Idaho women lead in fields from farming to fine dining

While many areas of food and agriculture are male-dominated, meet some of the women who are paving the way in their industries

Coffee roaster Alexa Montero prepares coffee beans at Dawson Taylor in Boise. | Photo by Marilyn Isaac Photography

Story by Riley Haun
Photos by Marilyn Isaac Photography

After nearly 20 years, Kathryn McClaskey can still feel the sting left by her first day in the vineyard. Fresh out of college after earning her master’s degree in viticulture and enology, she was an intern at an upscale vineyard and winery in Walla Walla. Like any intern, she’d be starting from the bottom, and McClaskey was set to work scrubbing massive tanks in the winery’s cellar. 

Wine educator Kathryn McClaskey is the owner and enologist behind Boise’s House of Wine. | Photo by Marilyn Isaac Photography

Outfitted in coveralls and protective gear, and eager to start right in the industry she’d been dreaming of working in for years, McClaskey dove in. She shrugged off the burning on her skin as she worked, but it became progressively harder to ignore the blistering pain as the cleaning solution breached her gear. When a supervisor ducked in to check on her progress, McClaskey remembers him being stunned she hadn’t said something right away as he sent her speeding home to shower. 

“I didn’t want to be seen as weak or complaining,” said McClaskey, now director of education for Hayden Beverage Company and the enologist and owner behind the Boise-based House of Wine. “There weren’t many women at that point in the viticulture fields, and I had this need to prove myself and I didn’t want to say anything. It’s taken me years to find my voice.”

For many women like McClaskey, innovating in food and agricultural fields where leadership and prestige tend to skew male has meant finding a voice and using it to make a path for themselves and others where few examples existed before.  From farming to fine dining and coffee roasting to winemaking, female entrepreneurs and creatives have been part of Idaho’s thriving food scene from the beginning and are leading the way as it grows. 

Blazing the trail

Counting just the produce grown on the 11-acre organic farm she operates near Sandpoint with her husband, Thom Sadoski, Diane Green’s work has been the basis for high-end restaurant meals and weeknight family dinners for 30 years.

Diane Green has run Greentree Naturals farm in Sandpoint for 30 years. | Photo courtesy of Diane Green.

But if you take into account the dozens of apprentices she’s taught, the students who’ve attended her workshops and the farming aspirants who’ve read her training manuals, Green’s impact on the Northwest’s farming community is nearly unimaginable. 

Along with her farm, Greentree Naturals, Green can claim a lot of firsts. Before she was a farmer, she was one of the first women hired for backcountry work by the U.S. Forest Service in the 1970s, which brought her to Idaho. The farm was the first in Sandpoint to sell produce direct to local restaurants in the early 1990s, anticipating the budding demand for farm-fresh, locally grown food. It was among the first operations certified organic when the Idaho Department of Agriculture began certification 20 years ago, a program Green helped establish after joining the national organic program the first year it rolled out. 

“Farmers tend to be a stubborn lot, and we have this instinct to do it for ourselves, learn on our own. but we had the opportunity to help give us a voice and get us together to make us stronger.”

Being first for everything, though, meant Green never had mentors to guide her. In Idaho, 45% of principal farmers — those who make the majority of farm-related decisions — are women, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But when Green started out, she didn’t see those numbers reflected back at her. It wasn’t because of lack of diversity or gender discrimination, but because representation for small-acreage farmers — frequently women running solo operations or partnering with spouses, like Green — simply didn’t exist yet. 

“There was no one to compete against yet, since I was the first founding those organizations,” Green said. “Farmers tend to be a stubborn lot, and we have this instinct to do it for ourselves, learn on our own. But we had the opportunity to help give us a voice and get us together to make us stronger.”

Building a career

Alexa Montero pours coffee beans into a roaster at Dawson Taylor. | Photo by Marilyn Isaac Photography

For Alexa Montero, a coffee roaster at Dawson Taylor in Boise, finding examples of female leaders within her industry was one of the final steps to achieving a long-term career goal. 

Alexa Montero moved up the ladder from barista to cafe management to coffee roaster. | Photo by Marilyn Isaac Photography

But elsewhere in the vast global coffee industry, specialized and higher-paid jobs like roasting and buying are often held by men, while women often occupy less prestigious and lower-earning roles. The disparity is clearest among coffee farmers, of whom 70% are estimated to be women, according to the International Coffee Organization, but who frequently lack access to resources and recognition in the wider industry. 

