Andrea Fraga of Middle Island Gardens works at the Sitka Farmers Market, at ANB Founders Hall, in 2022. (Daily Sitka Sentinel File Photo by JAMES POULSON)
By COLE HADDOCK Daily Sitka Sentinel Staff Writer
The Sitka Farmers Market opens its 19th season Saturday at ANB Founders Hall, bringing vegetables, eggs, honey, chocolate, sourdough and ceramics for purchase.
The market, organized by the Sitka Local Foods Network, runs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. every other Saturday through September. This year’s dates are June 27, July 11, July 25, Aug. 8, Aug. 22, Sept. 5 and Sept. 19.
All 18 vendor tables, including six new vendors, are sold. The event is an opportunity to support these vendors and meet the community.
“You see people hugging during the whole market,” said Debe Brincefield, co-manager of the event. “People can’t wait to get in there and see everyone and participate.”
Two stands will sell produce grown in Sitka. St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm, located behind St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, is run by Laura Schmidt and a team of volunteers who harvest produce the morning of the market. Middle Island Farms is run by Andrea Fraga and Kaleb Aldred. Both farms grow kale, zucchini, squash, carrots, garlic, basil, rhubarb and salad mixes, along with other cold-weather crops.
“When you come and buy produce from St. Peters, it was in the dirt that morning,” Brincefield said.
Other popular vendors include the Alaska Flour Company, known for its cookie, muffin and pancake mixes, and the Theobroma Chocolate Company, which makes milk and dark chocolate bars branded for the market. Vendors also will sell sourdough, baked goods and manuka honey.
One of the oldest vendors is the Sitka Cancer Survivors Society, which auctions a handmade quilt at the end of each season. Other art vendors will sell handmade bowls, Native art, earrings and paintings. The Sheldon Jackson Museum will bring their artist-in-residence to the market.
The market supports the Sitka Local Foods Network’s mission to strengthen food sovereignty on the island.
“We believe food sovereignty is the right of our community to control our own food systems — the power to decide how our food is produced, distributed and consumed,” Brincefield said. She added that the network aims to “prioritize sustainable and culturally relevant food over corporate, market-driven mass production.”
Sourcing local food is especially difficult in Sitka because of the island’s terrain and weather, Brincefield said. She moved to Sitka 25 years ago from New Jersey, where she once grew bell peppers, squash, zucchini and 28 tomato plants. She loves the community she found in Sitka. Adopted by Patricia Svetlak and given the Tlingit name Dosikee, she is of the Tak’deintaan Clan. She said the challenges Sitkans face in growing and finding local food motivated her to join the food network.
“Comparing us to down South, they have more land, they have road systems,” she said. “We don’t have that opportunity to do that here. So in our own little world, [the Sitka Local Foods Network] is trying to make a difference.”
The market is run by many volunteers and vendors, including Joel Hanson, president of the Sitka Local Foods Network, who also oversees the city’s Community Garden on Jarvis Street, and Sam Biancheri, a graduate of Outer Coast and this year’s new co-manager.
For questions or further information, you may call Debe Brincefield at (907) 738-4323.
The Sitka Community Gardens Association and University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service invite all gardeners to gather, connect and share their midsummer gardening stories and successes over a potluck dinner at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, July 8 at the St. Peter’s By The Sea Episcopal Church See House (behind the church).
Sarah Lewis, health, home and family development agent with UAF CES Juneau District, gives a presentation on “Preserving the Garden Harvest.” Sitka community gardeners are especially encouraged to attend and take a dish to share.
In addition, Lewis will offer a series of food classes from July 7-12 in Sitka. The classes are listed on the attached flier.
The first Sitka Farmers Market of the summer will be from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 27, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Founders Hall, 235 Katlian St.
This is the first of seven Sitka Farmers Markets this summer (up from six in recent years). The other dates are Saturdays, July 11, July 25, Aug. 8, Aug. 22, Sept. 5, and Sept. 19.
