10/12/2026
Watershine Woods was twenty-one when she became homesick for a place she had never been.
Her brother was a traveler. His letters told her about the Okanogan, a country she had never seen but already missed. She came to visit. Then she went back, quit her job, and returned for good.
She has never regretted it.
Her parents, farming stock from back East, heard this land calling them home too. In 1974 they put down roots here, on the land Watershine tends today. In 1996, Watershine bought everyone out and took it on herself. She had $150,000 in debt, an old station wagon, and the land. It had to work.
Six of her “loyal crew” gave her a three-year commitment to prove a small farm could fly.
And it flew. “It has flown all these years.”
By then she was already known for her garlic. In the late seventies she had brought Spanish Roja to the valley, and it carried her name far beyond the Okanogan.
In 1977 the farmland (Filaree Farms) became a certified organic farm in Washington State, license number 100. “We have always been organic, long before the paperwork designated us so.”
For years she farmed all week, then drove to Seattle and Spokane to sell at markets. She knew small farms could not thrive that way. So she and her community built OPMA.
“One truck, many farms.”
Twenty years on it is thriving, and Watershine and her son Minot still drive that OPMA truck.
Small farms, she says, are “stronger as allies than as competitors.”
Ask her what matters most and she will tell you about the soil. Farming is a circle. Take care of the EARTH and everything else will follow. The last soil test before she sold her orchard came back from the lab rated “Exquisite.”
Watershine sold the orchard land to JC and Amber Kauffman. They were married among its trees, and their daughter was born there.
“We have to create our families where we find them,” she says. “They are part of my family.”
At seventy-three, she calls Yonder Farms her retirement. “It’s hard to retire when you love it.”
Somewhere along the way, a valley she had never seen became home. For more than fifty years, she has helped make it a place where young farmers can come to put down roots.
