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International Elderberry Symposium

We had a wonderful time this week at the International Elderberry Symposium in Columbia, Mo.! Thanks to the amazing friends we made there, we will have some big announcements coming soon, so stay tuned! One of those big connections we made was with Elderglen, an Australian company producing elderberry products. We also got to hang […]

Lionberry Will Be at KC Pride

Pride Month is here and we are excited to announce that Lionberry will be at KC Pride, June 6-8. You can find us in the food truck section and try the first farmed sports drink, Lionberry Restorative Refresher! View this post on Instagram A post shared by KC PRIDE (@kcpride1) It’s also been fun to […]

Lionberry at the Kansas State Fair

We are thrilled to announce that Lionberry will have a booth at the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson! This huge, 10-day event is held at the Kansas State Fairgrounds beginning Sept. 5. This will cap an exciting and busy summer of farmers markets, fairs, and festivals. You can find our full schedule here. In addition […]

I Found a Pride of Lionesses!

Lionberry found a huge pride of LIONESSES to be drawn to! First off, I am here for the @thewomensfair! Those Lionesses are the epitome of women’s entrepreneurial spirit! AND Tonight before the show, I am at the Wichita Packaging and Labeling Workshop in Ala Carte Kitchen Incubator by Create Campaign learning from Jenny Doty of […]

Lionberry at the Kansas State Capitol

Lionberry recently celebrated Ag Day at the Kansas State Capitol. We talked about planting Elderberry and our quest to get Kansas on the map as a top producer of Elderberry! We took samples of our Elderberry SIPS and Lionberry Restorative Refreshers! And, of course, we talked about our new home at the Olathe K-State Food […]

Lionberry Booth Preview

In December, we participated in Jingle! at Legends Field in Kansas City, Kan. Here is a preview of our booth. Stay tuned for more event announcements in the new year!

What are we, exactly?

Lionberry 's Weekly Delusion and Re-illusion Update.

BS Weekly #13

That’s the question I keep circling after Mount Vernon. Are we a specialty crop, or are we bait for big ag? Because those are two very different futures, and American elderberry is standing right at the fork.

This June the national elderberry community gathered in Mount Vernon, Missouri. The Heartland American Elderberry Collaborative brought our poster. LIONBERRY REGENERATIVE™ stood alongside Elder Farms and River Hills Harvest. Dr. Andrew Thomas hosted, Buehler Organics and Elder Farms put on a dinner, and researchers, growers, and processors all ended up at the same tables. Good food, good people, real momentum.

But here’s the edge I can’t put down. The moment a crop gets valuable, the commodity machine notices. It comes in offering scale and efficiency, and it leaves behind growers who no longer own anything, working someone else’s market for someone else’s margin. We’ve watched it happen to crop after crop. The question isn’t whether American elderberry is worth that much attention. It’s whether we’ll be the ones holding it when it is.

So why does this crop matter enough to fight over? The science is finally catching up to what growers always sensed. American elderberry is anti-inflammatory in a way that speaks straight to how most of us actually live now, carrying oxidative stress from overprocessed food. And it’s stepping into the GLP-1 and metabolic-recovery moment, where early results on blood sugar and fat oxidation are turning heads. Our native berry isn’t the understudy to European Sambucus nigra either. The American acylated anthocyanin is more protected, more likely to survive processing and reach where it’s meant to work. We are not the lesser version. We are the better one, and we’re only now saying it out loud.

That’s exactly why the fork matters. A crop this promising will get built into a market by somebody. The only question is whose hands stay on it.

Here’s where I land, and where Mount Vernon left me hopeful. We are small, and small is not the weakness everyone assumes. Small means we can actually know each other. It means a grower, a researcher, and a brand can sit at one dinner table and leave understanding each other’s language. That’s how an AgriCluster works. We stick together, we grow the grower base on our own terms, and we build the shared story before anyone builds it for us. We’re standing on fertile ground here, in the dark, underground, where the real trading happens before anything shows on the surface.

More growers, yes. But growers who own it. That’s the whole game.