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Living Lands Studio •

Website Copy for Living Lands

Living Lands serves as a center that brings together 3 important pillars: creativity, community, and wellness. By intertwining these core values, we create a nurturing environment that enhances the region’s artistic landscape and enriches the lives of individuals and the community at large. Jessi Rieken, a native of the Ava/Mansfield area, is the visionary that started this beautiful journey, fueled by a deep-seated passion to elevate our community through nurturing connection and creativity. He
LFS Association •

Website copy for LFS Association

you are making a choice to directly support small farms and food producers and to take back control of your personal food chain by connecting directly with the farmers who grow your food and the food artisans who craft it. This is not just a place to buy food; this is a place to join a growing movement. A movement that champions local food sovereignty, nurtures community connections, and paves the way for a sustainably prosperous local food ecosystem. Together, we have the power to redefine our
Living Lands Studio •

Artist Highlight: Robin Horn

Robin Horn creates art as Mixxed Messages Painting and as The Naked Fairy Apothecary. She describes herself as possessing an innate love of rocks, color, plants, metals, and energy. While nature serves as her primary inspiration, she also draws from the mystery inherent in nature and life, as we can never know everything.

Having attended art school in Colorado, Robin has been painting all her life. She spent 27 years in Florida, where she “raised two beautiful sons and had many great adventures
LFS Association •

How fresh is your produce really?

All the dietary guidelines tell us that we are supposed to eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruits. So, every week when shoppers head to the store they jump right into the produce section and select groceries from the wide array of choices available at every supermarket in the country. The US is blessed to have an abundance of these markets. Have you ever stopped to think about the massive undertaking it is to get all that produce to all those stores around the whole country, let alone the world
Living Lands Studio •

Living Lands Studio Artist Highlight - Blog

Jennifer Fannen was born and raised in Utah where she developed a deep love of nature. She spent her childhood exploring the mountains, forests, and deserts of the state, and her love of nature was instilled in her at a young age. After graduating from high school, Jennifer met her husband and they moved to the Ozarks with their 3 son where she continues to live and work as an artist. Jennifer and her family live on a farm in the Ozark Mountains and spend a lot of their free time exploring and e
LFS Association •

The Importance of a Strong Local Economy: Why It Matters and How to Support It

The news is always going on and on about the economy and what’s going on with the economy; it seems like this large, unfathomable concept that somehow affects all our lives and is of super importance, but why? how? In its most simple terms, the economy is just the sum and flow of all the transactions made. It is how wealth is distributed and redistributed in society. When the economy is strong, it is because people have confidence that things are going well, and so they spend more money, which c
Little Farm Store LLC •

Producer Spolight: Ron's MicroGreens

Ron Cummings owns and operates Ron’s Microgreens. He has been supplying the highly nutritious microgreens customers have been enjoying these last few weeks.

Conversing with Ron was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon . This guy has a wonderful knowledge of soil heath and maintains beautiful garden spaces. It was a real pleasure getting to chat. He and his wife, Sammi, have built a lovely home in Willow Springs. Carved out of the trees on a hilltop, they have a custom house with lots of light
Little Farm Store LLC •

Producer Spotlight: Little Farm Store

I sat down with Ryan Goolsby, the proprietor of Little Farm Store, for the inaugural publication of the newsletter. Telling the origin story felt like a good place to launch. We had a great conversation about how food is a core need in human existence and how good food and a strong local food system can create healthy, sustainable communities.

Eight years ago, the Goolsby family bought a farm in Mansfield, Missouri with the goal of having a productive family operation and to participate in the
personal •

Springfield's Residential Compost Collection Service

I moved to Missouri as part of a dream to establish a small farm. I am passionate about the quality of food and quality of life provided by such a pastoral setting. I see a place where chickens are pecking the grass and eating the diet they are supposed to in natural foraging. I see my daughter hunting for interesting things or inspecting bits of life she finds as she meanders in child-like bliss around the land. I see a place where I can grow fresh, clean food and that all life is thriving in e
Little Farm Store LLC •

A Case for Local Food

If people spent just 10% of their weekly food budget on local goods, we would change the market. That’s $10 out of every $100. That’s an inexpensive means to make a big change in and around our communities.

Of course, all the local producers would like to see people spend more than $10, but it puts into perspective how we can each make big differences in small ways. We all know that massive, industrial food production is wreaking havoc on the environment and our health. We know that most of the
LFS Association •

Discovering the Benefits of Shared Meals

“Food and partaking in collective meals have been analyzed as acts that connect the human being as a biological organism to a social person. Understood in this way, eating together makes up a fundamental part of our social nature” (Jonsson et al., 2021).

History shows that sharing food has been a key part in the formation of societies and cultures; researchers have also linked it to the formation of individual social identity. Looking back across history, we can see patterns that have persisted