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Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap… American Heartland Elderberry Collaborative Hits the Road

Farmer Mickey Gallagher, the “Johnny Elderberry Seed” of KC Farmyard, joined by Bevin Brooks of LIONBERRY, are the co-chairs of the American Heartland Elderberry Collaborative… AHECo.

They have been touring member farms of their AgriCluster and helping to cultivate the American elderberry across Kansas and Missouri.

This week the co-chairs visited Jeremy Fyler of Fyler Farms and helped him start his elderberry orchard. Jeremy operates a flour mill and has an impressive start to a fruit orchard. The co-chairs brought him 500 cuttings that Jeremy purchased from Michael Hursey of Casa Somerset, a fellow AgriCluster member.
The newly formed elderberry AgriCluster… American Heartland Elderberry Collaborative… also spent a long day of farm visiting with fellow AgriCluster member Cassandra Nichole at Colonial Gardens, Good Oak LLC, and Powell Gardens. The group discussed elderberry and its role in regenerative farming and how it can help restore marginal soil.
Mickey Gallagher is the in-house farmer at Casa Somerset Elderberry Orchard, and he also runs KC Farmyard, where he grows impressive ginger and specialty crops.
Later that evening, AgriCluster members crossed back into Kansas from Missouri to attend a lecture on fruit farm agritourism at Gieringer’s Family Orchard & Berry Farm. There, AgriCluster core member Lori Trojan of Wild Ivy Herb Farm, AgriCluster members Siri and Robert Leonard, and new member Tom Buller of Kansas Rural Center learned and discussed soil health and specialty crops.

DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP

Why Elderberry?

  • Why Elderberry?
  • Performs well on marginal soils
  • Prevents soil erosion
  • Integrates with soil-health and regenerative practices
  • Supports perennial hedgerows and diversified systems
  • Brings in the pollinators
  • Strengthens the ecosystem
  • Sequesters carbon
  • Increases mycorrhizal activity
  • Stabilizes poor soil
  • Is a perennial that can be cut down each year and composted
  • Aligns with growing consumer demand for regionally produced products
  • Disrupts the global supply chain
  • Food is medicine
  • Follow co-chairs Mickey and Bevin in a day in the life of stewarding elderberry with DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP.

PART 1

We start the day in Kansas at Casa Somerset, where we pick up elderberry cuttings from Michael Hursey to deliver to a farm in Missouri.

At Colonial Gardens, Cassandra and Bevin compare good soil… rich with mycorrhizal life… to soil that was subjected to unknown pesticide chemicals five or six years ago. We discuss the possibilities of elderberry in the marginal soil in Missouri.
Elderberry may be the answer. DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP.
Mickey and Cassandra in the Elderberry at Colonial Gardens newly acquired by Powell Gardens.
Cassandra, lifelong feral female farmer, is a member of the American Heartland Elderberry Collaborative and focuses on our future infrastructure. She also runs Good Oak LLC, where they have more elderberry and her famous critters.
Later that day, AHECo co-chairs Mickey and Bevin made a farm visit with Jeremy of Fyler Farms, who is adding American elderberry (Bob Gordon variety) to his orchard. These 500 cuttings are from Casa Somerset’s elderberry orchard. More DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP as we transport elderberry cuttings across state lines.
Jeremy has a lot of new projects on his farm and lots of room for elderberry to help with his Missouri soil health.

PART 2

Back in Kansas, Mickey shows us his high tunnel at KC Farmyard and the Casa Somerset elderberry, for which Mickey is the caretaker.

In the evening we joined more members of the AgriCluster American Heartland Elderberry Collaborative to learn about fruit and specialty crops on a tour of Gieringer’s Family Orchard & Berry Farm.
Siri Leonard, a member of the American Heartland Elderberry Collaborative, works on the Growers Subcommittee shaping good elderberry growing processes, standards, and stewardship.
Here, Tom Buller is enjoying the special tour around the farm. We are thankful to have Tom jump in to help lead up our structural framework. We are lucky to have his experience in building the business bones and legal frame-raising of a new AgriCluster. Tom has elderberry on his land and is thinking about more.
Above is Robert Leonard, who has been with the AgriCluster since the early days. He and his wife Siri have their elderberry in the ground and are adding more. He is involved with plans to strengthen the market for elderberry.
Next to Robert is a farmer we are wooing… Jacob of JET Farms. GOT ELDERBERRY YET?
As it turned dark, we dropped Lori Trojan, our elderberry storyteller and core member, off at her Wild Ivy Herb Farm. On the next farm visit we can take a look at Lori’s elderberry and Mark Allison’s (seen below), who has elderberry at his Fossil Creek Winery. Mark also has the agritourism bus, The Miami Trolley.

Stay tuned as the co-chairs visit more members of the elderberry AgriCluster American Heartland Elderberry Collaborative.

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Lionberry 's Weekly Delusion and Re-illusion Update.

Heartland Elderberry Collaborative (Heartland ECo)


“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


PROBLEM CONTEXT

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.


WHAT HEARTLAND ECo IS

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


WHAT HEARTLAND ECo IS NOT

• Not a single-farm expansion program
• Not a commodity-scale production model
• Not a vertically integrated corporate system


WHY ELDERBERRY

• 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.


CURRENT PILOT STATUS

• Core grower group established
• Regular coordination underway
• Shared infrastructure priorities identified
• Grower recruitment initiated
• Early coordination with grocery buyers in progress


SHARED INFRASTRUCTURE HUB CONCEPT

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.


PILOT OBJECTIVES

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


FORTHCOMING PILOT STUDY

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

DOWNLOAD POSTER HERE