On Fae Ridge Farm, just outside of Iowa City, Janette Ryan-Busch raises organic vegetables, herbs, cut flowers, goats, sheep, llamas, and angora rabbits. Geese and ducks provide insect control, and chickens help with the decom-position of garden waste. Janette is known locally as the Queen of 
Basil, raising ten to fifteen thousand basil plants annually. She has chosen small-scale agriculture because it is something she can manage by herself, and she enjoys the satisfaction of growing products she can use directly.
Janette grew up on a farm in southern Iowa. Her parents ran a conventional grain and livestock farm and a small grain elevator, and her grandparents raised Black Angus cattle. “Both sides of my family have been farming for generations and generations,” she explains. Even though she hated picking strawberries and working in the garden, Janette’s childhood instilled in her a love of the land and of hard physical work. She grew up taking care of baby lambs and calves and walking the beans. Detasseling corn, the traditional teenagers’ farm chore, was out of reach for Janette—she was too short!
When her own two boys were small, Janette was determined to stay home to raise them. Already gardening to feed her family, she decided to grow and sell extra garden produce. Gardening was a way for her to be at home, be an active mom, and involve her children in something that had a community spirit to it. As Janette’s boys grew, so did her enterprise. She converted a small farm building into an on-farm store. Just minutes from downtown Iowa City, customers have found a reliable source for delicious, locally grown produce and animal fibers. With certified organic status, her loyal customer base includes neighbors, chefs, and New Pioneer Co-op in Iowa City.
Having grown up with livestock, Janette missed not having animals around, so she purchased some milking goats. While she liked the goats’ energy, she found that the twice daily milking was more of a commitment than she had time for. Rather than giving up on goats altogether, she switched to Angora goats with lovely, soft fleece. After discovering that she could not make an adequate income by selling fleece right off the goat, Janette started processing the fleece. And after goats, came sheep, llamas, and angora rabbits, all of which contribute their coats to Janette’s growing fiber business. “My entry into diversified small farming has been slow and constant,” says Janette. “I think of it as an evolution.”
Long-term planning, using yards and yards of woven fabric as a weed barrier, and incorporating a manure system are practices that make Janette’s small-scale farming successful. On portions of her land, she uses a technique called sheet composting—applying manure from her farm animals on the land and then planting a green manure crop on top of that. “It is an easy way to manage manure, and the results are amazing when I plant heavy feeder crops the following year,” she explains. By using crop rotation, beneficial insects, and ducks to control insects, Janette is able to keep her farm in certified organic production.
“The best times on the farm are the moments when you feel like everything is under control,” says Janette. “Everything is growing and you’ve gotten the rain you need and things feel like they are in harmony.” She loves going into the barn in the winter when it is twenty below zero outside and the barn is full of animals that are safe and warm. “I look at the animals and think, what a gorgeous flock they are!” Janette remarks that those moments are so deeply satisfying that they keep her doing what she does.
Outside of her on-farm activities, Janette has been actively involved in the organic movement. She helped start Iowans for Organic Food Standards, an organization that worked to create a labeling standard for organic production. When in 1989, the Iowa legislature passed an organic standardization law, Janette served on the rules committee that hammered out how the organic standards law would be implemented. Her involvement took her to Washington D.C. to speak with legislators and other farm activists and to work on the national organic standards.
The state of Iowa also enacted an organic certification law that Janette helped to formulate. The bill gave the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship the authority to be an organic certification agency. Janette continues actively working on organic standards and certification and is pleased to participate in a project that works to help Iowans, both consumers and farmers. When she had her farm certified using this new process, she felt joyful in having helped develop a system that works and is being implemented.
Life has been interesting as a woman farmer for Janette. “Traditionally, women have been farming here forever,” she remarks. “There are women in my neighborhood out driving tractors and moving cows.” Janette believes that women make great farmers. They make good decisions based on compassion and a long-range perspective. While there can be some physical boundaries, Janette knows those can be overcome by being smarter than the object you are moving.
Janette believes that farming is different from other ways of making a living. One has to be flexible and able to go with the flow. “We are really connected to nature and the planet in a way that a lot of people are in denial about. Small, alternative agriculture definitely magnifies your 
relationship to the land.”
For Janette Ryan-Busch, life is intimately enmeshed with the cycles of nature. She believes that humans must treat the earth with reverence and respect and let it call the shots. Her animals and plants are a testimony to the care that she gives to Mother Nature. She is indeed, a hard-working woman of the Earth.