In the Garden:
A Wonderful Farm

Elizabeth Taylor's small farm is the main local supplier of organic produce for the Moscow Food Co-op. A visit to the farm near Santa, Idaho, left me feeling envy for the kind of life that Elizabeth lives.

Her farm is linear, along a creek. Huge cottonwoods and evergreens overlook and wild roses spill onto the land. The rows are straight and productive. The chickens softly cluck, her dogs run alongside. Wildlife is abundant, she has seen cougar, moose, elk and heard bears. The dogs sleep under a huge spruce tree next to the house and protect the garden and the chickens from critters. One of the dogs killed a weasel and a mink trying to get into the chicken yard.

Not quite so welcome a catch was the porcupine both dogs got involved with, necessitating a painful trip to the vet. Deer are kept out of the garden by the dogs so no fencing is necessary. Insect-eating swallows nest in the chicken coop, snakes eat grasshoppers and mice. Water is pumped from the creek. She has few problems with pests because she keeps her plants healthy. Since she spends 6 and a half days a week in the garden, her plants are able to tell her what they need.

Elizabeth's gardening year starts in March. She has a little sunroom with a solid roof, which adjoins her house, and she first starts cucumbers, squash and basil. Other plants she grows are lettuce, garlic, peas, beets, kale, broccoli, beans and carrots.

Farming in Santa is a challenge because of the short growing season. It can freeze up until July 4th and the first frost of the year can start anytime after August 1st. When I visited in June it was still around 40 degrees at night so she was nightly putting row covers on the plants that need to be warm, removing them each morning. She succession plants and tries to have produce through the month of October. Elizabeth's garden is small when it comes to organic farms but big enough that she has hired help every day. She enjoys gardening barefoot and the day I was there she was wearing beads.

Elizabeth's mother gardened some when she was growing up although they lived in a fairly shady area. Her grandparents had a big garden. Elizabeth always loved animals and plants and liked being outside. When she was a kid she always took jobs that were outside. She grew up in Illinois then moved to California when she was young and that's where her first farming job was, at the age of 19 or 20.

She learned from there and one day rented a little piece of land to grow her own. Organic was just starting in 1980 and she never gardened any other way. She worries about the watering down of organic rules and fears it will invalidate her hard work. She wonders how the mega-farms of tens of thousands of acres can be truly organic.

Elizabeth learns from trial and error, from her own mistakes and others, and from talking to other farmers. She loves the community of farmers at the Moscow Farmer's Market and gets ideas from it. She has always hoed her entire garden but this year is experimenting by mulching with straw some of the plants that will be in the ground for a long time, like kale and broccoli. The mulching worked somewhat but the straw has been sprouting, more weeds to pull!

She sets aside a section at the end of the garden for experimentation. She used to plant a lot of flowers but found them a little stressful as they took up too much time and space so she has cut down in that area. She still has some sunflowers and cosmos. 

Elizabeth supplements her farming income by weaving beautiful willow baskets and tanning hides, two pursuits she can partake in on her front porch which overlooks the creek and where eagles fly by at eye level during the salmon spawning season. This beaded, suntanned, barefoot farmer is happy and fulfilled with her life, and we Co-op shoppers are also the richer because of her.

Holly Barnes walks around her garden daily communing with all the green growing things and dreams of her next life in which she might live off the land.

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