Montero had been passionate about coffee since she was a teenager, moving up the ladder from barista to cafe management. When a position opened up for a coffee roaster within Dawson Taylor, Montero felt that having a precedent set by a woman who’d previously been on the roasting team and a female general manager who recommended Montero for the job made it clear there was no reason not to hire her. She hadn’t been worried about encountering gender bias in the company, but the road ahead had always been a little foggy.

“When I was a barista, I had no idea what the path would be for me to get to being a roaster,” Montero said. “But I feel very optimistic that as more women do become roasters or other specialized roles, it'll become exponentially more accessible to women who are interested in it just by seeing other women in those roles and those women reaching out to support other women in the industry.”

Leading the way

Sarah Kelly is the chef and co-owner of Petite 4 in Boise. | Photo by Marilyn Isaac Photography

From her first job as a line cook 26 years ago, Sarah Kelly has seen plenty of changes in the restaurant industry. But one thing was predictable over the course of her career: In any given kitchen, she was usually the lone woman.

Now, as chef and co-owner of Petite 4, a cozy bistro on the Boise Bench, Kelly is still in a minority. Only 24% of chefs and head cooks in the U.S. are women, according to Census Bureau data.  

Sarah Kelly working in the kitchen at her restaurant, Petite 4. | Photo by Marilyn Isaac Photography

But the James Beard Award-nominated Kelly has never felt held back within her industry. Restaurant work prizes capability and work ethic above all else, Kelly said, and anyone who’s up to snuff can make the cut in Kelly’s kitchen and many others, in her experience. In fact, there was a period of time when the entire back-of-house staff at Petite 4 was female. Kelly wasn’t seeking out women, per se — it just happened that all the best-qualified cooks out there were women.

“I’ve seen a lot more women entering the industry in the past 15 or 20 years, and it might have something to do with TV somewhat glamorizing kitchen work, even though it’s definitely not glamorous,” Kelly said. “But it’s drawn types of people who might not have thought about being a cook before, because it’s kind of always been countercultural to work in a kitchen.”

Long nights and strange hours standard in most kitchens aren’t often compatible with childcare schedules for working moms, Kelly said, and some women might have previously been put off by stereotypes of kitchen culture or low pay. But Kelly thinks the industry has made progress in addressing cultural problems and wage disparities in recent years, helping to assuage some fears.

The work still requires a certain kind of person, though. The hard-working and creatively driven Kelly hopes her high standards at Petite 4 serve as a model for people of all genders hoping to break into the culinary world. 

“I hope that myself and any other women in this industry are here because we deserve it and we work hard like any woman or man does,” Kelly said. “We’re great at what we do and that’s how we’ve earned it.”

Forging ahead

Kathryn McClaskey, the Boise-based wine educator, has seen the wine world make strides in including marginalized groups in all aspects of the industry. It’s about time, too, since women are far and away the biggest U.S. consumers of wine, McClaskey said. 

Forming mentorships and community with other women in the wine industry to hasten those strides has always been a priority for McClaskey as she’s advanced in her career and increasingly found her voice as a respected expert. 

“You have to be able to visualize yourself,” McClaskey said. “Not just breaking a glass ceiling, but seeing somebody else who did it too, and you think, ‘Oh, wow, they are human. And they did this. And it's not something that's an otherworldly power. It’s available to me.’”

“I just think, hopefully, we're creating a better culture where it's OK to try things and it's OK to step outside of what is prescribed.”

For McClaskey, despite the often predominantly male spaces she’s worked in, having female mentors and role models at all stages of her career has made all the difference in knowing what she’s capable of. As an educator, she works to maintain a true open-door policy and create a welcoming space that allows anyone to feel they’re capable of rising in the ranks, too. 

And as a perpetual student herself — she’s spent the last decade studying for the Master of Wine certification, a prestigious title held by fewer than 500 people worldwide — McClaskey is always learning new ways to help others see the industry she loves the way she sees it. She’s deeply optimistic about what the future holds for women in every corner of the food world.

“I really believe that there are resources out there and growth is happening,” McClaskey said. “I look forward to the life that my daughter, who’s 10, will be able to craft in the future because she’s seen me studying at 5:30 a.m. every day since she was tiny. She sees me having to do hard things and fail, and then get back up again and try. I just think, hopefully, we're creating a better culture where it's OK to try things and it's OK to step outside of what is prescribed.”