Since 2007, the mother-daughter team of Brooks Mitchell and Merritt Mitchell-Wajeeh have been transforming 92 acres with a mile of frontage on the Yakima River, a designated salmon tributary into the Columbia, from pastureland growing deleterious and even poisonous vegetation, overgrazed by rodeo bulls and broncos, creating run-off, deforestation, and dust storms damaging air and water quality, to a farm and eco-education center with diverse crops of organically grown vegetables, herbs, flowers, grains, fruit, chickens, and goats.

We’ve used the best sustainable organic practices including cover cropping and rotational and companion planting, and provided food and education to nearby residents, businesses, and food banks while hosting young adults as interns from various parts of the country, coming to learn how to be farmers and to gain, in their words, “life skills.”