COCOLALLA — If you really want to support our local economy and its agricultural community, it is not only possible, it’s easier than ever now that Thomas and Darla Fletcher have opened the Only Local Farmers Market in the log cabin near the post office in Cocolalla.

It is there you will find meat grown by local ranchers—even yak raised in the Athol area and emu meat from a farmer on Dufort Road — milk and soaps from local goat farmers, cheeses made by Mennonites, flours milled from grains grown near Bonners Ferry — all non-GMO — and affordable fragrant fresh flower bouquets to cheer up any living room with the glorious notion of summer in a vase.

Ideally, Thomas would like to see two-thirds of his inventory foodstuffs and the other third would be handmade artwork, crafts such as earrings, furniture, and even metalwork created in the Panhandle. He will also accept produce and products from the Spokane Valley.

The Fletchers moved to Idaho about five years ago from Austin, Texas, because they are philosophically aligned with the beliefs of Thomas Jefferson, who believed strongly in an agrarian culture. Even though they lived in a city of two million for decades, they both have fond memories of spending time on their respective grandparents’ family farms as kids.

They want to devote the rest of their time on this plane of existence in support of their beliefs. Jefferson said, “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if He ever had a chosen people, whose breast He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.” They purchased the six-plus acres on the highway with the log cabin, huge barn, and house, and in September, opened Only Local.

So far it’s been a less-than-profitable enterprise. Fletcher candidly says he takes no salary and doesn’t want one. He just wants to make enough to cover utilities, insurance, and his employee’s wages. He is willing to lose money for two years before he shutters the doors. To thrive, he needs more products to sell. He encourages those who want to sell their homemade and homegrown products to come by the store. He would like to see the store filled with three times as much inventory than it presently holds.

Philosophically, Fletcher made allusion to an apparent lack of virtue and civility, politeness, and cleanliness in our country today. His beliefs are reminiscent of the William Butler Yeats poem about the center falling apart, where the “falcon cannot hear the falconer.” Fletcher wants to create a place where the falcon can hear the falconer, so if things do fall apart, and the center does not hold, the community-at-large will have a venue where locals help each other sustain their passions and their mutual interests in healthful nourishment and ready provisions. But it takes others committed to the same principles to achieve a semblance of success.

Thomas says he is a Christian and a Bible verse is on one side of a sign out front. Besides the obvious American flag, there is the red United States Marine Corps flag.

The Fletchers also own the huge 90-year-old former dairy barn to the south of the store. Right now, he said, it is a domicile for pigeons. In the winter months, it is used by the Little League players for practices. It is big enough to hold 1,000 people, the Sagle fire marshal told him. Fletcher believes it would be a great venue for live music with food trucks, or for other types of events. Someone is looking at it for that purpose.

Presently, Fletcher is spread too thinly with managing his own ranch, and his soul is connected to Only Local, the store, to think of being anything but a leasor for someone who wants to take it on. He does not want to sell it.

“When we bought it, it was filled with trash — old tires and junk. I cleaned it out. It has electricity and lights, but no heat or plumbing,” he said.

Fletcher said the store, in upcoming months, will have artisan breads made by a couple who had a successful bread-making business in the Portland area but made a move to Spirit Lake where they are setting up a big bakery for wide distribution of quality artisan breads.

During the summer season, vendors set up outside on the porch and in the grass out front at Only Local from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursdays and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays. These include Debbie, who prefers to go sans surname, who raises German angora rabbits, long-haired beauties whose fur she shears and spins into wool. Presently she has 14 rabbits, the most recent litter born on Mother’s Day.

Debbie and her family moved to the Sagle area from Alaska 10 years ago where they settled on 20 acres and run a small-scale farm with herb and vegetable gardens. The gardens produce because she has an unlimited supply of rabbit manure.

Her business is called “Indigo Angora” because she uses natural dyes for her rabbit wool. She also appreciates the meditative quality of spinning and the science behind using natural dyes. For example, when the wool is in a vat dye from the indigo plant, it appears yellow-green. When it has contact with the air; “there is a fun chemical reaction that is like magic — it turns blue,” she said. She uses French marigolds and onion skins for dyeing 100 percent cotton pieces a yellow hue, and she uses the lobster mushrooms in the fall to create a reddish-orange dye, adding that if baking soda is added, the dye turns pink. Debbie would like to create a wardrobe that is all locally sourced, but it would be challenging, she said.

“The COVID-19 scare has shown how dependent we are on mass industry, but we can grow our own foods. We have witnessed a breakdown of the meat industry, but we have a store that is providing locally grown meat,” she said.

For more information about her fiercely fuzzy angora rabbits, her yarn and fiber, call 208-304-3934 or go to www.indigoangora.com

Another vendor, Pam Spurgeon, sells roasted-in-Sagle coffee at the Only Local Farmers Market. She and her husband, Scott, who both have full-time jobs in Sandpoint, sell their custom roasted coffee beans under the name of Hook N’ Coffee.

Spurgeon says she and Scott came up with the name because they both are passionate about fishing and they both enjoy coffee roasting. Hook N’ Coffee was the result. “We both get up at 4:30 a.m., so we are happy to wake up to our coffee,” she said.

Spurgeon is a nurse at Valley Vista. Several years ago she took a class on coffee roasting at Diedrich’s Coffee Roasters, the Sandpoint-area business that makes coffee roasters, and she became a certified coffee bean roaster.

“We make only small batches from 12 ounces to 5 pounds,” she said. The beans come from around the world and we work with only one man who shows us videos of the farms and the workers; he does direct fair trade deals, she said.

Hook N’ Coffee’s best-selling beans are the “5150,” described online this way: “The robusta beans are the power kicker, and will give you a caffeine high with a creamy finish. We only select robustas that we can actually drink straight, not the beans that the major roasters use for filler…Get Crazy Caffeinated with this one-of-a-kind blend.”

Pam Spurgeon also makes coffee bean favors for bridal showers and weddings with labels made for the event. She also creates gift baskets at Christmastime filled with a variety of coffees, for sale for the coffee-loving friend or relative.

Presently, their sales are primarily to family and friends and through word-of-mouth. “We only roast small batches at a time, so we can customize,” she said. For both coffee tasting and buying, Only Local carries a variety of their coffees, both beans and ground.

“No one else is doing a year-round all-local market,” Spurgeon said. “Everyone here works hard and they are passionate about what they are doing,” she said, describing the vendors at Only Local.

For more information on Hook N’ Coffee, call 559-909-0172.

For more information on Only Local Farmers Market, contact Fletcher at 208-265-2277 or manager@onlylocal.farm.

Susan Drinkard writes features for the Daily Bee. She can be reached at susanadiana@icloud.com.