Part three of a series
Part one: In a land of plenty, food deserts prevalent in western Kansas
Part two: As population shrinks, Morland finds a new way to provide groceries
By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Evelyn Wray scooped up a bunch of carrots, "Oh I didn't see these," she said and nestled them in a basket already stuffed full of fresh produce.
Wray, a Luray resident, is a regular at the Step Back in Time Food Market. She chats with the co-founder of the market, Alice Hill, and other locals as she lingers among the fresh-picked lettuce and fresh-baked bread.
For years, Luray, population 184, was without a grocery store. Before the Step Back in Time Food Market opened this spring, there were no restaurants. The only place you could buy food of any kind was at the convenience store.
In 35 years, Luray had six different grocery store owners. The building that housed the last grocery store is now being used as a hunting lodge. The community went seven years without anything until the market.
Luray is known as a food desert based on U.S. Department of Agriculture measures including income levels, poverty rates and area median income levels. It is also considered low access, an area where people live more than 10 miles from a grocery store in a rural area and more than 1 mile from a grocery store in an urban area.
“When I moved here, I was shocked that I was in such a food desert because I had come from big cities where I could just walk across the street and get everything,” Wray said. “It really hit me when the pandemic hit. I realized that I don’t have any food out here."
Hill saw a better way — grow local and sell local.
“I think it's the most vital thing that any small community can have. It’s food security, economic growth through its own food security. Can we live without it? We are, but we’re not living well without,” Hill said of the market.
The market is operating under a farmers market model. Hill grows a diverse selection of vegetables in topless high tunnels on her small farm south of town. She also makes baked goods from scratch using local eggs and Kansas grains.
3 Sisters Aquagarden, a local hydroponics operation near Natoma, provides a variety of fresh produce, including lettuce and microgreens. Yet another local farm provides eggs and hopes to eventually be able to offer meats and chicken.
Other household gardeners fill in with crops when their harvests are bountiful.
The market received a $15,000 start-up grant from the Kansas Department of Agriculture Securing Local Food Systems Program. The market is sharing a storefront with a local tax services provider, Krista Ulrich, a volunteer, co-founder and market vendor, to keep overhead low.
Hill said she hopes to expand the market to include a certified kitchen so the market can serve deli items, hot foods and can produce. Canning and freezing would allow the farmers market to extend its local food season.
“This has been a very important first year to grow awareness, to create a customer base, to see what people really want, what are people needing, and then we will have data to work with when we take it to the next level,” Hill said.
“It’s truly a community labor of love,” Hill said. “Yes, we hope people will be able to make enough income to make it worthwhile, but it’s not a corporate success story.”
Luray and its surrounding townships are bleeding food dollars as shoppers go elsewhere for groceries. $2 million is spent on food dollars annually in just four townships: Lucas, Luray, Waldo and Paradise, Hill said.
“Every food dollar we spend that stays in our county makes a huge impact,” she said, “and we are healthier for it and happier. We are talking about a resurgence of what this country was and should have stayed."
Wray, who settled in the small community to pursue her art career, said she eats healthier and saves money when she buys from the market. She doesn't have to drive 25 miles to Russell or Osborne to the nearest full-service grocery store.
“This is the first food shed I have ever seen, and I have been to a lot of states and a lot of cities, all over, New York to LA. This is the first person that I’ve heard say we’re going to set up a food shed in a food desert area, and it’s working so well for us.”
Wray said she also appreciates knowing where her food comes from. Neither Hill nor 3 Sisters Aquagarden are certified organic, but they use organic methods to grow their produce.
“This way I know the grower,” she said. “It’s not shipped 5,000 miles from Mexico. I’m pretty clear on how they’re growing it.”
The average food in a grocery store is shipped 1,500 miles, Hill noted.
Wray said she has space to grow some of her own produce, but can't do it as efficiently as the vendors who bring food to the market.
“$70 a month to water my tomatoes, and I'm getting four tomatoes,” she said.
Teresa Roach of 3 Sisters Aquagarden said selling at the Luray market is a win-win for their business. 3 Sisters attends markets in Hays on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The Monday market gives them another day to harvest and sell.
“We hope slowly everyone gets a little more fresh, local produce in their homes. It’s available if they look for it. We want them to live a little healthier lifestyle by doing that,” Teresa said.
Hill, a passionate advocate for the eat-local movement, said she hopes the movement will bring young people back into small communities. What Luray has created can be duplicated, she said.
“Instead of having five 10,000 acre farms, we’ll have 10,000 five-acre farms. We can do so much better,” Hill said.
Hill, a former school nurse, greeted one of the regulars to the market, a grandmother with her grandsons. The boys scooped up as many cucumbers as they could carry.
“I’m thrilled when I see young people come in here,” she said. “I’m just tickled. At the same time, I love to see the elderly because they have missed this. They can no longer garden themselves. They grew up with it, and now they miss that fresh quality. It’s a lovely multi-generational community event.”
When Luray lost its grocery store, it also lost one of its last community gathering places, Hill said. That's coming back too.
“One more facet that I had not anticipated is this community energy,” she said. “That when people come in, they linger. They visit. They share stories. They catch up with each other. They share recipes. They share stories about when they were kids helping their grandmother do things. The community enhancement is powerful.”