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Pink Magazine
The Real Dirt on Green
“I’m in the s---,” says actress Marsha Mason, who is
hands-on and knee-deep in compost – turning garbage and
lots of crap (not the Hollywood kind) into fertilizer
that transformed her once-barren 250 acres in New Mexico
into the organic Resting in the River farm. Today she
grows several tones of herbal crops yearly, like
valerian and spilanthes. “I love it. It’s like alchemy,
says Mason, who retreated to the Abiquiu, New Mexico region (the
same that inspired painter Georgia O’Keeffe) some 15
years ago after her divorce from playwright Neil Simon,
hardly expecting to hoe the front lines of the green
revolution.
Jane Fonda, Oprah Winfrey and Julia Roberts also own
large properties in the state, but Mason is the real
deal – a grower and agricultural leader as chairwoman of
the New Mexico Organic Commodity Commission, which
certifies farmers. Initially warned her spread was not
big enough to farm profitably, she recently launched a
healing body products line – key for the small grower’s
bottom line. “If you drew up a business plan, you
probably would not do this”, says the “Goodbye Girl,”
who has battled grasshoppers and drought. “I haven’t
been able to make it a huge success, but I feel like
one. I’m doing business in a spiritual way.”
The spirit is hopping, considering that her nearest
neighbor, Shirley MacLaine, drops by on a golf cart,
gardens on Mason’s farm and has a new book, Sage-ing
While Age-ing (Atria, November 2007). With all the good
vibes, Mason jokes, the gals have it covered if space
aliens ever touch down nearby. “Shirley will greet them
and I’ll feed them.”
On the menu? Not bottled water – a green no-no since the
famed chef Alice Waters switched to tap varietals (from
the faucet) at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., to
reduce waste. Waters, a well known promoter of natural
eating, was just elected to the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, only the second chef honored since Julia
Child.
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