Holly Bollinger

Holly Bollinger, the author, wrote Outhouses" and John Deere Tractors" (MBI), and writes articles for numerous agriculture magazines. She lives in House Springs, Missouri. Catherine Lee Phillips, the photographer, is trained in studio photography and provided the photos for Ertl Toy Tractors" and works at Antique Power" magazine. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio. MaryJane Butters discovered that she was a writer when she needed a mail-order catalog for her line of organic foods produced at her...See more

Holly Bollinger, the author, wrote Outhouses" and John Deere Tractors" (MBI), and writes articles for numerous agriculture magazines. She lives in House Springs, Missouri. Catherine Lee Phillips, the photographer, is trained in studio photography and provided the photos for Ertl Toy Tractors" and works at Antique Power" magazine. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio. MaryJane Butters discovered that she was a writer when she needed a mail-order catalog for her line of organic foods produced at her Idaho farm. When her passion for good stories got out of hand, her catalog became a "storefront" magazine ("MaryJanesFarm(R)"), finding its way into stores like Barnes & Noble and Wal-Mart, and eventually landing on the desk of a literary agent in New York who encouraged her to write a book sharing her message of simple, everyday organic living. Her first book, ""MaryJane's Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook...for the farmgirl in all of us,"" produced by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Random House, is now available in bookstores nationwide. The founder of MaryJanesFarm(R) has always been a pioneer. Born in 1953, MaryJane grew up in Utah in a self-sufficient family of seven, longing for fertile ground where she could raise her own flock of chickens, maybe a cow or two, and a family. 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 in Idaho's Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area, the most remote Forest Service district in the continental U.S. Later, making her way north, she made her living as a carpenter, waitress, seamstress, secretary, janitor, and milkmaid.The work of raising two children, remodeling a succession of old houses, and growing gardens full of food filled the next few years. But throughout that time, MaryJane never forgot her dream of a small family farm at the end of a dirt road. She dreamed of chicken coops, barns, root cellars, fruit trees in bloom, clematis vines, lilacs, wild roses, irises, and gardens. In 1986, she saw an ad in a newspaper for a five-acre north-Idaho homestead. It was an old relic of a house, without any plumbing, but she knew it was her dream place. After moving to her farm, she grew and sold a variety of vegetables to local customers. In 1990, she founded a regional environmental group, Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute (www.pcei.org), and decided to develop new products for locally grown organic beans that would provide a secure market for farmers transitioning to sustainable, organic production. Starting out back then with just a falafel mix, MaryJanesFarm(R) products now include a line of more than 60 instant and quick-prep organic foods. MaryJane has accomplished everything she set out to achieve, including a few surprises. Thirteen years ago, she married her neighbor, Nick Ogle, a third-generation farmer. Together they raised four hard-working children, plus bees, chickens, goats, cows, peas, beans, hay, wheat, and every vegetable imaginable. MaryJanesFarm(R) now provides organic fruits, vegetables, and eggs for an 18-family CSA and even grows a biodiesel crop to fuel MaryJane's car. She has also cultivated 27 future organic farmers in her apprenticeship program called Pay Dirt Farm School(R), bought an historic flour mill, and created the "FarmgirlConnection," a Web site (www.maryjanesfarm.org) that brings together hundreds of women sharing their farmgirl dreams and big farmgirl hearts. MaryJane would like to see the number of small family farms increasing and greater local awareness of people wanting to purchase the wholesome foods produced by them. She continues to dream big, work... See less