(upbeat music) - Welcome to Inspire.

We are so happy to have you here.

On this show we're down on the farm talking agriculture with a woman who farms organically.

Next on Inspire.

(electronic tones) Inspire is sponsored by Kansas Furniture Mart, using furniture to inspire conversation.

And by the Blanche Bryden Foundation.

(upbeat music) Hello, and thank you for joining us for Inspire.

I'm Betty Lou Pardue with these beautiful cohosts.

We have Danielle Norwood, Leslie Fleuranges.

Angel's in my lap here.

- Aw!

(Betty Lou laughs) - And on today's show, we're talking with a woman who has a passion for organic farming.

- Nancy Vogelsberg-Busch farms the hard way without the use of pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, antibiotics, or hormones.

- It may be hard, but Nancy believes that the proof is definitely in the product.

Nancy's family farm near Home City Kansas has been farming organically for more than 140 years.

She's here to share her experiences as an organic farmer, striving to keep alive the agricultural practices of her ancestors.

Welcome to Inspire Nancy.

Thank you for being here.

(hosts clapping) - [Betty Lou] Welcome.

- Thank you for having me.

- So how did you get into farming and what were you doing before you got into farming?

And why did you decide to take up the family business?

- Well, I was born and raised on a little organic farm, but there was no real expectations for me to ever consider being a farmer.

And so even though I was raised that way, I went off to college and I was majoring in sociology thinking I'm gonna be a social worker.

And those kind of insights led me first of all, to the Appalachian Mountains.

And I kind of saw poverty firsthand there.

And then I ended up in the inner city projects in Providence, Road Island.

And I actually really began to see how where people, where they were living, they just weren't really connected to that place very well.

And so then I met Caesar Chavez while I was - Wow.

in Providence, Rhode Island, And here he had come all the way across the country to let people know on the east coast, what was happening with the migrant workers in regards to not being paid well enough and also being sprayed with chemicals.

And so that kind of brought it home like "Wow, that's how I was raised without chemicals."

Then I ended up actually on the Navajo Indian reservation and I lived in a Hogan without running water or any electricity.

In my family, particularly the grandmother of that family really instilled in me what happens when you start to lose your place and if you don't have any real roots.

So I headed back to the farm with my dad for a short while.

And then I rented my first farm in 1978.

And shortly after that I got married and I raised my kids there and I was a stay-at-home mom for like 17 years.

And from the onset of renting that farm, I just started farming organically because I literally didn't know any better.

Name Bossie's Best came in because when I got married, I actually inherited the family milk cow and her name was Bossie.

And she came from a Guernsey dairy line, but she actually looks like a big black Angus cow because my dad had freshened the cow with Angus bull.

So anyway, her name was Bossie.

So that's how I started to direct market my beef under the name Bossie's Best.

- Nancy I wanna go back even further.

Let's go to Abraham Lincoln.

I mean that's going back there because this speaks volumes of you being the first woman to own this land since the Civil War.

- Others have owned this land that I live on now, but I am the first person that has owned it and actually lived here.

Owning something I feel that you put down roots.

One thing I noticed here, there was no orchard.

There was no lilac bushes.

You don't do that if you're just on rental property.

And so by owning the land, it instilled in me this sense that I'm gonna stay and I'm gonna take care of this place.

And that's what I've tried to do.

And I love it because the creek runs through it.

I remember talking with Wes Jackson and brought Wendell Berry up to my farm.

And it was really nice to hear my dad visit with those two guys.

And as they were talking, Wendell was kind of looking out where my daughter's horse was.

And I don't know if you know Wendell well, but you know, he would never say anything like, "Oh, what you got that horse out there grubbing down the grass?"

You know he said, "Well sheep would do rather nicely here" 'cause that's the way he is.

- Right, suggestions.

- This is what I'm, you know, and I'm listening to him, but I'm thinking, but what about raising a daughter?

What about raising my kids?

It's just not about yeah cows, but it's so much more in making sure that they're rooted down, that they have a place to play in the creek that they have just this sense of belonging.

And I think, I think with that, and I think that's with the Navajo family that I lived with, a sense of pride.

- Nancy you mentioned a person who is special to people like me from Salina, Saline County, talking about Wes Jackson with the Land Institute.

Talk about the impact that he had on you.

- Well he actually, just the notion of farming without chemicals and the perennial agriculture that he was talking about and keeping the soil in place and protecting the soil.

That really made me realize what my dad was doing was pretty significant, and farming organically like Wes' co-partner his wife Dana actually, she was the one that really encouraged me to go home, to farm with my dad as we waited for this perennial agriculture to take off.

