Lionberry
REGENERATIVE
Lionberry
REGENERATIVE
$11.00
We preserve the natural power of elderberries through gentle, light processing. Packed with delicate purple anthocyanins (natural anti-inflammatories), elderberries require protection from heat and are best maintained at a lower pH. To support this, we blend in a touch of Concord grape and tart cherry—enhancing stability, boosting flavor, and adding even more plant-based nutrients. The result is a delicious taste that both kids and adults love.
Size: 2 oz
Suggested Use: Tea spoon to Tablespoon daily
Elderberry
May boost immunity, provide antiviral support, reduce inflammation, aid digestion and gut health, and serve as a rich source of anthocyanins.
Local Concord Grapes
May support healthy blood flow, enhance cognitive performance, and boost antioxidant activity. Contains resveratrol, which may help lower LDL cholesterol.
Tart Cherry
Contains magnesium, may support restful sleep, reduce joint inflammation, and help relax muscles.
Local Honey
Adds natural sweetness and support immunity and sooth the throat.
This product is currently not available online and sold exclusively at:
Franklin General Store.
Out of stock
“Instead of asking each farm to grow bigger, we’re building shared capacity so farms can stay viable at their current scale while accessing value-added markets.”
An AgriCluster Pilot for Shared Infrastructure and Value-Added Market Access
Eastern Kansas / Western Missouri
Small and mid-sized farms face persistent structural barriers to entering value-added markets, including:
• Limited access to processing infrastructure
• Limited cold storage capacity
• Transportation constraints
• Fragmented, uncoordinated distribution
• High costs from duplicating equipment and logistics across individual farms
These constraints restrict grower profitability, inhibit vertical integration, and reduce the viability of diversified regional food systems.
The Heartland Elderberry Collaborative (Heartland ECo) is an active, facilitated, place-based AgriCluster pilot organizing elderberry growers and processors in eastern Kansas and western Missouri.
• Facilitated through ACRE (AgriCluster Resilience and Expansion)
• Emphasizes collective capacity-building and shared infrastructure
• Designed to enable farm-level vertical integration (grow, process, and take products to market)
• Structured to share infrastructure, governance, and market access
• Not a single-farm expansion program
• Not a commodity-scale production model
• Not a vertically integrated corporate system
• Performs well on marginal soils
• Integrates with soil-health and regenerative practices
• Supports perennial hedgerows and diversified systems
• Enables multiple value-added pathways (destemming, juicing, beverage and supplement production)
• Aligns with growing consumer demand for regionally produced products
The pilot is explicitly designed to test repeatability across additional non–Big Ag crops, including tomatoes, fruit crops, and legumes.
• Core grower group established
• Regular coordination underway
• Shared infrastructure priorities identified
• Grower recruitment initiated
• Early coordination with grocery buyers in progress
The Heartland ECo model proposes a centralized hub facility located south of Kansas City to support participating farms and processors.
• Aggregation and intake
• Cold storage
• Destemming
• Juicing
• Bottling
• Short-haul regional distribution
The hub is intended to reduce duplicated equipment costs, logistical inefficiencies, and fragmented distribution efforts that commonly limit small-farm participation in value-added markets.
Establish a functioning elderberry AgriCluster
Create shared access to processing, storage, and distribution infrastructure
Build collective grant-writing and fundraising capacity
Coordinate educational outreach related to elderberry and soil-health practices
Evaluate feasibility of scaling the model across additional crops and regions
This poster outlines a proposal for a forthcoming pilot study to formally evaluate the effectiveness of the Heartland ECo model.
• Economic impact
• Grower profitability
• Infrastructure utilization
• Soil-health indicators
• Logistical efficiency
• Replicability across crops and regions
