Lindsay Myron has a passion for cooking and farming, so it was only natural she married the two into a successful business venture.

In 2019, Myron founded Smoot’s Flavor Farm just outside of Pullman. She said it all started after spending some time working on her husband’s family farm.

“I worked on my husband’s family farm for about three years and decided, you know, I love farming, I really want to farm, but that kind of farming was not for me, and I didn’t feel like I could make it work,” Myron said. “So I kind of ventured out on my own, and I felt like herbs fit with the climate on the Palouse really well; they’re a really versatile crop, and there’s a lot of ways that you can market it.” 

Myron specializes in culinary and tea herbs, as well as other flavorful products like garlic and specialty varieties, including up to 10 different types of basil and three types of thyme, she said. 

“I really wanted to do value-added goods, so dried herbs, and it’s taken me until this year to be able to start doing that, mostly because of food safety rules,” Myron said. “So I had to build a processing facility that gets licensed by the state to make sure everything is safe and good for the consumer, and it took a really long time to get that done, but I’m really excited this year is my first year to be able to do that.”

Smoot’s Flavor Farm is located at the bottom of Smoot Hill on a one-acre piece of land that Myron rents from her larger family’s farm. The farm is adjacent to Myron’s house, and her processing facility is on site as well, she said. 

“I actually converted a 40-foot shipping container into a processing facility, so half of the container is like a dehydration chamber — It’s a gas-heated, super-insulated, really efficient, drying room and then the other half of it is a processing kitchen,” Myron said. “So it’s got all the things that you need, stainless steel tables and storage and stuff like that; it was a big project, and I actually worked with a group of [WSU] students in mechanical engineering in a capstone class to design the dehydrator room.”

Smoot’s Flavor Farm is hyperlocal, and products can be found at the Pullman and Moscow farmers markets, local restaurants occasionally and indirect customers, Myron said. 

“I have an online store, and I post all of the fresh herbs that I have available on the store, and people can place an order and then pick it up at the farmers market, so that guarantees that I have what they want at the market,” Myron said. 

Most of the farm’s fresh herbs are sold through her Community Supported Agriculture group. For 18 weeks each summer, people can get a fresh bouquet of culinary herbs that are curated to pair with other produce that patrons can find at the farmers market or in their own garden, Myron said.

“I also give them some recipes and some ideas to try with the herbs, so that’s been really popular as well,” Myron said. “I try to offer some ideas to help people get inspired and use produce that they find at the farmers market that is maybe starting to get a little redundant, and maybe they need a little spark of inspiration.”

Although Myron can not grow tea leaves, she buys them to mix with the tea herbs she grows and turns into herbal teas, she said. 

“The grapefruit green tea is really popular, and I also do a basil mint tea that’s got a cinnamon basil and I think spearmint, mixed together with a few other things, and it’s just delightful. It’s my favorite,” Myron said. 

Katie Emerson, a friend of Lindsay’s and member of her CSA, has seen Myron’s business flourish since it first started, Emerson said.

“I think she’s done a wonderful job; I think it’s something that this area really needed,” Emerson said. “I would get herbs, and they’d rot in my fridge because I didn’t know what to do, so it’s wonderful because I don’t have to grow anything, but I still get fresh herbs, and I still learn how to actually use them.”