by JULIET WATERS

It's hard to believe these days that there still exists a place called Moscow, Idaho. If the residents of this small farming community are representative of how the American heartland voted in the last election, you'd think they'd have changed the name by now. It's also worth wondering what they think of their increasingly famous citizen MaryJane Butters.

When I first read Butters' weeklong online diary on Slate.com about a year and a half ago, I was intrigued. A dissident Mormon and single mother, she'd had an eclectic career as a carpenter and forest ranger, until she bought a five-acre farm in Moscow and settled there with her children. Butters quoted some startling statistics estimating that at the rate women were buying up farmland in the U.S., they could own 75 per cent of it in 10 years. She runs the Pay Dirt Farm School, which teaches women organic farming skills, had recently started an online "farmgirl" community and a magazine called MaryJanesFarm, with tips on everything from building outhouses to embroidering dishtowels.

Apparently, Clarkson Potter, a high-end coffee-table book division of Random House, had recently noticed the production quality of MaryJanesFarm, and Butters' infinite well of resourcefulness. Back then, Martha Stewart stock was starting to tank, so it wasn't that weird that Butters was offered a $1.3-million book advance for MaryJane's Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook: For The Farmgirl in All of Us.

A year later, my curiosity turned to zeal. The Republicans had won the election. Thomas Frank wrote What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, The New York Times published roughly 100 op-ed pieces about how the Democrats had lost the heartland and ran features about creepy ex-urbs where fundamentalists lured voters with never-ending supplies of Krispy Kreme. I had a hard time seeing myself as a farmer (if plants were people, I'd be doing life as a dangerous offender). The ideas I got when I browsed the online version of MaryJanesFarm were less about garlic scapes and sourdough starters, and more about millions of single mothers buying up farmland to fuck up the Bush dynasty

When, however, I mentioned Butters to a farmer friend, I discovered that even before the book had hit the stores, Maryjane backlash was already sprouting. A recent New Yorker article had focused on Butters', shall we say, slick side. Turns out she doesn't actually farm (though she did marry her Moscow neighbour, a third-generation farmer.) She makes most of her money hawking mail-older organic baking mix and no-animal-product gelatin, and charges close to $3,000 for a week at Pay Dirt. I couldn't find the actual article, but there was a gleeful summary of it in the Independent Women's Forum, a right-wing Washington think tank. My zeal dampened, but curiosity remained. If right-wing women hated her this much, she couldn't be all that bad.

Finally, this month, the book is here to speak for itself, and I will say one thing: It looks like a million (or to be more precise a million-three) bucks. While the lifestyle she advocates is, in general, one of frugality and even grunge - as environmentally conscious living tends to be - it does go to show that with the right photographer, just about anything can look like House and Garden. Barbed wire outpost chandeliers and re-decorating with wooden clothes-drying racks aren't going to appeal to all urban women. But old-school feminist quotes from Judy Chicago ("To have a mother who loves you for being independent is to have a mother who fosters rebellion in your heart and revolution in your bones,") might do something to loosen the fusion between feminist and city that seems to be as tight as Republican and rural.

Can it be just a coincidence that Butters looks like Hilary Clinton in high-waist jeans? Time and Amazon rankings will tell.

MaryJane's Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook by Maryjane Butters, Clarkson Potter, hc, 416pp, $50