Sean Nash

The Buffalo Seed Company is represented by Cherokee White corn and Kiwano melon in Kansas City Reciprocity. Owned by Nancy and Matthew Kost, The Buffalo Seed Company grows crops of diverse plants from bioregions around the world that resemble our own climate patterns in the Kansas and Missouri area. The Buffalo Seed Company and their growing partners steward annual and perennial plants for successive generations in order to develop seeds that are adapting to our local climate. While this is part of our human agroecological relationship with plants, many of us are separated from understanding the full process and the miracle of seeds and seed saving as fundamental to our security and survival. Matthew, Nancy, and their children, Thomas and Silveria, possess a profound intimacy with their crops and seeds that feels empowering, alive, and radical in the original sense of the word (to the root).

I met Matthew and Nancy to see the crops they steward twice in 2022. On those visits, I experienced their splendid generosity and love for their relationships with plants. Both Nancy and Matthew light up with excitement in describing every crop they grow as we walked to meet each of their crops. Details about the plants (they use the term landrace, referring to culturally significant and geographically or climate-adapted crops) emerged through their stories- of people they obtained seeds from, the landrace’s origins and cultural importance, or of people who were thrilled to find that Nancy and Matthew have made seeds of personal importance available to them.

Their growing philosophy and guiding ethical principles as scientist-farmers is guided by a deep sense of awe and a desire to be catalysts for change. They see abundance and joy in their work toward biodiversity. They understand it as part of a movement. Sometimes biodiversity and living with complex ecosystems means that the crops they are stewarding might be entirely disrupted by animals. In the Fall of 2022 they had to adjust to the loss of all their fall crops being eaten by rabbits. Other times, they might not get much seed, but they receive another kind of ecological gift. On my second visit to their farm we found that a fungal delicacy called huitlacoche had overtaken more than a few of their ears of corn. Thomas, Silveria, and I marveled and giggled at the strange bluish otherworldly forms emerging from individual kernels. Matthew gifted one of the ears to me and I cooked it at home that night in in a hot pan with oil and a dash of sea salt at the end. Its buttery funky taste and meaty texture is undoubtedly one of the worlds most incredible symbiotic -though parasitic- occurrences. I had eaten it before in Mexico, where it is widely understood as a delicacy in cuisine, but having it close to home and cooking it myself was truly special.

You can find out more about Buffalo Seed Company and purchase their seeds on their website.

Ki Koko Farms is represented by long beans in Kansas City Reciprocity. Meaning two sisters in Karenic language, Ki Koko Farms is a shared farm operated by Beh Paw and her sister Pay Lay in Kansas City, Kansas. Their produce and flowers can be found at the Overland Park Farmer’s Market on Wednesdays and Brookside Market on Saturdays.

I met Beh Paw and her daughter Taeh at the 2.5 acre family farm on a beautiful morning in June under crystalline blue skies. The gentle slopes of the land are framed by tree stands almost entirely around the perimeter in the residential area, which gives their farm an embracing feeling. At a glance, their neat crop rows glisten with lush green leaves with different textures and vibrant, kaleidoscopic flowers dotting the landscape. There were orchard trees, hoop houses, rows of chard and lettuce, onions, carrots, and gorgeous crimson poppies that Beh Paw picked wearing a gardening hat dotted with red flowers. I was awestruck by the specific range of color and light at their farm and eagerly snapped photos of Beh Paw gathering a huge bouquet of the poppies in the green field.

Beh Paw, Pay Lay, and their family are Karen people from Burma (Myanmar). During our conversation I learned about their exile from Burma and migration to refugee settlements in Thailand before coming to the United States in 2007. Through Taeh’s translation of her mother’s comments, I heard their wish for people to better understand the story of the Karen people and their continued persecution in their ancestral homeland of Burma. The importance and depth of Karen culture is celebrated through the Ki Koko Farms’ logo in the symbol of the traditional klo drum. Toward the end of my visit, I asked Beh Paw and Pay Lay to pose for a portrait. Beh Paw enthusiastically went to find a traditional Karen embroidered shirt to wear for the picture with her sister.  

Beh Paw and Pay Lay are graduates of New Roots for Refugees, a training program of Cultivate KC. New Roots assists refugees with farming experience and training to create successful business farming operations through area farmers markets. The sisters came to Kansas City with years of farming experience and are valuable members of a growing community of New Roots graduates selling their produce at market in the KC area. 

