Supporters of Sitka’s community garden project at the top of Jarvis Street can help the project along by donating to a new SeedMoney.org fundraising campaign that launched on Friday, Nov. 15. Donors have 30 days, until Dec. 15, to help one or more of 432 food garden projects around the world fund themselves.

“The goal is $2,500 which will cover about half of the cost of an engineered drainage plan, a pre-development requirement that will have to be met before we’ll be able to start clearing the site,” project manager Joel Hanson said.

The Jarvis Street community garden project was proposed by Transition Sitka and the Sitka Local Foods Network, and it will fill a glaring need in this town since the Blatchley Community Garden was closed in 2016. This project will build a new half-acre community garden at the top of Jarvis Street, near where the Sitka Homeless Coalition is building a tiny home neighborhood for unhoused Sitkans. This is the only Alaska project in this year’s #SeedMoneyChallenge.

“After more than a year of planning, we are close to securing a long-term land lease for a half-acre community garden. Construction will begin in 2025,” Hanson said.

The Jarvis Street Community Garden will have room for 45 standard 10-foot-by-20-foot plots, plus a few smaller growing beds along the perimeter fence for cultivating tall or trellised plants like snap peas.

In addition to Transition Sitka keeping all of the money raised during the contest, there are bonus grants for projects that raise more money. Any funds raised beyond what is needed for the drainage plan will be held and used for construction of the garden.

Please support our garden by going to this link, https://donate.seedmoney.org/10864/jarvis-street-community-garden, and completing the donation process. We had a similar #SeedMoneyChallenge in 2023 for a site survey, raising $2,410 with a goal of $1,500. Donations are tax deductible.

For more information, go to https://transitionsitka.org/projects/sitka-food/sitka-community-gardens/ or call project coordinator Joel Hanson at 907-747-9834.

The Sitka Local Foods Network in recent years created a sponsorship program to help promote our mission, and Sitka businesses and individuals are welcome to join for 2025. The goal of the sponsorship program is to make the projects we undertake (Sitka Farmers Market, St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm, gardening education, food business development, etc.) more sustainable.

“Sitka has a precarious position when it comes to food security, and the Sitka Local Foods Network is trying to improve our community food security through our mission to increase the amount of locally harvested and produced foods in the diets of Southeast Alaskans,” Sitka Local Foods Network president Charles Bingham said. “Sponsors of the Sitka Local Foods Network are working with an organization and a farmers market that places a high value on local food and businesses, fun, premium quality goods and experiences.”

In recent years, the Sitka Local Foods Network has hosted 7-8 Sitka Farmers Markets during the summer (from July to September). Due to COVID-19, we had to greatly scale back our 2020 Sitka Farmers Markets, focusing just on produce sales and using an online sales portal, but we did double our number of market weeks. In 2021, we hosted an outdoor-only market that brought back some of our vendors. In 2022, we returned to our usual venue of the Alaska Native Brotherhood Founders Hall after a two-year absence, and we almost had a normal market (with masking to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and no half-tables to spread out vendors). We had a similar experience in our 2023 and 2024 markets. We haven’t set our 2025 market dates yet, but we anticipate we will announce them in the spring.

In addition, we grow most of the local produce sold at the markets at St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm communal garden and a couple of other locations in town. In March 2020 we built a new high tunnel at St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm, and we were able to add another new high tunnel before the 2021 growing season. These high tunnels allowed us to extend our growing season and helped reduce the impact of our last couple of cold, wet summers. We usually offer a variety of garden education classes in the spring. And one way we ensured fresh, local produce is available to lower-income Sitkans is through our matching program for WIC and SNAP beneficiaries (the first $20 spent on produce at the market), courtesy of recent grants from the Sitka White Elephant Shop and the Sitka Legacy Foundation.

In 2018 we launched the Sitka Food Business Innovation Contest to inspire food entrepreneurs in Sitka, and have continued the program with the expectation of hosting it again in 2025 (our 2024 winners were Transition Sitka for work on the Jarvis Street community garden and Red Herring food truck). In 2023-24, the Sitka Local Foods Network partnered with Transition Sitka on two projects — one to update the 2014 Sitka Community Food Assessment Indicators Report and the other to build a new community garden at the top of Jarvis Street. .

There are four levels of sponsorship available, and each has its own set of perks.

• Grower ($2,500-plus) — We’ll hang your banner at ANB Hall during the Sitka Farmers Markets, include your logo and company name prominently in our merchandise and advertisements, and thank you on our social media and web pages. If appropriate for the Sitka Farmers Market, you may set up a free promotional booth.
• Harvester ($1,000-$2,499) — We’ll hang your banner at ANB Hall during the Sitka Farmers Markets and include your logo and company name in our merchandise and advertisements.
• Planter ($250-$999) — Your banner will hang at ANB Hall during the Sitka Farmers Markets.
• Friend ($50-$249) — You are listed on our online sponsor page.

We have limited space for banners at the Sitka Farmers Markets, so please contact us before June 1 to guarantee your spot. To learn more about the sponsorship program, click the link below for details and a registration form. For more information, contact Charles Bingham at (907) 623-7660 or by email at sitkalocalfoodsnetwork@gmail.com.

• 2025 Sitka Local Foods Network sponsorship program details and registration form

An update to the Sitka Community Food Assessment Indicators Report has been released this week, 10 years after the original report was published in 2014.

The update was compiled by Sitka resident Callie Simmons, who used the project to earn a master’s degree in public health degree from the University of Alaska Anchorage. Lisa Sadleir-Hart, who coordinated the 2014 report, served as an advisor to the project. The work was sponsored by Transition Sitka, in partnership with the Sitka Local Foods Network.

The study provides the community with food security data so it can plan and meet current and future needs. It looked at how Sitka families get their food — do they buy it at the store, hunt or fish, gather traditional foods, get it from a food pantry or with food benefits, etc. It also asked people how much food they have stored for emergencies, and if they are struggling to be fed.

This information is needed for planning, grant applications, and more. The data in the original report was a decade old, so the update was needed. Information came from a community survey that had more than 400 participants, plus a series of smaller focus groups that targeted various parts of the community.

Simmons will give a project report to the community at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 21, at the Sitka Public Library. You also can learn more at the links below.

• Sitka Community Food Assessment Indicators Report, Executive summary one-pager (updated October 2024)

• Sitka Community Food Assessment Indicators Report, PDF for printing (updated October 2024)

• Sitka Community Food Assessment Indicators Report, Online version (updated October 2024)

• Sitka Community Food Assessment Indicators Report, PDF (released April 2014)