August 17, 2009 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka Farmers Market debriefing and work party on Wednesday

The Sitka Local Foods Network will host a Sitka Farmers Market debriefing and St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm work party on from 4:30-6 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 19, at the communal garden located behind St. Peter’s By The Sea Episcopal Church, 611 Lincoln St.

Ideas on how to improve the Sitka Farmers Markets will be discussed, and we’ll do some weeding and slug hunting. The person that catches the most slugs gets a rare, tasty, healthy prize. Volunteers are discouraged from bringing slugs from their own yards in an attempt to increase their odds of winning. This event is open to the public.

For more information, contact Linda Wilson at 747-3096 (nights and weekends).

August 16, 2009 by Charles Bingham

• This week’s e-newsletter (Aug. 16)

Click here to read this week’s Sitka Local Foods Newsletter courtesy of Linda Wilson. Don’t forget, you can sign up for the e-newsletter by typing your e-mail address in the box on the left side of the page.

August 14, 2009 by Charles Bingham

• Third Sitka Farmers Market takes place on Saturday (Aug. 15)

The third Sitka Farmers Market of the season takes place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 15, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall (235 Katlian St.) and in the adjoining parking lot owned by the Baranof Island Housing Authority.

“The Sitka Farmers Market offers unique varieties of fresh, nutritious food at the peak of flavor, creates a vibrant community gathering place, and provides the opportunity for learning about healthy life choices and local products,” says Linda Wilson, Sitka Farmers Market Co-Coordinator.

The Sitka Farmers Market features about 20-30 vendors each market who sell locally grown produce, locally harvested fish and locally made arts and crafts. Local musicians perform on the stage inside the ANB Hall and in the jam tent outside, local cooks make ready-to-eat dishes and there are activities for the children. The Sitka Farmers Market is the only farmers market in Southeast Alaska authorized to accept WIC vouchers, which can be used by WIC-eligible families to purchase produce.

Booths are available for Saturday’s market for $5 a table. For more information about this week’s market, contact Linda Wilson at 747-3096 (nights) or lawilson87@hotmail.com, or contact Kerry MacLane at maclanekerry@yahoo.com.

By the way, don’t forget to vote for the Sitka Farmers Market in the “Love Your Farmers Market” contest sponsored by Care2.com and LocalHarvest.org. The market with the most votes wins $5,000. To vote, just click on the contest logo below and follow the link.

August 14, 2009 by Charles Bingham

• City offers free topsoil for Sitka gardeners

A mound of topsoil at Blatchley Community Gardens

According to Thursday’s issue of the Daily Sitka Sentinel, the city is offering limited amounts of free topsoil for use by community gardens.

A limit of one pick-up truck-sized load per household may be had at the north side of the community garden behind Blatchley Middle School.

Gardeners also are reminded that coffee grounds are still available. They’re located on the north end of the garden.

For more information, call Sitka Community School/RecycleSITKA at 747-8670.

Doug Osborne and his daughter, Darby, shovel topsoil into a wheelbarrow while building the WISEGUYS men's health group's garden plot in May 2008 at the Blatchley Community Gardens

August 12, 2009 by Charles Bingham

• Community Gardens Act of 2009 introduced in Congress

According to the Vancouver, British Columbia, blog CityFarmer.info, U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) on July 15 introduced HR 3225 into the U.S. House of Representatives, a bill known as the Community Gardens Act of 2009 (click here to read the text of the bill).

In a nutshell, this bill creates a grant program that compensates community groups up to 80 percent of the costs of starting and maintaining a community garden (click here to read the CityFarmer.info article about the bill).

Activities eligible to receive grant assistance include acquisition of interest in real property, construction, community outreach, operations, and any other appropriate activity. When making grants, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will consider the geographic diversity among grantees and the number of individuals in a local community that are likely to participate in a community garden.

“I’ve introduced this bill to help local groups create new community gardens in neighborhoods around the country,” Inslee said in a press release posted on his Congressional Web site (click here to read it). “Community gardens provide local food sources, strengthen and beautify neighborhoods and let people in urban settings enjoy the benefits of local agriculture. As a parent, I’m also happy to note that community gardens engage families and children in growing their own vegetables, which studies have shown has increased the willingness of children to eat their veggies.”

According to a national study, 1 million households participated in community gardens in 2008, but an estimated 5 million households expressed an interest in starting a garden plot near their home. Groups eligible to apply for funds in Inslee’s new grant program include community-development organizations, schools, state and local governments, tribal organizations and other groups. By encouraging these groups to construct gardens in their communities, Inslee’s bill will promote nutrition, environmental awareness, and neighborhood development.

On the same day the Community Gardens Act of 2009 was introduced, Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) introduced a complementary resolution to designate August as “National Community Gardening Awareness Month.”