Longfellow Farm is represented in Kansas City Reciprocity by tomatoes. The Longfellow neighborhood is located just southeast from the center of downtown Kansas City. Longfellow Community Farm was established by Longfellow residents Ami Freeberg and Clare Murphy Shaw in collaboration with the Longfellow Community Association and many dedicated neighbors. Ami has continued to manage the community farm since its inception in 2015. Ami has extensive experience working in urban agriculture, food systems, and sustainability in Kansas City and is currently the Assistant Director of Strategy and Partnerships with Cultivate KC. In addition to Ami and her wife Ellie and baby Milo,many supportive neighbors from both in and outside of Longfellow come to garden during community workdays.

Personally, I love community gardens and think there should be more of them everywhere. There is a spirit to community or collective gardening all-hands activities that is genuinely social and collaborative in nature. It can be a space where learning from each other and the land gets etched into your memory and those vivid associations can create a sense of belonging in community. Longfellow’s gardening model is not based on individual plots, 4x8 beds where everyone could be growing their own tomatoes, for example. Instead, the garden is structured around long rows for all kinds of seasonally rotated crops that everyone plants, weeds, and harvests together.

In my experience visiting Longfellow, this was the beauty of going there, especially as it got warmer and people came out in numbers to really feel the summer. The environment is energetic and buzzy, and people are chatting while sowing seeds, laughing, teaching each other techniques (I learned how to use a broadfork, which also resulted in laughing). I find it motivating and reviving to see so much happening at once, and especially to see others getting their hands in the soil. When you’re done getting your hands dirty at Longfellow, you get to take home a share of what was harvested in exchange!

There are a number of community gardens in KC to visit, and some have a similar model (see a list at the bottom of this page). Like all good farms should be, Longfellow is attentive to its pollinators. A pollinator garden greets you on the sidewalk if you come in from the south side in the summer, and you can find orchard trees planted with the help of the Giving Grove on the lot as well. If you would like to learn more about the history of Longfellow Community Farm, you can watch this video by KC Raised or go to the farm’s website. Check their Instagram if you’re interested in lending a hand- no experience required!

Maseualkualli Farms is represented in Kansas City Reciprocity by jicama and patty pan squash. Maseualkualli Farms, or The People’s Farms, is Pantaleon Florez III’s name and description for his farm and food sovereignty project. Based in Lawrence, Kansas at the shared Common Ground Incubator Farm, Pantaleon’s no-till, no fossil fuel farming practices support the growth of a wide array of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and pollinator plants. His farm and activism equally support land and the people with his vision for The People’s Century Farm in Douglas County. Using data driven research on land access and food apartheid in the United States, The People’s Century Farm is Pantaleon’s model for structural support for BIPOC farmers and food security that could be implemented across the United States. 

My first visit out to Maseualkualli Farms was on a May morning in 2022, just after a dramatic Kansas morning rainstorm cleared. There were other farmers out after the rain, all eager to do their May plantings or prep work. Panta said he had been prepping the soil for planting his experimental crops of centli (Nahuatl for corn) before I arrived. In the shared workshed he pulled out a few cobs of his dried centli. These were small cobs with white and lavender colored kernels. Many crops that he grows are intimately tied to his Mexican heritage and to the birthplace of his great grandfather in Guanajuato. The Mexica centli he showed me is one he has been stewarding since 2019 and conducting studies with using different growing methods. That day in May, he was prepping the soil for the Indigenous growing method using mounds described in the Florentine Codex from 1552. He shared all the juicy details of growing it with me, from acquiring the seed to the progress of breeding it to produce a beautiful lavender colored masa. 

Each farmer chose three of their favorite things to grow so I could select one or two to make casts of and include in the piece. Pantaleon’s choices were the Elote Cónico maize described above, papalotl and jicama. Corn was already going to be represented by the Buffalo Seed Company, so I decided to choose jicama for the piece. When I returned in late summer to acquire the jicama for casting, I was surprised to see it bright white like a turnip straight out of the ground, at least in its early maturity. Pantaleon washed and cut one for us to eat at the farm, and its water-filled juicy flavor was totally refreshing in the Kansas heat. In fact, we walked around that entire afternoon munching on and picking leaves (this is what you do or you should do at a farm). We snacked on leaves like papalotl, which is Nahuatl for butterfly, and is also referred to as papalo. It has a cilantro-like flavor that is even more complex and flavorful. Papalo is only used fresh and was used in Indigenous Mexican cooking before the Spanish brought cilantro from the Middle East. Wandering around the farm that day, Pantaleon found that there were some mature pattypan squashes and offered some for me to take home. Their form is so intriguing and cute that I had to cast one for the piece too. The whiter jicama you see in the piece is from Pantaleon’s farm, while the other one is an imported grocery store find.

