Meet Wendy Gail: Life in the Heart of Kansas
I’m Wendy Gail, a Texas-born, California- and Utah-raised city girl who always felt her heart pulling toward Kansas. For as long as I can remember, I dreamed of living where my family’s history is rooted, close to my mom, with a barn, horses, and a yard full of animals. In 2012, I packed up the horses and all my belongings and moved to the middle of Kansas. My farm eventually transformed to include chickens, goats, a huge but gentle livestock guardian dog, a tiny mini dachshund, and a few cats. Through trial and error, I learned to build hot wire fences, panel fences, goat fences, how to buy hay in 2000-pound round bales, what a scoop shovel was, how to bid at farm and livestock sales, how to buy fresh beef straight from the farmer and choose your own cuts; and that farmers go to the feed store three times as often as the grocery store.
Most days you’ll find me outside—doing chores, fixing fences, mowing grass, or stealing a minute to just soak in the quiet beauty of the country. When the cold Kansas winters set in, I spend time turning our surplus of fresh goat milk into rich lotions, creams, and soap, along with making goat milk cheese, goat milk caramels, goat milk ice cream- all products my kids absolutely love. I’m a mom to three (one girl and two boys) and a proud grandma to six grandchildren—three boys and three girls—who definitely live too far away from me.
I would say I have finally adjusted to small town life in the heartland, literally the middle of the United States. You can’t beat Kansas sunsets that stretch forever, golden sunflowers waving in the fields, flat prairies that allow you to see for miles, the smell of milo in the fields, fresh alfalfa in the barn, bierrocks for lunch at the county fair, or strangely enough, cinnamon rolls with your chili. Truth be told, I will always miss “my” mountains in Utah, and the snow that goes with it; and I could do without the Kansas tornados- I still run for the basement when the real natives head for the front porch to watch-tornado sirens and all. Everything I make is a little piece of this life—simple, heartfelt, and rooted in the lands I love.