Now they've developed Kernza and this is just kind of a side note, but Patagonia actually has developed a beer called Long Root and always tell people what my hot dogs need is just a cold beer.

(hosts laugh) You know?

So all of it kind of comes together.

And I do wanna mention about just like Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry, having an opportunity to be around them, for me that organic certification is probably the closest to a land ethic that I feel that we have.

I brought another book off my shelf, "A Sand County Almanac" Aldo Leopold.

These were actually class books that we had when I went to the Land Institute.

These were our textbooks.

"Small is Beautiful" was another one.

Look how old that puppy is.

(upbeat music) - Wow.

(Danielle laughs) - Yeah.

- We're gonna take just a real quick break.

Do stay right there though, because we're gonna be speaking more with Nancy Vogelsberg-Busch about farming organically right here on Inspire.

Stay there.

(upbeat music) - Today we're gonna be talking about what goes into your compost pile.

Composting is a great way to reuse your kitchen scraps or your garden scraps so that those things aren't going into the landfill and contributing to pollution.

So we're talking about things to collect, we're gonna divide that up primarily into two categories, the green category and the brown category.

So when we're talking about green, that's gonna make up about one third of our compost bin.

The green items that go into composts can be coffee grounds, like are pictured here, plant material, and kitchen scraps.

You wanna leave out any food or anything that has too much butter or oil like a pasta sauce.

The ends of your tomatoes or garlic or onions are all wonderful additions as well as anything that started to spoil.

Eggs are a great addition to the compost pile.

You may wanna crush the shells a little bit just to help them break down a bit faster.

And if you're adding your coffee, you can also add coffee filters.

They're gonna break down just like everything else.

So that makes up your green matter, which is about one third of your compost pile.

The other two thirds of your compost pile are gonna be your brown matter.

So here I have some crushed up leaves and also some shredded cardboard.

It's important to shred the cardboard.

If you put a full box in your compost bin and you go to turn it, it's gonna be a full box.

So just make sure to shred it or break it up so that those particle sizes are small enough that our soil microbes can actually go in and then break them up.

Shredded paper would also be considered part of our two thirds for our brown, but again, you're gonna wanna make sure to shred the paper, put it into small pieces and you wanna avoid anything that's too waxy.

So those inserts that you get in the mail that are sort of waxy or smooth, those should not go into the compost bins, but should be recycled.

Additionally, you wanna put a little bit of soil into your compost bin.

So if you layer your greens and your browns, which you can do in a two thirds to one third ratio, sprinkle some soil on top and the soil is gonna introduce all of the soil microbes and those soil microbes are what are gonna do the work to break down this waste material into usable compost.

And if you wanna kickstart the soil microbes a little bit, add some fertilizer to your compost.

So this is just a simple garden fertilizer that I've diluted in water and adding something like this into your compost bin can help to feed those microbes so that they can get the energy to break down the waste that you've put into your compost bin.

At the Shawnee County extension office, you can actually pick up a voucher for a free compost bin, just like this.

And this is thanks to a partnership with the Shawnee County Refuse Department.

Bins like this are also widely available at a hardware store.

They're just made of a plastic material and can be really easy to assemble and small for those of you that may not have a lot of space.

Just as important as what goes into your compost bin is what does not.

So I mentioned that we don't want oils and we don't want meats, but we also don't want pet waste.

Our cats and dogs can carry some of the same diseases that we as people can contract.

So it's really important not to add any pet waste into your compost bin.

Furthermore, if you're adding any leaves or grass clippings to your compost bin, make sure that they're from an area that your pets haven't been visiting, such as the front or side yard, just to ensure that your compost bin is gonna be completely safe.

You can purchase a compost bin thermometer at your local hardware store to make sure that your compost bin gets up to about 140 degrees.

You're gonna wanna hold that temperature for a few days.

That's gonna be the Thermophilic stage where the compost and the microbes are really breaking down.

Periodically, turn your compost bin and keep it about as damp as a wet sponge.

Within a few weeks, you're gonna have beautiful brown compost.

(upbeat music) - We're back talking with Nancy Vogelsberg-Busch, a farmer who produces organic beef.

So Nancy, you gotta tell me, Bessie, Bossy, the beef organic bossie.

Tell me about, I mean it's amazing to me that you are running a farm as a woman and it shouldn't be a big deal, but it is.

It's a big deal to have women farming beef in this state.

Tell us a little bit about that.

How you like it and how it works if you would.

- Well the reason why my beef product is, the label is Bossie's Best, because I actually inherited the family milk cow.

