MaryJanesFarm

MaryJane Butters bought a five-acre homestead at the base of Paradise Ridge near Moscow, Idaho in 1986. She paid $45,000 for it — a fraction of what comparable land costs now — and started farming with little more than determination and a willingness to figure things out by hand. By 1993, she'd incorporated the food business as Paradise Farm Organics, later renamed MaryJanesFarm.

What makes this operation unusual is its scope. MaryJanesFarm isn't just a food company. It's a farm, a magazine publisher, a bedding line, and an organic backpacking meal producer, all run from the same stretch of Idaho farmland. The backpacking meals are how most people discover the brand. Over 50 varieties of lightweight, organic, dehydrated meals designed for trail use — soups, pastas, chilis, desserts, and baking mixes you can prepare with just hot water. They're sold through REI, independent outfitters, and the MaryJanesFarm online shop.

The food follows federal organic standards: no synthetic pesticides, no chemical fertilizers, no GMO seed stock, no antibiotics. That's table stakes for an organic certification, but what separates MaryJanesFarm from most backpacking food brands is the ingredient simplicity. Flip over a MaryJanesFarm meal packet and you can read every ingredient without a chemistry degree. Many competing freeze-dried brands hide behind long ingredient lists full of preservatives and flavor enhancers. MaryJanesFarm doesn't.

Butters and her husband Nick Ogle co-own the business. They've intentionally kept it small. "We've stayed small and still answer our phones" is how she's described their approach — big enough to deliver, small enough to care. That philosophy shows in the product line. There's no private equity money pushing them to scale into categories they don't understand. No investor board demanding quarterly growth metrics. Just a farm in Idaho producing organic food and shipping it to people who want it.

The magazine, also called MaryJanesFarm, has been in print since 2001. It covers organic farming, homesteading, rural living, and simple cooking — part editorial, part community-building. It rounds out a brand that's more rooted in daily farm life than marketing strategy.

Products

• Organic backpacking meals — 50+ varieties of dehydrated soups, pastas, chilis, and desserts
• Budget Mix baking mixes — pancakes, cornbread, pizza dough
• Emergency food supplies and bulk options
• Organic-on-the-go food bars
• Organic bedding and textiles
• MaryJanesFarm magazine (print, since 2001)

Why We List Them

• Co-owned by MaryJane Butters and Nick Ogle — no outside investors
• USDA Certified Organic across the product line
• Operating from the same Idaho farm since 1986
• Ingredient lists you can actually read — no synthetic preservatives or flavor enhancers
• Intentionally small, independently scaled business
• One of the few organic options in the backpacking food category