Croft: [noun] an enclosed field used for tillage or pasture, typically attached to a house and worked by the occupier.

Many of us deeply admire people like Debi and Dave Smith and their 31-year old son and partner Tony, who are the Ravencroft farmers. Like all the other Tuesday growers I’ve met, they’ve made thoughtful and considered choices at every step along their intriguingly different paths. And I admire how lightly they tread, attempting to do no harm to the planet or other species.

Debi is an artist and crafter as well as a farmer. She worked for many years for the YWCA at Washington State University and before that directed the Palouse Regional Crisis Line. She has been a private practice counselor and still holds a fulltime job at the WSU Women’s Resource Center, but that’s ending in September. It’s a transition Debi is very much ready for. As a painter, ceramic, and fiber artist, she is very active with the local Palouse Chapter of the Women’s Art Caucus, and her work is currently in two separate Moscow Art Walk venues: at Two Degrees Northwest, and also in the “Madam Chair” show at the Third Street Gallery.

After many years at the University of Idaho Research Dairy, Dave is now “retired”—Ha! Actually, he’s into his fifth year of full-time farming and homesteading. Dave likes to read history. Both are fans of jazz and blues, and for years Dave hosted KUOI’s Sunday morning program of the same name. Though they may borrow or rent a movie once or twice a week, neither watches TV other than that.

On the day I visited, I did not meet the third partner, Tony. This guy travels a lot because he is a professional bicyclist. (In fact, he won the International 24-hour Single Speed mountain bike championship in Whistler Canada a couple years ago.) It seems Tony decided to “come home” awhile back, after too much world travel and, “He ended up helping us. Now he’s enjoying it.” Tony still travels a lot, as an Ironman Course Organizer, but is based in Moscow, and is usually at the farm 2-3 days a week. As bike guy, yoga practitioner, and strapping vegan, his folks say, “We save the heavy stuff for him.” Word on the street is Tony is also setting up a shop on the Ravencroft property to build custom bikes. A fourth “quiet” partner is Tony’s sister who lives in Salt Lake City; she created and maintains the Ravencroft website.

So what is this property like? It’s not like any other working farm I’ve visited. Individual beds sprout up all over nine acres of land, but most of them are visible from the house. The total cultivated footprint is about 1/2 acre. All are raised beds—some waist high and on legs—or in frames of salvaged lumber, tires, or old logs, under which frogs and other beneficial critters are welcome to come and stay.

On my tour, we said hello to the snake that’s been living in the chive and herb bed for a couple seasons. I get the feeling he or she is another “companion animal” at the croft, along with the coven* [group] of ravens that still periodically harasses the dogs, and the full orchestra of birds, who gobble up mosquitoes from a beautiful 1/2-acre pond.

There are two permanent greenhouses now, made for the most part of recycled windows and other materials. And when the handles of their store bought rakes and hoes break, Dave refurbishes them with new, aesthetically as well as structurally superior ones made of boughs he has whittled.

The rest of the property (located a little north of Moscow on Hwy 95) contains many tall pine and spruce trees. The whole place is an ‘owner active’ system, between keeping predators at bay (the worst of which are hungry moose), irrigating by hand, and moving portable shades structures around to extend the season for early salad greens, etc.

“I’m big on companion planting.” Nasturtiums are stuck in many a corner, to attract flea beetles, while catnip grows elsewhere to repel the same insect, and to attract cats who help out with rodents. Zinnias and marigolds function as other bright lures, and inhabitants of the bat boxes next door at the Phillips Farm certainly help out too.

They have crop rotation down here too. So while beans and squash are always planted together, “We never plant the same thing in the same place from year to year. Different plants take and leave different nutrients in the soil.”

The Smiths have been tending the soil and gardening here, closely watching how all the flora and fauna interact on this land for the past 22 years. Herbs make up the largest portion of gross sales, about 25 percent. Debi says, “I’m an herb junkie. I love reading about them, growing them, using them, experimenting with them…” Her art studio turns into an herb processing building at this time of the year, with cloth covered screens stacked up high, air-drying. There are other specialties too, like mache, a tender and early salad green that does especially well for them, arugula and other greens, some of which they supply to area restaurants such as Nectar, and Red Door.

If you miss Ravencroft’s produce at the Tuesday Market, and you’re north of town, you will also find them Saturday mornings at the Potlatch Farmers Market, which runs 8 a.m. -noon, and where Debi also brings her crafts.

For the first time, this year Ravencroft is offering “mini” CSA shares. Geared for one or two people who love salads, they seem to have happily struck another niche market among folks for whom a ‘family sized’ CSA might be too large. There were one or two openings left when I last spoke to Debi, The subscription prices are:

$100/season, for pick up at Tuesday Market

$125/season, delivered, elsewhere in Moscow

$150/season, delivered, in Pullman

The season, which began the second week of June, will extend through the second week of October.

Contact Debi or Dave at 208-882-3616

Or by email: < This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it >

Their website is www.ravencroftfarms.com

Jeanne Leffingwell, a local artist, is going to stop feeling guilty about her huge brush pile and leave it alone - for the snakes and critters!

Tuesday Growers’ Market

Growers and July Produce List

Affinity Farm (Russell Poe and Kelly Kingsland):

salad mix, spinach, carrots, beets, chard, lettuce, green onion, radish, broccoli, kale, parsley, cilantro, peas, onion, cucumber, summer squash, basil, tomatoes, new Zealand spinach, green beans.

Avon Eggs/Tourmaline Farms (Kyle Bujnicki):

fresh eggs, pastured chicken, grass-fed beef; pre-orders recommended for chickens and beef.

Debbie’s Flowers (Debbie and George Durrin):

flowers, herbs, fresh-cut bouquets and hanging baskets.

RavenCroft Farm (Dave and Debi Smith):

Herbs, salad greens, onions, snow peas, beans strawberries.

Thorn Creek Native Seed Farm (Jacie Jensen):

Thorn Creek Native Seed Farm is not be selling plants in July and August; look for them again in September and October when the temperatures cool.

Backyard Harvest (Amy Grey):

Providing USDA Food Stamps to Shop the Market!