“I support the Community Gardens Act of 2009, as it will help Americans across the country establish new gardens and support those who want to take part in feeding their families and their communities,” Matsui said. “Community gardens are on the rise across the nation as Americans look to shrink their monthly grocery bills, introduce produce and more nutritious foods into their children’s diets, and as a way to create a connection between our communities and the food we feed our families.”

Encourage Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) to support this bill, and ask him to sign on as a co-sponsor. Also, write and ask Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) to sponsor a similar bill in the U.S. Senate. Feel free to take things a step further and notify your state representative and senator that Alaska needs a similar bill using this legislation as a model.

Click here to e-mail Rep. Don Young.

Click here to e-mail Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

Click here to e-mail Sen. Mark Begich.

August 12, 2009 by Charles Bingham

• Capital City Weekly covers Sitka Farmers Market

Capital City Weekly screenshot showing the Table of the Day Award winners from the second Sitka Farmers Market of the summer (Aug. 1)

This week’s edition of Capital City Weekly (a free Southeast Alaska regional weekly newspaper that comes out on Wednesdays) had some good coverage of the Sitka Farmers Market.

Click here to see a photo honoring Table of the Day Award winners Pete Karras and Mimi Goodwin from the second Sitka Farmers Market on Aug. 1. This photo ran in the Health section of the paper.

Click here to see a package of four photos taken by Capital City Weekly reporter Libby Sterling when she was in Sitka for the first Sitka Farmers Market on July 18. This package ran in the Outdoors section of the paper.

By the way, the third Sitka Farmers Market of the summer takes place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 15, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall, 235 Katlian St. Some booth space is available, so call Linda Wilson at 747-3096 (nights and weekends) for more information.

The Sitka Local Foods Network (the 501(c)(3) non-profit group that sponsors the Sitka Farmers Market) welcomes any volunteers who want to help set up the market before it opens and take it down once the market is over. Also, the Sitka Local Foods Network accepts donations of extra locally grown produce and berries people may have to sell at the network’s booth at the Sitka Farmers Market. The money raised at the network’s booth helps fund Sitka Local Foods Network projects (the market, community gardens, seed money for the community greenhouse project, educational speakers, etc.). Just drop your extra produce off at the network’s booth, usually outside right next to the building on Katlian St., at the start of the market.

And finally, there was one last story of interest in this week’s Capital City Weekly. Click here to read an article and photo package about the variety of plants being grown at the Jensen-Olson Arboretum in Juneau.

A screenshot from the Capital City Weekly photo package about Sitka's local foods from the first Sitka Farmers Market of the summer (July 18)

August 11, 2009 by Charles Bingham

• Chena Hot Springs greenhouse a model for Sitka greenhouse project

One of the five focus areas for the Sitka Local Foods Network is to build a community greenhouse in Sitka. This will serve several functions, such as extending our growing season, allowing us to grow a wider variety of produce and expanding our capacity to grow fruits and vegetables in Sitka. The Sitka Local Foods Network has been looking at several locations around town and recently submitted a proposal for a possible site (more details as they become available).

Anyway, there is a model for a successful greenhouse here in Alaska, and it’s worth looking at so people from Sitka can see the possibilities.

Chena Hot Springs, located about 60 miles from Fairbanks, is working toward becoming a more sustainable community and an important element of this vision is being able to produce more of their own food locally. In 2004, Chena Hot Springs Resort installed a 1,000-square-foot test greenhouse that has become the only year-round producing greenhouse in Interior Alaska (click here to read more).

The hoop house greenhouse was able to maintain an interior temperature of 78 degrees Fahrenheit, even when outside temperatures dipped to minus-56 (the 134-degree difference is the largest ever recorded for a controlled environment facility in the U.S.). The greenhouse is heated by geothermal energy from the hot springs (165-degree water running through pipes embedded in concrete floor slabs). Click here for a downloadable report (as a PDF file) on the economic benefits of the project.

After the successful first year or two of production, Chena built a new 4,320-square-foot greenhouse to provide the resort’s restaurant with a greater variety of fresh produce on a year-round basis. Under optimal conditions the nearly 14,000 lettuce plants can grow nearly 150,000 heads of lettuce in a year. They also have 450 different tomatoes, including six Dutch varieties, a cherry tomato variety, a grape tomato variety, a beefsteak tomato variety and three intermediate cluster varieties. They also grow green beans, peppers, cucumbers and numerous greens and herbs (click here for a photo gallery). Chena Hot Springs Resort is working in partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station (click here for a link to the UAF AFES).

Chena Hot Springs Resort, which uses geothermal and other waste heat for power, will host the Fourth Annual Chena Renewable Energy Fair on Saturday, Aug. 22. Click here for more information.

