Model Organic Farm Hard Work, Satisfying

High above Killarney Lake and deep in the national forest, farm life flourishes with pioneer spirit.

Where the pines and ferns end, the potatoes and cabbage begin. Neat rows of garlic and sweet corn, carrots and cauliflower, peppers and beets insert a dash of order into the wild landscape.

Across six Edenlike acres, fruit and nut trees thrive and perennials parade colors as if they’re competing for prizes.

At the hub of this bounty is a rustic wood house, defiantly free of power lines and architectural boundaries.

“You won’t find another one like it,” says Ellen Scriven, the good-natured woman who commands this farm to produce.

Ellen, 43, and Paul Smith, 46, run Killarney Farm, a self-sustaining, all-natural venture from the water-generated power to the home-grown fertilizer.

Ellen and Paul are as organic as their operation, both sun-ripened tan and lean from years of hard work and healthy eating.

They raise goats for dairy products, sheep for wool, chickens for eggs, bees for honey and a steer for meat. They cook on a wood-fired stove and in a homemade solar oven. They can or compost everything.

“This is very satisfying to us,” says Ellen, whose work-calloused fingers spin wool into yarn and weave dried herbs into fragrant wands in winter. “The world would be a better place if more people were doing what they wanted to do instead of what they thought they had to do.”

Paul was a refugee from upstate New York when he found the hideaway in 1976. He was 24 and had little use for other people. He wanted self-sufficiency and seclusion. The abandoned mining claim offered both.

He salvaged a small cabin that had been deserted 25 years earlier, planted an acre of vegetables and allowed the surrounding wilderness to swallow him.

When he needed what the farm didn’t produce, he picked up jobs as a stone mason or traded his produce at regional barter fairs - hippie-style swap meets. At a barter fair in Tonasket, Wash., he met Ellen.

She shared Paul’s back-to-the-land ideals. She’d raised produce on a small homestead outside of Portland, and apprenticed on a large organic garden in the San Juan Islands.

In 1986, Ellen joined reclusive Paul on Killarney Farm.

She saw potential in his acreage. Managed properly, the land could support them and neither would have to rely on odd jobs for money.

The Kootenai County Farmers’ Market began that year and offered them a sales outlet. The open-air market for vendors of homegrown and homemade goods operated only on Saturdays.

It took six years for the market and Killarney Farm to grow enough to completely support Paul and Ellen. Killarney Farm developed a following. The market proved such a good outlet that the couple hasn’t missed a Saturday in 12 years.

Ellen and Paul work their land hard. They raise more than 50 varieties of vegetables, flowers, herbs and fruits, including berries, grapes and half an acre of garlic.

They start plants in winter in the greenhouse that stretches along two sides of their house so they’ll have produce ready for market in May.

They harvest and replant and stagger plantings to keep their land producing spring through fall. The herbs they grow are for medicine and flavor, and the garlic chives, nasturtiums and marigolds they raise deter insects.

They grow buckwheat, winter rye and field peas for organic fertilizer and feed their crops composted animal manure.

Even their irrigation system is natural. Gravity pulls water through rubber hoses from higher elevation ponds.

It’s not work for Ellen and Paul as much as a lifestyle.

“Where does the work end and the play start?” Ellen says, looking at the rolling acres of plants that demand all her attention. “For me, the hardest part is not having the time to get to everything.”

The work is Paul’s escape. He speaks little and hikes purposefully through the fields spreading red straw mulch among the plants, moving hoses, rotovating. He wears dirt well, and it’s clear there’s no place he’d rather be.

Killarney Farm loses little to insects or animals. A bear used to raid the apple trees and a cougar once stole a few of the animals. Ellen bought a Great Pyrenees dog and the animal raids quit.

As for insects, “I’m a believer that fertile soil keeps plants healthy and they can resist attacks,” Ellen says.

She and Paul hand-pick bugs off some plants and place a cover over others.

“Even when I was 8, I played that I was in a little cabin where I could raise my own food and animals,” Ellen says. “I’m still playing.”

Farm tour The University of Idaho Kootenai County Extension has planned a public tour of Killarney Farm on July 30. The tour will include workshops on organic production, pest management, compost systems and how to use cover crops and green manure. The cost, which includes an organic lunch, is $25 per person. The tour is limited to 30. For reservations, call 882-1444.