Simple solutions for buying less, eating better, and getting more out of life.
News Release
United Media
United Feature Syndicate
Newspaper Enterprise Association
www.comics.com
CONTACT:
Mary Anne Grimes
212-293-8626
magrimes@unitedmedia.com
For immediate release
“MaryJane’s Everyday Organic ™,” A New United Feature Syndicate Column by MaryJane Butters, Offers Simple Solutions for Buying Less, Eating Better and Getting More Out of Life
NEW YORK, July 17 — MaryJane’s Everyday Organic is a new weekly column that delivers simple yet sophisticated advice on how to live better and enjoy life more while doing right by the environment. The American organic original, MaryJane Butters speaks to every woman who has ever fantasized about living on a farm — or bringing the healthy, safe, homegrown aspects of farm living into their daily lives. MaryJane’s Everyday Organic, distributed through United Feature Syndicate, starts in newspapers nationwide this fall.
MaryJane’s premise is that anybody can be a farmgirl if they really want to. It’s not about where you live, but how you live. MaryJane’s Everyday Organic offers concrete suggestions for adding a little fresh air to daily life with easy-to-follow farm kitchen recipes, directions for simple homemade solutions and projects to do around the house. Plus photos.
“I know it’s out of the ordinary, but it’s true. I’m an organic farmer AND the editor of a women’s magazine and author of books. And now I’m a newspaper columnist,” says Butters. “Here is where I’ll share my ideas, gardening tips, crafting, sewing, carpentry, home decorating, entertaining ideas and simple solutions for everyday organic. The inspiration for this column was born when a woman told me, ‘I wish I could have your life!’ I thought, ‘Why not?’”
Ever since Butters moved to her Idaho farm 20 years ago, she has played around with recipes for organic fast food. While feeding her family and farm crew and perfecting a solution for the dilemma of what-to-cook, she dreamed up MaryJanesFarm magazine, a women’s magazine where women share solutions, show off talents, and just talk.
Deborah Needleman, former Editor of House & Garden magazine and current Editor-in-Chief of Domino magazine, says, “MaryJanesFarm is charming and well done — hugely appealing. It is homey, and smart and interesting ... part Martha Stewart Living, part Oprah magazine, part Organic Style, part Nation, part Ladies Home Journal ... full of tips, ideas, and information.”
Butters’ magazine eventually landed 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. MaryJane’s Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook — For the Farmgirl in All of Us was published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, a division of Random House, in 2005. Its pages are filled with more than 600 photographs and illustrations; farm kitchen recipes; make-it-easy how to’s; outpost advice; and old-fashioned tips, hints, and values — with love, from her farmhouse to yours. Her newest book, MaryJane’s Outpost — Unleashing Your Inner Wild, arrived in stores June 2008. No matter what your age, MaryJane shows exactly HOW to get outdoors — and what to do once you’re there.
MaryJane Butters was born and raised in a self-sufficient family in Utah, growing their own food, and sewing their own clothes. Over the years, she worked as the only woman on a carpentry crew at Hill Air Force Base, was one of the first woman wilderness rangers hired by the U.S. Forest Service, and was the first woman station guard at the Moose Creek Ranger station — the most remote forest service district in the continental United States. After the birth of her two children, MaryJane began searching for the farm of her dreams. In 1985, she found a remote five-acre homestead at the end of a long dirt road on the suitably named Paradise Ridge just southeast of Moscow, Idaho. Eager to promote sustainable agriculture and actively support local farming, in 1993 she launched a line of organic foods now sold nationwide under the MaryJanesFarm label. The first issue of the women’s magazine MaryJanesFarm hit stores in January 2002 and is now distributed nationwide.
Environmental activist and organic farmer, Butters is a pioneer of sustainability and conservation. She is the founder of a thriving environmental group, has developed a diverse array of organic products, and runs a rural enterprise that has been featured in National Geographic magazine. She trains future organic farmers through a farm apprentice program, runs a B&B that was featured in The New York Times, designs and sells her own line of organic linens, and is the creator of Project F.A.R.M. (First-class American Rural Made), an organization that supports rural women’s handicrafts.
United Feature Syndicate is a division of United Media, the information and entertainment company that develops and markets 150 comic strips and editorial features worldwide, including Miss Manners, Cokie & Steven Roberts, Peanuts, and Dilbert. United Media (www.unitedfeatures.com) is a wholly owned subsidiary of The E.W. Scripps Company.
