After spending her young adult life teaching English abroad, Leah Dannar-Garcia returned to Wichita in her late 30s to help care for her parents.
And so began an unexpected second act. She fell in love with her childhood neighbor, put down roots in her hometown and immersed herself so completely in a new hobby — gardening — that at age 55, she was able to launch a new career as an urban farmer.
A decade later, Dannar-Garcia is recognized in Wichita as one of the leaders of the farm-to-table movement and as the owner of downtown Wichita’s Rise Farms, a 15,000-square-foot, solar-powered operation that is one of the only rooftop gardens in the Midwest.
The organic produce she grows — fresh lettuce, herbs, beets, radishes, broccoli, carrots and the like — is enjoyed in Wichita’s finest restaurants and fills the refrigerators of discerning home cooks across the city.
Dannar-Garcia says she’s as happy as she’s ever been.
“Being a teacher, I really believed that I was helping people, that I was empowering people, and I really missed that after I quit teaching,” she said. “And somehow, being a farmer has fulfilled that need.”
Dannar-Garcia was raised in Wichita, just two doors west of the home she lives in now. Her neighbors were Bob and Violet Garcia, who had a small house on a five-acre farmstead they’d purchased in 1950.
Bob Garcia noticed that a middle-school-aged Dannar-Garcia was interested in the sheep he raised on his property. He taught his young neighbor how to show sheep.
When she returned to Kansas to care for her parents, she learned that her old neighbor had passed away. She called his son, Ron, to ask what he planned to do with his dad’s house.
“And he said, ‘Well, I think I’m gonna rent it.’ And I said, ‘Well, I want to rent it,’” she said.
Ron Garcia is 13 years her senior. But eventually, the two began dating, and in 2005, they married.
The couple split their time between the house on the Garcia property and Ron’s ranch near Sedan. They redid both houses, and they also started gardening on the property. They planted a small orchard: Every time Ron ate a piece of fruit he liked, he kept the seeds and planted them. Today, they have about 120 trees that produce pears, apples, tart cherries and nectarines.
Their backyard gardening went so well that they always had more than they could eat. Ron suggested they gift it to the kitchens of their favorite local restaurants.
“After the second year I did that, God bless him, my husband said, ‘Why don’t you sell it to them?’” she said.
But she was good at growing vegetables, and she got better by reading everything she could about vegetable farming and by attending every workshop and seminar she could find. “I have a theory that teachers like to learn, and I think that’s why they’re teachers,” she said. “If you’re engaged in what you do, you don’t burn out. And so for me, there is so much to learn about farming.”
In 2015, she and her husband named their growing home business at 15615 E. 21st St. North Firefly Farm and started offering farm-to-table dinners and farmers markets on the property.
Dannar-Garcia also began offering her produce to chefs around Wichita and quickly became one of the most respected and sought-after local providers. Eventually, she started a food hub, an online portal where locals could order vegetables and products Dannar-Garcia had sourced from other local producers — things like jams and jellies, bread, pickles, pasta and coffee.
Dannar-Garcia was busy running Firefly Farm and the food hub and managing her ever-growing list of restaurant clients when, in 2020, Fidelity Bank approached her with an offer. They were building a new parking garage at Waterman and English and planned to add a rooftop urban farm. Would she manage it?
“And I was like, ‘Well, I know nothing about it, so I’ll give it a try,’” she said with a laugh.
Five years later, her days are a blur of harvesting, washing and packaging vegetables, recording inventory, delivering vegetables, calling on chefs, crop planning, crop planting, marketing, event planning, emailing and texting.
In July, she’s planning to launch a you-pick program at Rise Farms that will allow people to visit the farm and harvest a pint of cherry tomatoes to keep. Next year, she plans to do the same with strawberries.
She’s also applied for a grant so that she can open a food pick-up spot in Wichita, complete with new refrigerators and freezers, for people who want to order things from her Food Hub.
Dannar-Garcia also is working with a Wichita food pantry called Dear Neighbor Ministries, which purchases some of her produce, and dreams of helping the pantry — and even some of its clients — start their own urban farms.
“And I’m so glad that I’m 65 and not 25 because at 25 I had to make all my own mistakes,” she said. “At 65, I don’t. I’m able to listen and evaluate a story and take what I think’s important and implement it without making all the mistakes.”
Rise Farms
Group tours of Rise Farm are available between May and September and cost $50 a group. To book one, visit risefarmsks.com/#risetour
To purchase Rise Farms produce, visit foodhubks.com
Panzanella (Italian bread salad)
5 cups of one-inch bread cubes, made from country-style Italian or French bread
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
½ cup red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon fresh garlic, minced
⅓ cup fresh parsley, minced
Salt and cracked pepper to taste
3 cucumbers, peeled, seeded and cut into ½-inch cubes
3 large, ripe tomatoes, cut into ½-inch cubes
One large red onion, cut into ½-inch cubes
½ cup of olives of choice
½ cup fresh basil leaves
Parmesan cheese shavings
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare bread by cutting into one-inch cubes and spread them on a baking sheet. Bake them in preheated oven, shaking the pan a couple of times, until browned, about 10 to 15 minutes.
Whisk olive oil, vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper together in a small bowl. Then, in a salad bowl, toss the croutons and dressing with the cucumbers, tomatoes, onion, olives and basil leaves.
Toss well then sprinkle with Parmesan cheese shavings. Serve immediately.
Roasted root veggies
Root vegetable of choice (carrots, beets, fingerling potatoes, etc.)
Extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt
Fresh-ground pepper
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Chop veggies into similar sizes and toss generously with olive oil, then add salt and pepper to taste.
Spread veggies out on the pan in a single layer, being careful not to crowd. Cook for 30-45 minutes or until done, rotating the pan 180 degrees halfway through cooking. Beets will slip their skin once cooled.