Her name was Bossie.

And so when I was trying to figure out, how am I gonna take care of my kids, the cows, pay the mortgage.

I wanted to market this beef.

I wasn't gonna make enough by just selling the cattle at the sell barn.

And I had already certified the land.

The cattle were certified, but I wanted to take a step further and direct market that beef.

And so most of my customers, they buy wholes, halves and quarters from me, but I had to then certify the locker plant.

So USDA got involved in defining organic.

That was kind of a grassroots of movement among farmers, that they wanted to be able to protect what organic really meant to them.

So the government got involved and everything then had to be certified under USDA's guidelines.

And so I have to be certified every year.

This is the certificate I have for the crops.

And also then for the cattle, separate certification, I get certified under OCIA, which is the Organic Crop Improvement Association.

An inspector comes out every year.

And so everything was going along fine until then in order to market beef, in order to sell my cattle as beef, I had to have the locker plant certified.

And so I worked with a guy that had just bought the locker plant.

I was gonna take my cattle down there.

And he said, "Yes," so I could do that.

So I brought down the inspector and we walked through the whole process.

And so now I have a separate inspection certificate.

It's called handling.

And I have to have that in order to market my cattle under the Bossie's Best label.

And I think still to this day, because that was back in 1999.

So, we're talking 23 years ago that I did that.

To this day in the state of Kansas, I think I have the only locker that is certified organic for the beef.

You cannot just go out and say, "Oh, my cattle are organic" because USDA's rulings under that prohibits it.

So I've gone through that process.

I label my beef.

This is my, can you see that?

- Yeah.

- Yes, it's fine.

- I label for my ground beef and I actually, this artwork here is, does everybody know who Thomas Hart Benton is?

- Yes.

- The artist?

This is his grandson, Anthony Gude, did this artwork of this cow.

I just kind of wanted that touch of the mother with her calf.

That's Bossie's Best.

And then the other product that I have is I make homemade hot dogs.

- Ooh.

- And I just take my ground beef and put in spices.

And then I make those down at the locker plant and I sell those locally at the farmer's market here where I live by the farm.

And I just want you to know that I am not a big beef eater myself.

I don't eat a lot of red meat.

I'm probably more of a vegetarian than what people realize.

(Hosts laugh) - I know.

- Yeah wow.

- But when I do, I really wanna make sure that yeah, I know how the cattle are being raised.

And what's really neat about the certification process is all of those animals have an ear tag.

I brought a little ear tag along so you can see it.

That's my brand name on there.

And it flows through not only that calf, but the calf's mother, the calf's grandma.

And for me, that goes back about 40 years of the bloodline because I keep back all my own heifers.

And so that process has kind of flowed through for a long time.

But I believe that not eating a lot of meat.

And I think that when you don't eat a lot of anything, - Right.

- then you can afford to maybe pay a little bit more and get directly to the farmers.

Somebody made a comment to me one time the people have to come up to the locker plant, but they only do that once a year.

And they get their either whole, halves, or quarters.

And then they take it home and put in their freezer.

I'm a big advocate of freezers and also crockpots.

I think they call them Instapots now.

(hosts laugh) Because you know, I was a single ma.

I raised three kids.

I kind of know what it's like to live within a budget.

And so, but what's nice about red meat is it's a great source of protein and it's a great source of iron, particularly for women.

And it fills you up.

I don't eat a lot of it.

And so anyway, that's.

- So where can we find your products?

- Actually, besides coming up to the locker plant, if you want the whole, halves, and quarters is I market at the farmer's market.

I'm a huge fan of farmers markets for people to go to, to buy local.

And then also, I have my ground beef at the Merc in Lawrence.

What I don't like about selling to retail stores is that then you have to sell like wholesale and then it just takes out a little bit more money.

So by direct marketing, it just gives me more money to take care of my farm and my cows.

And so I'm very conscientious about making sure I have that connection with the consumers.

- Nancy thank you so much for being here and for sharing your story and we're gonna be right back.

So please stay with us.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Janet Thompson-Jackson, and I'm so excited to be a part of Inspire today.

Are you one of those people who feels like I just don't have time to work out?

I want to.

I would if I could, but I just don't have the time.

Well, today I am going to show you some yoga moves and just some general movement that you can do while you're sitting in your chair.

You can do this in a small space.

If you don't have access to a yoga studio, or if you just don't feel comfortable going to a studio.

Let's sit down and get started.

(gentle music) What we're going to do next is a simple forward fold.

