Hay…I mean, Hey! I’m the Guest Writer for the current issue of MaryJanes Farm Magazine! You might remember my account of an amazing road trip I took last fall and A Moonlight Bath at Paradise Farm…ahhhh.
Located just outside Moscow, ID, Paradise Farm is home to MaryJane Butters and an actual working organic farm with many “value added” components. From romantic wall tent cabins tricked out in girly finery, acres of wild irises, a (delicious) line of instant organic packaged food, rolling fields of wheat, luscious berries, as warm a group of fun-loving, hard-working folks as you’ll ever meet and chickens in the plum pit, Paradise Farm is a little piece of Heaven right here on earth and word is getting out! You can read more about MaryJane and her Paradise Farm in the August issue of Sunset magazine, “Fun on the Farm”.
I’m traveling beneath a languid and lazy blue sky. On either side of the nearly deserted two lane road thousands of acres of grassland clothe undulating hills and hollows; a simple, soothing landscape reduced to big sky and a blue highway navigating an inland sea of rippling corduroy fields. Newly shorn grasses, golden bristles starched by the late summer sun, are all that remain from the recent wheat harvest.
I’m on a solitary road trip. This awkwardly shy freelance writer – sometimes garden designer – has invited herself to Paradise; I’m going to call on MaryJane Butters. Paradise Farm lies just outside of Moscow, Idaho and is the organic homestead and working farm that MaryJane has called home for the past 20 years.
I can only attribute my uncharacteristically bold overture to recent months spent absorbed in the life and work of Carla Emery, one of our country’s pioneer women of contemporary self-sufficient living and a former neighbor and friend of Mary Jane. I want to talk with someone who knew Carla; someone who is herself cultivating a resourceful, creative, can-do “Farmgirl” spirit.
Carla Emery grew up on a sheep ranch in Montana and was educated at Columbia University. In the early 1970′s she settled on a farm in northern Idaho, where she wrote the first edition of The Encyclopedia of Country Living. Originally entitled Carla Emery’s Old Fashioned Recipe Book and produced on a mimeograph machine in her living room the book launched its author to the forefront of the back-to-the-land movement…
Mile after mile of fertile hills and prairies of eastern Washington flash by outside my rolled-down windows, the warm wind refreshing the stale interior of my rental car. This area, known as the Palouse, extends into northern Idaho and down into northeastern Oregon is a major wheat-producing agricultural region.
Pick up the August-September issue of MaryJanes Farm, the Everyday Organic Lifestyle Magazine to read my entire Field of Dreams essay and all about my little experiment with planting a stand of backyard wheat.
The grass family is basic to supporting all animal life on earth. Green grass is pasture; dried grass is hay. The edible seeds of corn, wheat, rye, barley, rice, oats, and flax grasses provide grain, a rich food for both people and livestock. Millet, amaranth, quinoa, and buckwheat are nongrass plants whose highly nutritious seeds are harvested and consumed as “grain.” (from Growing Your Own Vegetables by Carla Emery & Lorene Edwards Forkner)
I was quite proud of my stand of winter wheat. Mild autumn temperatures prompted quick germination and in no time my planting was “rowed up” nicely. The plants came through winter without a hitch and steadily grew tall and lush throughout a cold, damp spring. I won’t kid you. I had real visions of my own “amber waves of grain” this summer.
Savannah Big Cat
Turns out big fat George was having visions as well. Here he is languishing and creating a very big cat-shaped hole in my “field”. So much for my tidy sheaves…I’m afraid they’ve become George’s dryland savanna where he stalks big game and stealthily moves through his own feline “field of dreams.” Actually, mostly he just naps. All is not lost. It was a great project – even without my fruitful harvest festival decor to show for it. I’ll probably plant more wheat this fall just to watch the transformation from grain to grass to grain again.
The clarion voices of impassioned writers (and eaters) have opened our eyes to the possibilities each of us has to actively participate in the seasons and reconnect with a healthy food system. Many, many thanks to MaryJane Butters and her warm, embracing, incredibly hardworking family and crew who graciously welcomed me for a farm visit and a magical sleepover under the stars. In many ways similar to Carla Emery, theirs is the voice of can-do resourcefulness and community as they foster a contemporary twenty-first century “farmgirl” mentality.
—from the Acknowledgments page of Canning & Preserving Your Own Harvest by Carla Emery & Lorene Edwards Forkner, Sasquatch Books – in bookstores NOW!!!
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Your Mary Jane article was quite delightful. Ever so proud to know you!