One of Pantaleon’s Instagram images reads: Panta__ Grow stuff. Pick stuff. Cook stuff. Makes it all sound simple, right? His work exemplifies the broad range of knowledge and labor that can and often does go into farming: from his knowledge about biodiversity, landraces, and seed banking, to systemic issues impacting BIPOC farmers and new or aspiring farmers, to public policy, education, and navigating complex bureaucratic systems, to growing, tending, then cooking and caring for his family, his community, his heritage. He has an infectious passion for solidarity and an admirable practice that combines his activism, scientific knowledge, and creative pursuits. You can donate to his farm and to the Nanasoohannena Farm, a farm project of the Indigenous Community Center that he helps lead at the Common Ground Incubator site.

Sankara Farm is represented in Kansas City Reciprocity by hot peppers and okra. Ryan Tenney operates the 27 acre farm located in Little Blue River Valley, in south Kansas City, Missouri. Ryan is a returning generation farmer and artist growing organic and culturally specific crops. Stated on their website, Sankara Farm cultivates: 

direct connections to communities of color and families who are living in food insecure urban areas, engaging new ideas and practices to meet the goal of bringing local organic produce to food insecure households.

I first met Ryan in 2017 when we were both awarded a Rocket Grant from the Charlotte Street Foundation for projects having to do with art and growing food. He received the award to support his art and agroecology project, AgroArt, which: 

nurtures creative community practices as socio-ecological intervention strategies, cultivating Black resistance: material, cultural and spiritual. AgroArt engages with artists working at the intersections of environmental justice, black agrarianism, and cultural healing practices for the development of strategies in building cultural and food sovereignty.

Ryan has since been awarded multiple grants for his intersectional work in art and farming, including an Interchange Grant from the Mid America Arts Alliance for Sankara Seed Project in 2021. Ryan is also the recipient of three Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Project (SARE) grants, which you can read about here. Ryan’s work with Sankara Farm is collaborative; Ryan told me that he was considering expanding his name to the “Black Farmers Collective,” speaking to the collective work and collective future that is being fostered with projects like Sankara Farm. Specifically, Ryan works with Izula Jade Maximillen, who is also Kansas City’s chapter leader for Hip Hop is Green: the world’s first plant based Hip Hop organization. On the day I went to visit Sankara, farmer Daniel Robinson was lending a hand on the farm. Ryan and Daniel were talking about their upcoming workshop with the Urban Rangers Corp— discussing their plans and experience working with Black youth to grow food, save seeds, and to have a space for connecting with Black farming and liberation movements. 

Sankara Farm is creating systems for mutual aid, particularly among and for Black people in Kansas City by imagining and realizing different ways to provide for neighbors. Their work makes culturally relevant foods readily available through CSA programs while strengthening networks for traditional ecological knowledge sharing through other programs, like the Farming While Black Study(ies) Reading Group. To dive further into the research they are doing and community work they are building, consider a SARE grant they are working called: The Black Emancipatory Agriculture Asset Map and Returning Generation Black Farmer mentorship program. This project “will use participatory action research, participatory GIS and innovative arts-based knowledge translation of traditional ecological knowledge to improve Black Food Sovereignty in the Kansas City Area.” Partnered with HBCU Lincoln University in Jefferson City, MO, this project is setting up a mentorship program with experienced Black farmers in Kansas City and will enhance Black food sovereignty through increasing the number of Black farmers. Sankara has also joined with national leadership communities and organizers for Black farmers, such as Black Urban Growers and the National Black Food & Justice Alliance, which they serve as the local chapter for. Other local partners include Uzazi Village.

In 2022, Ryan told me his favorite things to grow were: cotton, buena mulata pepper, purple hyacinth bean, and collard. The way things happened in the course of the season meant that I was unable to get the buena mulata pepper from him that he chose. I received jalapeño from another farmer, so the color range of the hot peppers in the piece are meant to reference the multiple colors that the buena mulata goes through over a single season as well as the diversity of hot peppers generally, but I’ll get my hands on a buena mulata one day. A google search reveals that the legacy of the buena mulata is attributed to the artist Horace Pippin and his preservation of the seeds. 

Sankara Farm’s okra was big when I visited and needed to be picked. The Young Family farm chose okra, but their okra struggled a bit in 2022, so Ryan’s okra was the okra I cast for the Young family’s choice. Read just below for more about the okra and the Young Family Farm.

See also their Feed Ourselves to Free Ourselves PDF and Follow Sankara Farm on IG to know more.