August 9, 2009 by Charles Bingham

• Juneau Empire features Sitka Farmers Market

A screenshot of the Juneau Empire page showing the winners of the Table of the Day Award from the second Sitka Farmers Market on Aug. 1

Click here to see where the Juneau Empire on Sunday ran a photo of Sitka Local Foods Network volunteer Maybelle Filler giving Pete Karras of Pete’s Sourdough Bread and Mimi Goodwin of Just Arts the Table of the Day Award from the second Sitka Farmers Market of the season on Aug. 1 (Pete and Mimi shared a table).

In addition to the Sitka Farmers Market photo, there were other articles of note in Sunday’s Juneau Empire for those interested in learning more about local food.

Click here to read about the second annual Juneau Farmers Market and Local Foods Festival, which takes place on Aug. 29. Juneau only hosts one farmers market a year. Click here for the Juneau Farmers Market site.

Click here to read an article about the Juneau Community Garden. The Juneau Community Garden’s annual Harvest Fair is Saturday, Aug. 22. Click here to go to the Juneau Community Garden site. Click here for the Juneau Community Garden Association site.

Click here to read an article about the poisonous baneberry, a red berry that grows here in Sitka as well as in Juneau. There are photos, to help people identify this poisonous berry.

August 9, 2009 by Charles Bingham

• Vote for the Sitka Farmers Market in the ‘Love Your Farmers Market’ contest

Sitka Farmers Market Calls On Community To Vote For It In The ‘Love Your Farmers Market’ Contest In An Effort To Win $5,000 From Care2.com

Prizes to help farmers markets across the country promote fresh, local foods and small family farms

SITKA, Alaska, Aug. 9, 2009 — Sitka residents have a fun new way to show the Sitka Farmers Market some love — and help this farmers market win $5,000 through a fun, online contest.

The “Love Your Farmers Market” contest, sponsored by Care2.com and LocalHarvest.org, will award the voters’ favorite farmers market the grand prize, which will go a long way to help the Sitka Farmers Market support local family farmers and provide Sitka with fresh, healthy, locally grown food. Voting opened on June 19 and closes on Sept. 17. In addition to the $5,000 grand prize for the top farmers market, there are several other prizes including weekly $250 prizes for a random market and some prizes for voters (tote bags, $50 prizes for top recruiters to spend at their market, etc.).

Such a contest couldn’t be more timely. With a global recession, food scares and growing concern over industrial farming practices, Americans are searching for ways to reconnect with local, healthy and safe foods for themselves and their families. “Recession gardens” are popping up around the country. Organic food is now a $20 billion industry and still expanding in spite of the economy. First Lady Michelle Obama broke ground on the new White House organic vegetable garden. More and more, Americans are visiting their local farmers markets to feed their families and support their local farmers.

Care2 (www.care2.com), the largest online community of people passionate about making a difference, is teaming up with LocalHarvest (www.localharvest.org), America’s most popular website for finding food grown close to home, to bring public awareness to the need to support family farms, fresh healthy food, and the farmers markets that connect these farms and food to our communities.

In addition to the grand prize, Care2 is awarding $3,000, $2,000 and two prizes of $1,000 to the four runner-ups respectively. Local residents and market supporters will determine the winners of this contest, and can vote for the Sitka Farmers Market by going to this link.

“This is the best time to support America’s farmers markets,” said Randy Paynter, president and founder of Care2.com. “More and more Americans are taking an interest in local foods, sustainable farming and healthy eating. Care2 is proud to reward the farmers markets that our members love, and to grow the local food movement, one vote at a time.”

“People across the country are rediscovering the benefits of local food,” said Erin Barnett, Director of LocalHarvest.org. “Not only is the food at your farmers market fresher, tastier, and better for the environment, it’s also good for your local economy. By supporting farmers markets, we support family farmers and help them stay in business.”

“Five thousand dollars would make a huge impact on the kinds of support we can offer to farmers and outreach we can do to the community,” said Kerry MacLane, president of the Sitka Local Foods Network, which sponsors the Sitka Farmers Market. “We encourage all of our neighbors and customers to visit the contest web site and vote for us.”

Click here to vote or click on the contest logo above.

August 9, 2009 by Charles Bingham

• Special e-newsletter for Sitka Farmers Market

Click here to read a special e-newsletter from Linda Wilson about the Sitka Farmers Market and issues related to our second market on Aug. 1.

In addition to the issues listed in the special e-newsletter, please remember that no pets are allowed inside the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall during the markets because food preparation and sales are taking place in the building. Please leave all pets at home (or in your car).

Also, we gladly take any donations of extra produce grown in family gardens to be sold at the Sitka Local Foods Network booth. The proceeds from these sales help support our projects, such as rent for the markets, supplies for St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm and seed money for our proposed Sitka Community Greenhouse and Education Center. We’re always looking for new vendors, especially those people with big gardens who want to sell some of their extra veggies, people who pick berries and people who sell baked bread.

By the way, our next Sitka Farmers Market is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 15, at ANB Hall on Katlian Street.