MaryJane Butters has always been a pioneer. After graduating from high school in Utah, she spent summers watching for fires from a mountaintop lookout near Weippe, Idaho, and in 1976 became the first woman station guard at the Moose Creek Ranger Station, the most remote Forest Service district in the continental U.S., in Idaho's Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area.

After moving to her farm near Moscow, Idaho, in 1986, she founded a regional environmental group, and then decided to develop and market products made from locally grown organic beans in order to help farmers transition to sustainable production. She began in 1990 with an easily-prepared organic falafel. Now her organic enterprise includes more than 60 prepared foods, a nationally-syndicated newspaper column, three Random House books, and a national bimonthly organic-lifestyle magazine (also calledMaryJanesFarm), as well as a romantic wall-tent B&B, a farm apprentice program, and a u-pick membership program called MaryJanesFarm Country Club.

A maximum of 20 families join the Country Club yearly, paying both an annual fee of $100 and market prices for the organic vegetables, fruit, flowers, and eggs they gather during the June to October season. Members are also invited to bring out-of-town visitors and relax at the farm with a picnic lunch, a snooze in the hammock, or a visit with the farm animals that are a delight for children to experience.