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Locavores on the prairie
Brad Guhr organizes a symposium bringing together practitioners and supporters of “local food.”
by Melanie Zuercher
Brad Guhr grew up in Moundridge and now lives in Newton with his wife, Sara Friesen Guhr, and their sons, Henry and Benjamin. Brad and Sara are both 1992 Bethel graduates. Brad’s degree is in global studies with a concentration in environmental studies. After finishing at Bethel, Brad went into Mennonite Voluntary Service in St. Louis – where he worked for three different organizations: Missouri Coalition for the Environment, Missouri Energy Resources Project and Missouri Botanical Gardens – and then, two years later, to graduate studies in restoration ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As a Bethel student, Brad had the chance to work with Lorna (Habegger) Harder ’87, then the natural history curator at Kauffman Museum, and as the prairie restoration intern with Dwight Platt ’52, professor emeritus of biology. “They were foundational influences,” he says, “and I built on those experiences in graduate school.”
After their time in Madison, the Guhrs moved to the Kansas City area where Brad worked as an environmental consultant and then, in 2001, back to Newton, where Sara had grown up as the daughter of Duane ’62 (professor emeritus of Bible and religion) and Liz (Voth) Friesen ’62. Sara is a school social worker and Brad is prairie restoration/education coordinator for Dyck Arboretum of the Plains in Hesston, connected to Hesston College. He develops new educational programming for all ages; oversees the Prairie Window Project, which includes seed collection, cleaning, planting and propagation; oversees the Earth Partnership for Schools program; coordinates volunteers and interns; and writes grants.
Context: How did you make your way back here to south central Kansas?
BG: We were living in Kansas City, I was working in consulting at Burns & McDonnell, we had just had Henry – we were looking to simplify life. Both of us were working full-time jobs, to keep Henry in the best daycare we could afford – life just seemed out of balance.
I felt a need to pursue a vocation more similar to what I had studied in graduate school and knew that Dyck Arboretum could offer that. About that time, Duane told Sara about an opening for a resident director in Haury Hall, and she decided to apply. She was offered the job, so I went to Burns & McDonnell and asked if I could telecommute. They were willing to try it. I worked out of the old nurse’s station in Haury as my office for two years [2001-03]. It was a very meaningful transition. We regained some balance in our lives, and Henry had 400-plus big brothers and sisters.
I did the telecommuting at Burns & McDonnell for five years and during that time I began helping out with grant-writing and volunteering at Dyck Arboretum. I gradually worked myself into a position. For a while, it was half-time arboretum, half-time Burns & McDonnell. Eventually I was 80 percent at the arboretum. We had Ben, and it seemed like the right time to leave Burns & McDonnell so I could be home with him a day each week.
Context: How and why did you come up with “Locavores on the Prairie,” the symposium at the arboretum last March?
BG: I actually put together a presentation on this, since Karen (Sheriff) LeVan ’91 asked me to come and talk to her Hesston College class about it.
The first inspiration was food. Over time, I have come to value it so much more – not just taste, but where and how food is prepared, where it comes from, the energy that’s used to transport it and process it. Food is not just calories – there is such a rich complexity of what we can eat. With my background in environmental studies, this has always been important but I haven’t really latched onto until recently the importance of using and promoting local food, and why we should. It’s not like college any more, where I was happy to get through a package of ramen noodles so I could continue to study.
The second thing was the prairie and the connection we have to it. The prairie is foundational to everything I try to do at Dyck Arboretum. Not much more than 100 years ago, there was nothing but prairie as far as you could see. Looking at the natural history – food is part of what we get from the land. We have some of the best soil in the world here in the “breadbasket of the world.” The prairie plants and grasses put down ten- to twelve-foot roots, producing organic matter that’s constantly sloughing off. Take 10,000 years of that and it’s packed with organic matter and very friable [crumbly, easy to cultivate] – which equals, in spite of occasional rainfall limitations, a perfect place to grow food.
The third inspiration was Barbara Kingsolver and her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. She was an early impetus for my thinking. She tells the story in such a poetic way, of living off the land, getting food as locally as possible and why this is important. She moves it from latent possibility to concrete reality.
The fourth was the community. When I thought of the resources available, it wasn’t hard to come up with this kind of symposium. There are many good people doing many good things – let’s clue into that, organize it, create a database, a network.
And finally, it made sense. The locavore movement makes sense: environmentally – it’s less energy-intensive; health-wise, for both people and the environment; and for the local economy – making it more vibrant by keeping dollars in the community, enhancing culture and diffusing and diversifying the food stream beyond the local grocery store.
Context: Say some more about this community of people you gathered for the symposium.
BG: I started with people I knew and asked them for more contacts. People like Becky Nickel, who runs Prairie Harvest [a natural foods store and deli in downtown Newton that specializes in selling Kansas-made products], and Miner Seymour ’91 [who just recently sold his organic apple orchard near Moundridge], and John Janzen ’61 [who is part of a family farm operation near Elbing that produces organic, grass-fed beef and baked goods made from local wheat].
All of these people have their own unique story about growing and/or distributing their products, and good reasons for doing so. Plus, people are looking for publicity and a way to increase their business. So it wasn’t hard to pull something like this together. In fact, I had so many presenters, I had to really limit their time, but I think that worked out all right.
The symposium met and exceeded my expectations. There was good attendance [more than 90], which made for a worthwhile distribution of information. I was thrilled with the quality and value of the presentations. And I was delighted with the food [breakfast with food donated by presenters, lunch catered by Clair (Brubacher) Williams ’96 using mostly local ingredients] as a way to make concrete some of what we talked about.
It was a great way to connect consumers with producers and to solidify the network of local consumption and production and better connect people in that web.
Context: Do you plan to do another symposium? What’s next?
BG: I’m still thinking about it. The editorial pages of the Journal of Ecological Restoration long ago had some commentary on the connection between restoring the prairie and growing food. There’s been interest for a long time in the importance of restoring native prairie and landscaping with local plants, but then there’s the example of what Joanna Friesen is doing at Sand Creek Community Gardens with her native flowerbeds. They attract pollinators; they attract insect predators that also help control pests in the rest of the garden. I think it would be interesting to explore the connections.
Locavores on the Prairie, a symposium March 19 at Dyck Arboretum, featured 21 presenters, including the following Bethel alumni (in addition to planner and organizer Brad Guhr ’92):
Dwight Platt ’52, North Newton – garden soil and ecosystem health
Duane Friesen ’62, North Newton – community gardening
Marion Deckert ’56, North Newton – fruit growing
John Hobbs ’80, Newton – venison
Chuck Regier ’81, Newton – rabbit
Joe Smucker ’84, Goering & Smucker Farm, Goessel – lamb
John Janzen ’61, Janzen Family Farms, Elbing – beef
The symposium breakfast included these local ingredients: hard-boiled eggs (supplied by Annette (Siebert) Lamp ’84 and husband Kenneth of Halstead), Lorna Harder’s ’87 bread, Brad Guhr’s and Natalie Young’s cinnamon rolls (made with whole wheat flour from Little Red Hen Bakery of rural Newton, connected with Janzen Family Farms), honey from Oakschmied Honey of Wichita, and apple cider and cheeses from JaKo Inc., an organic family farm near Hutchinson. The lunch menu, prepared by Clair Williams ’96, included curried grass-fed beef meatballs (Janzen Family Farms), bunny rabbit & barley risotto (Chuck Regier), truffled egg salad sandwiches (Morning Harvest Farm of Walton, eggs; Little Red Hen Bakery, rolls) and a pasta and sausage dish that used chicken bratwurst from Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch, Tampa, a producer of heritage poultry.