The Young Family Farm is represented in Kansas City Reciprocity by okra and cherry tomatoes. Their multiple lots of vegetable farms are impossible to miss around 39th and Wayne, just south of the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council in the Ivanhoe neighborhood of KCMO. The farm is owned and operated by Alan and Yolanda Young along with help from their children, grandchildren, and family members. 

When I mentioned to people that I was doing this project, many of them responded— “do you know the Young Family!?” After writing them to get approval for their inclusion, Alan and Yolanda both wrote back, and Yolanda included this about their favorite things to grow:

Alan likes purple hull peas because he loves to eat them. 

I love to see all of our crops grow; however, the okra is amazing to watch. In some circles it is called lady fingers because of the way the pods look. I like to call them praying hands because they clasp around the stem and look as if they are reaching to the heavens. The other amazing thing about them is that they tower over all other crops that we grow -- their statuesque presence is hard to match. 

Well before okra season, I went to visit them in early April on a day they were planting seeds in a few long rows. The night before, their lettuces and early crops were threatened by an overnight frost. Alan had been up very, very early to cover the crops— it was a hard decision to either cover them or take the risk and not cover— you can either lose precious crops and labor or work hard to take the extra precaution for a short time. The precaution Alan took that day reveals the sense of care for their crops that is connected, most deeply, to their work caring for community. 

Listening to the Young Family talk about their farming operation reveals layers on layers of stories about their 30+ years in the Ivanhoe neighborhood. Their commitment to their family and neighbors with the development of the farm has meant a visible shift in land use in the area. They have made fresh veggies, fruits, and beehives a recognizable and accessible part of their neighborhood culture. The sites their farm is on were formerly illegal dumping sites, so it has been a labor of love and concern to farm on those same sites, where they have shipped in soil and compost to create soil beds on top of the remediating earth. (Note: there haven’t been any contaminates in the tests they have done, but they test twice a year to check on the health of their soil.) The family’s commitment to the neighborhood extends well beyond their farming operation. Alan helped start the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Association and has been the Housing Director for the Neighborhood Council. Yolanda serves as state representative for Missouri District 22 and is focused on addressing the needs of children, families, and seniors. She has also served on the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council.

At a farm-to-table dinner they hosted to end the season in October 2022, the Youngs’ daughter, Alana Henry, shared that the median income of their residents is about $29,000, and that they could make more if they went to sell at the Overland Park’s farmer’s market. Instead of leaving the neighborhood to sell, they have made a conscious decision to serve folks where they are because that’s what’s most important to them. Growing healthy, seasonal, no-pesticide produce, using sustainable methods is a visible community model for what’s possible and within reach. In their online media packet they emphasize that they are one of the few Black farms in Kansas City, and that they farm in honor of their elders and enslaved ancestors who farmed. On their Instagram they shared a post with the fact that Black farmers in Missouri currently are around 207 in number, contrasted with a count of 2,826 from 1920 census data. Yolanda grew up gardening and having a relationship with picking food right outside her door in Nash, Texas and is enthusiastic about people gathering around and with food. Those ties to food and reasons for farming need to be more supported through local, state, and national funding for Black farming and foodways initiatives that address harm(s) done through racist policies and the resulting health implications for BIPOC communities.

The Young Family Farm is a hub of activity in the neighborhood. Some of the days I went to lend a hand there were quite a few other volunteers there busily weeding and harvesting. On Saturdays when the season gets going with produce to sell, they host their farmers market stand with multiple vendors lining the route to the food, vendors selling everything from books, jewelry, wellness products, and honey. They also host yoga at the farm before market (see their IG posts) and are open for vendor applications of all kinds. They ended the 2022 season with a sit down dinner in the farm that included farm tours, drinks, incredible food, conversation, and dancing. It was something I’ll look forward to every year they’d like to put it on. 

In the end, their okra didn’t quite reach maturity for 2022, so the okra represented in the piece came from Sankara farm (above). One of the days I went to volunteer at the farm I picked lots and lots of beautiful cherry tomatoes that were various shades of red to green, most of them speckled and striped. A few of those cherry tomatoes also ended up getting cast for the piece, representing the fact that cherry tomatoes in particular were a consistent favorite among the growers.

To conclude, I want to acknowledge and remember AJ Young in this story about the Young Family. AJ was beloved as a musician, a father, a brother, son, uncle, and was frequently at the farm to lend a hand. His life was taken in a homicide in December 2022.

If you’re interested in volunteering, scheduling a group visit, or even being a vendor, check out their social media, website, or their Linktree.