If you have enough space between your chair and your desk, if you're at a desk, you simply want to have your legs a little bit farther apart, and we're gonna bend at the waist.

So this is really important.

We don't wanna slump over as we're doing folds.

You wanna keep your chest high bending at your waist and a great ideas is to always think about a string that's going from your belly button to your back.

Pretend that you you're pulling that string back, engaging that core, bending at the waist, and then coming down and just allowing your hands to just fall there.

And you can just simply be for just a few moments and then pulling that string back with the core lifting up, and that is giving you a nice core movement.

You can even sit on the tip of your chair and simply rock back and forth like this, using your core muscles.

It's like doing a crunch and you've never left your chair.

(Janet laughs) That's great.

Another thing that we can do is to get a little bit of leg stretch with one foot on the floor, the other heel on the floor.

Again, we're going to bend at the waist.

I'm feeling that in my hamstring, nice stretch.

I can even pump my foot a little bit there.

I'm feeling a very nice stretch.

Again, you can do this pretty much anywhere.

You don't have to have any equipment for any of this.

You don't even need a yoga mat.

And I'm going to now switch to my other leg and you always wanna make sure you're doing both sides so that you're nice and even.

You're giving the love to both sides of your body.

So that was for my hamstring at the back of my leg.

To get a little bit of a quad stretch, I can simply lift my leg and holding my knee to my chest.

And while I'm here, I'm gonna do some ankle twists just to stretch out my ankles a little bit, give them some love.

And I'm gonna do the same thing here.

All right.

I'm Janet Thompson-Jackson, and I hope I've inspired you to replenish and restore.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) - And we're back.

And ladies, we don't often think about the effort that goes into food, but I was kind of concerned about there when she was saying about the beef, because you know 'em.

and she knows Bossie.

And she knows - We try not to think about that.

- I know.

I know.

- I would like to disassociate as much from knowing what my food was until I get it on my plate as a rib eye.

- Right.

- You know?

And when she was talking about the difference between organic, as opposed to what we get in the grocery store, to me it's a lot leaner and I have to season it up more because there's fat and marbling, fat is flavor.

So I have to season it up a little more, but I mean it's beautiful.

The texture, the taste, I mean it's the real deal.

So it's worth the extra few dollars that you are giving.

- Absolutely.

- And again, it's the producers.

Now I can think about look, this came from Bossie's Best or whoever the other organic producers are of our food around the state.

- Exactly.

- So I think that that's wonderful to know that she's in the game, along with all these other guys.

- And the work that she does, but I love the fact that she was working with other organic farmers so that they can all come up with it.

I mean that's a big deal.

- Yeah.

I mean you know I'm fascinated by really what this does for the soil, right?

I mean here is another example of what's important for global warming and for our environment and how we have to keep our land in the best possible, - Condition.

- Condition.

Thank you.

That's what I was about, the best possible condition for generations to come so that we can continue to feed our citizens.

So what she's doing and what her father has done all of these years, I mean, it's amazing.

And I only wish she could take over more of the state and more farmers were doing this and not adding these things to our food and to our crops.

I mean that's huge.

- And ultimately to our water.

- Right.

- And ultimately to our water.

'Cause it all goes somewhere.

- Exactly exactly.

- And I liked her I did it.

She's like one thing leads to the other, like the grass fed led to the beef, led to the hot dogs, led to yes.

- Yes, yes.

And I thought that going back as far as Abraham Lincoln.

- Abraham Lincoln.

I know.

I love that.

- Boy talk about your roots.

Talk about ancestry.com.

(Betty Lou laughs) She knows her whole lineage about where she lives and really her connection to her ancestors and to what she wants to do.

How many of us can actually say that we are doing something that has something to do with people that came before us?

- Right.

And they're living on land that Abraham Lincoln gave a Civil War widow.

And that was the last woman before Nancy who farmed that land.

- That's amazing.

- Yeah.

- It's a real story.

- It's a story.

- Kansas history.

- I know.

I like it.

And Home, Kansas is just about an hour and a half away from Topeka.

- And it's a woman.

- I know.

- It's is a woman.

- We love it.

- We're inspired.

We hope you are too.

That is all the time we have for today.

We do hope you found it informative and inspirational.

And as a reminder, you can watch the program again @watch.ktwu.org.

- And if you are so inspired to learn more about our guests and get access to additional content, be sure to visit our website at www.ktwu.org/inspire.

- Inspiring women, inspiring farmers, inspiring you on KTWU.

We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - Inspire is sponsored by Kansas Furniture Mart, using furniture to inspire conversation and by the Blanche Bryden Foundation.