Craving corn this summer? Here’s a chance to help yourself — and the community

If you’ve been craving some sweet corn on the cob this summer, you’ll have a chance to harvest your own next week and help the community by doing it.

The first program to kick off at the OneRise Health Campus, where the new South Central Regional Psychiatric Hospital is under construction, is an agricultural endeavor that is the brainchild of Jeff Lange, managing partner at the Lange Cos.

Though he’s known for his RedGuard blast-resistant buildings and Lange Real Estate, Lange also happens to be a farmer.

The new hospital, which will be ready in early 2027, takes up about 11 acres of OneRise’s 72 acres, and Lange did not want the rest of that land to stay stagnant while awaiting development.

“He wanted to go big, and we went big,” said Leanne Miller, chief strategy officer for OneRise, a nonprofit that the Lange family founded.

OneRise planted 50 acres of sweet corn.

“Only 10 acres survived the Kansas weather,” Miller said.

First came the drought, then came the deluge. Still, Miller said, OneRise anticipates about 100,000 ears of corn, which the community is invited to come and pick directly from the stalks or from a bin, where there will be bags of a dozen cobs each.

The suggested donation is $10 a bag, and proceeds will benefit OneRise.

Anyone in need is welcome to take a bag without a donation.

OneRise is working with nonprofits such as Dear Neighbor Ministries and ICT Food Rescue among others to share the corn.

Tessere and Key Construction, which are designing and building the hospital, are sponsoring the event, which is Aug. 12 through Aug. 16, and will provide volunteers to harvest the corn. Lange employees are volunteering, too, but OneRise still needs help from other volunteer harvesters each morning from 7 a.m. to noon. Harvest volunteers are asked to sign up here.

Others are welcome to come harvest their own corn from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day of the event.

Starting small

OneRise has big plans for more gardening, but Miller said the next steps will be measured ones.

“We’re starting small,” she said. “We were going to do this big, and then we learned a lot.”

One lesson is that it could use some help, and OneRise has found it in K-State Research and Extension — Sedgwick County, which it’s partnering with to create an agricultural and horticultural therapy program at the campus.

Miller said the idea is first to help the people who will be treated at the campus.

“We want to have that as part of their living experience.”

She said patients will be taught how to plant, grow, harvest and prepare food.

“These are folks who probably don’t have a lot of life skills,” Miller said.

OneRise will be helping people, including veterans, transition out of homelessness.

Miller said part of the goal will be to make the agricultural work therapeutic.

“We’ve seen the benefits of working in the dirt and nature.”

She said the extension service is recommending trying a smaller amount of acreage next year, and it’s going to help take soil samples. Miller said the extension service said soil issues along with the unexpected weather may be why so many acres of corn didn’t take.

They’re talking about planting a pumpkin patch next summer, and Miller said, “We definitely want to do . . . community gardens.”

Those will be for people on the campus and the greater community as well.

After a trying year this year, Miller said OneRise now has “an amazing partner” in the extension office and already is looking forward to next year’s crops and harvest.

“We want to do it right.”

This story was originally published August 6, 2025 at 12:58 PM.