise of the Land."
But the reality of farming today differs from her childhood. As a single mom, Vogelsberg-Busch has to squeeze farm chores in with work in a local envelope plant to afford health insurance for her family.
"It's not glamorous. It's really hard sometimes for me and any other farm family going through this," she said. But she dreams of someday leaving the night shift and concentrating on a passion second to her children -- Bossie's Best beef products.
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Nancy Vogelsberg-Busch
Children: Noah Busch, a biology teacher in the Wichita school district; Ali Busch, a student at Kansas State University; and Isaac Busch, fifth-grader at St. Gregory's Elementary in Marysville
Age: 48
Activities: Board member of Organic Crop Improvement Association, a national organization that sets standards and certifies organic producers; member of Kansas Organic Producers, a marketing cooperative; board member of the Kansas Rural Center, Whiting, which promotes sustainable farming methods; participant in the Clean Water Farms Project, a grant program to help farmers learn ways to prevent pollution of local rivers and streams; member of the Kansas chapter of the Sierra Club
Education: The first intern at The Land Institute, Salina, a center dedicated to the study of natural systems agriculture
Reading materials: I really enjoy reading the magazine Hope with its inspiring stories of common folk doing good. The latest book I have read and highly recommend is "Fast Food Nation," by Eric Schlosser.
Favorite pastime: I love to walk.
Role model: I admire my dad who as a farmer was able to be at home with his family, working in the fields by day and always sharing his meals at home with my mom, me and my siblings.
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Bossie's story
About five years ago, Vogelsberg-Busch devised a plan to enter the growing niche market for organics.
"I had to figure out how to pay the mortgage on the farm, so I decided to feed my cattle out and start selling the beef. My first customers were my local women friends."
She decided on 1-pound packages of beef hot dogs. As a parent, she knew the time demands at mealtime. But why not mix convenience with quality?
"I thought, this is all about what we put in our kids' mouths," Vogelsberg-Busch said.
She created pre-cooked beef sticks easily warmed and served. Through test marketing, she learned the health-conscious buyer wanted no nitrites, no monosodium glutamate or other any other preservative.
"It took a year of making them, taking them to my friends' houses for taste tests. I found I couldn't please everybody all of the time," she said.
Her target consumer also wanted cattle raised without hormones. She found enough appetite to get serious about a brand name.
Enter the family's favorite milk cow -- Bossie.
The Guernsey provided the original breeding stock for a line of about 100 cattle Vogelsberg-Busch now raises. Bossie's nurturing disposition, she said, is mixed with Hereford and Angus breeds for the herd grazing her lands. The cattle receive no artificial supplements, no hormones and eat ground corn and hay raised without chemicals.
Bossie's Best is starting to turn significant heads. "Gourmet" magazine will feature the Vogelsberg-Busch farm in its July edition.
All because of a hot dog. Her children tease her she'll be known as "wiener woman."
But instead of wieners, she likes to call them her "soul sticks." That's what they're all about, she said, small family farms are the soul of the countryside. And people need to be reminded.
"I don't take that lightly," she said, "because these have my blood, sweat and tears in them."
Beefing up business
One might not expect such passion about a frankfurter. But for this farmer in T-shirt and blue jeans and an easy smile, food should be really good for you and the community at large.
"This is what an American hot dog should look like. It should be raised organically, it should be hand cut, it should be supported by a little local locker plant. We have to think about what's happening to American food," she said.
When Vogelsberg-Busch began to market ground beef and hot dogs at The Merc in Lawrence, she met a few vegetarians.
"They still had a craving for the meat," she said. "They just wanted it healthy."
But they were concerned with beef's artificial additives and its processing en masse through huge feedlots and giant packing plants. Some worried about mad cow disease found in cattle fed tainted rendered animal parts. Some worried about the way meat packers treat their employees.
She has succeeded in winning some back over to meat. And customers now call from Overland Park, Wichita, and from Prairieland Market in Salina and the People's Grocery in Manhattan.
