My friend, Beth Gibans, who died of cancer at the age of 58, was an organic farmer who loved to share her experiences with others in the hope that they would follow in her footsteps.
Born in San Francisco, Beth was the youngest of four children of Nina (née Freedlander) and Jim Gibans, who had spent a year in Britain on a Fulbright Fellowship in Architecture, working to help restore Liverpool after World War II, before settling in Nina’s birthplace, Cleveland, Ohio, after their marriage.
Beth went to Hawken School in Cleveland and then to the University of Michigan, where she spent a year in Costa Rica studying native agriculture. After college, she worked for public interest research groups and became involved in sustainable agriculture while interning for the Land Institute in Kansas.
This led her to an apprenticeship in ecological horticulture at the University of California at Santa Cruz, after which she started her own business, Sauvie Island Organics, near Portland, with another apprentice from Santa Cruz.
When she married Leon Werdinger, a photographer, in 2003, she moved to Joseph, Oregon, in the Wallowa Mountains, in the northeast of the state, and established her own farm, Backyard Gardens, which offered customers a full season of the products were available.
A community educator at heart, to help her on the farm, she has hired recent college graduates as apprentices, providing them with hands-on experience and the skills to start their own businesses. During the winter months, she took her knowledge on the road to share her experience in meetings and conferences.
An avid Guardian online reader, Beth’s commitment was teamwork, community building and environmental stewardship – an approach that was recognized with a Chamber of Commerce Agricultural Leadership Award. of Wallawa County.
She is survived by Leon, her siblings, Amy, David and Jonathan, three nephews, Kelsey, Cody and Andrew, and a niece, Melissa.