Move over, Martha: Native Utahn may be next domestic maven - with a rural twist

MOSCOW, Idaho — Rural living is a little different on Mary Jane Butters' farm.

Hens lay eggs. Workers fill bags of dried soup. Editors prepare the next edition of her magazine. Television producers call.

Butters presides over the bustle, positioning herself to become the new Martha Stewart while the original maven of gracious living prepares for a January securities-fraud trial.

Clarkson Potter, a Random House branch that also publishes Stewart's books, will pay Butters $1.3 million for two books that highlight the rural skills and do-it-yourself philosophy she has developed on her organic farm.

The first book, "Mary Jane's Gathering Place," is scheduled to be published in spring 2005. The second is tentatively due out in 2006.

The book deal has started a stampede in all things Mary Jane. A newspaper column, which had been appearing in three free weeklies in the Northwest, is being shopped to nationwide syndicators.

Television producers are calling about doing a show. Butters isn't sure she is interested, because of the travel and time required. She made it a condition of her book contract that she not have to do a book tour.

There are even discussions about a line of household products — from peelers to purses — under the Mary Jane brand.

Butters sees herself as a model for new economic vitality in rural areas, and a conduit between rural women who produce goods, and shoppers looking to buy those goods.

"I'm going to be an approachable Martha Stewart, a rural Martha Stewart, in my home," said Butters, an apple-cheeked blonde with a backpacker's sun-burnished skin. "We're going to resurrect those nearly extinct domestic skills so we are not always buying things produced by a child in Taiwan."

Her publisher is betting that many Americans are longing for a taste of the comforting skills of pioneer rural women: cooking, gardening, sewing. They see Butters as the nation's home economics teacher.

"It reminds us of simpler times, but acknowledges we live in the present day," Pam Krauss, editorial director at Clarkson Potter in New York, said.

"The most important thing is she is a completely authentic voice," Krauss said. "It's not a city dweller's idea of what it might be like to live on a farm in Idaho.

"We see a huge potential for Mary Jane the book and Mary Jane the brand," she said. "We see her as someone we can publish for years to come."

Krauss declined to compare Butters to Stewart.

"We would rather not draw that comparison," Krauss said. "She is completely original."