Vogelsberg-Busch continues to seek places where health-minded consumers pay a fair price for organics, which can cost twice the price of standard supermarket fare. But many say it's worth it.
An interested buyer even asked her to ship her product to California. But Vogelsberg-Busch declined, committed to fostering local markets.
"I think people in California need to learn to raise their own cattle organically. I really want to stay local. It's really important to me to stay in Kansas and to support organic farmers here," she said.
Urban customers make the trek to her farm three miles south of the Nebraska line. They learn that "organic" is more than just a section in a grocery store.
A recent spring morning, the calves frisk on the lawn as a light rain falls outside the Vogelsberg-Busch's brick farmhouse. Mama cows, "her girls," keep a casual watch from a nearby lot.
Vogelsberg-Busch welcomes visitors to the farm's simple pleasures.
"Nancy is above all a good organic farmer. That is her profession," said friend and longtime advocate Dana Jackson, associate director of the Land Stewardship Project in White Bear Lake, Minn. "She is serious about being a good steward as a farmer. She is creative and gutsy."
Down the road a ways, she takes customers to tour the state's only organically certified meat locker, Welch Brothers Meat Co. at Frankfort.
Owner Ron Hards helps her maintain meticulous organic standards, required by U.S. Department of Agriculture inspections. New federal organic rules require a "nightmare" of paperwork. But Vogelsberg-Busch is clearing those hurdles for her young enterprise.
Her business, VB Farms, started out as initials to honor her family. "But now it also stands for valued beef," she said, "and valued bodies -- for the farmers."
And there's also valued art.
Her Bossie's Best labels feature a print of a cow nuzzling her calf. The background is a bright Kansas prairie at sunset. The scene was painted by Anthony Gude, Marshall County artist and grandson of regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. Vogelsberg-Busch offered to help Gude certify his farm as organic in exchange for his label design.
Continuing along the art theme, Vogelsberg-Busch had a hot dog stand at the Mulvane Mountain/Plains Art Fair at Washburn University in early June.
In the fall, she'll join other farmers supplying produce for featured organic meals during the Land Institute's annual Prairie Festival. It's been nearly 30 years since she brought her family's knowledge there as the institute's first intern.
"My dad didn't like the word organic. He referred to it simply as good farming practices," she said.
While serving in World War II, he had used anhydrous ammonia to harden the soil for an airstrip in the Philippines.
"It made the land so hard. He saw what it did to the soil, " Vogelsberg-Busch said.
Later at home, he never followed the crowd into chemical farming.
Vogelsberg-Busch recalls her father told stories about her grandfather calling the prairie "medicine."
"From the earliest of spring to the latest of fall, it's in continuous bloom," she said.
In her dining room, a painting by Lawrence landscape artist Louis Kopt depicts her family's field dressed in red yarrow and black-eyed Susan. The native grasses that nourish the Vogelsberg-Busch cattle along with the corn and alfalfa she raises are part of the same crop rotation her father used in their soils made rich by glacial deposits.
While her father inspired her, Vogelsberg-Busch also drew motivation for her business from the book, "Fast Food Nation," a revealing look at the state of America's food today. And, of course, her greatest motivators are named Noah, Ali and Isaac.
Vogelsberg-Busch has her children involved both in the testing of her products and running the farm. Daughter Ali helps on her breaks from college. Eleven-year-old Isaac tends the corn patch and sells the ears at a roadside stand in the summers.
"We put in a big enough patch, so the coons can have part of it," his mother said. "When they hit it, you know it's ready to pick."
Her eldest son, Noah, a biology teacher who shares his love for the outdoors to his students, recently earned a "Young Teacher of the Year" award in the Wichita school district.
It's little surprise. He grew up in the crick. hk
Sarah Kessinger is a Topeka-based writer. She can be contacted at hers@cjonline.com.