Sitka Community Garden’s Barbara Bingham, outreach coordinator, and Joel Hanson, project manager, stand in the Jarvis Street garden Tuesday. Some of the more than 40 20×10-foot plots staked out for Sitka residents to lease for $55 annually are still available.(JAMES POULSON / Daily Sitka Sentinel)
By CATHY LI Daily Sitka Sentinel Staff Writer
Among the natural abundance of bright pink salmonberry blossoms and the tender green of spruce tips, infusing the air with their citrusy fragrance, the 36 out of 45 occupied plots that comprise Sitka Community Garden at the end of Jarvis Street is flourishing in the midst of its first growing season open to the public.
The citrusy fragrance doesn’t compete in the olfactory arena, however, with the pile of compost donated and shipped in by the Juneau Community Garden.
But to project manager Joel Hanson, it’s all part of the excitement of welcoming the first group of Sitka gardeners to the community garden — manure and all.
In addition to shoots of chard, beans, peas, radishes, leeks, sunflowers and carrots in the 36 assigned plots, Hanson is overseeing the construction of a 22-by-14-foot multi-purpose building that will include a tool room, restroom and open three-sided shelter.
Some of the lumber is from a Petersburg mill, also used by gardeners to build their individually-designed plots, and some of it is donated by the nearby Sitka Self Storage facility.
He also recently facilitated the installation of a central water line — though Hanson said with a laugh that it’s “not like we need a whole lot of watering around here.”
The garden is funded through a two-year $345,000 grant from Philanthropy Northwest’s Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program, a subsidiary funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, set to expire in June 2027.
Hanson said he is “uncertain as to the long-term prospects for this grant.” During the 2025 Department of Government Efficiency cuts, EPA revoked some of the promised funding, but Philanthropy Northwest appealed on behalf of the grantees and a stay was issued — freezing the removal of the funds.
However, Hanson said, the administration has appealed the stay, and it’s unknown when a decision on it will be made.
“We’re trying to complete all the improvements as fast as we can before the uncertainty resolves itself. Hopefully, it will resolve itself favorably and we won’t have to worry,” Hanson said. “Hopefully we will have spent most of the money and been reimbursed before the time comes.”
This flurry of activity is a lot to manage, but Hanson said “it’s a huge benefit because it shows community buy-in.”
“There’s obviously buy-in from people who want to start growing gardens here, but there’s also a huge buy-in in terms of volunteer contributions,” he said.
Sitka Community Garden was founded through a partnership between Transition Sitka and the Sitka Local Foods Network, though Hanson is trying to establish a separate organization called the Sitka Community Gardens Association.
The association is currently registered as a non-profit corporation in the state of Alaska and is the entity awarded the Jarvis Street lease from the City and Borough of Sitka, but it doesn’t yet have a 501(c)(3) status, Hanson said.
Barbara Bingham, the garden outreach coordinator and a founding member of Transition Sitka, was instrumental in making the community garden a reality.
“Our grocery stores, by some accounts, have about three days worth of groceries. If all barge service was cut off, we’re not going to last long. And the produce that we get up here has traveled a long way. It’s lost a lot of nutrition, it’s very expensive, and so the more we can produce ourselves, the healthier we will be,” Bingham said.
“The idea that we’re building community at the same time is really what makes this such a heartwarming, uplifting kind of project,” she added. “But we need more than one garden. We need a network. The more areas we can turn into agricultural areas, the better.”
On a one-acre parcel near Rudolph Walton Circle, Sitka Tribe of Alaska is doing exactly that. Through a long-term lease with the Baranof Island Housing Authority, STA is in the conceptual design phase of establishing a tribal community garden.
Though they’re a bit behind schedule, STA Resource Protection Director Jeff Feldpausch indicates, they are hopeful the site plans contracted with Corvus Design, based in Juneau, will be done by the end of June.
Then the design will be consolidated into a master plan, used in local and federal permitting processes, before the construction contractor breaks ground later this year.
In the meantime, STA’s Kayanní Commission Coordinator Sienna Reid has been working out of garden beds at the STA Resource Protection Department’s and Sitka Rangers’ offices to plant Tlingit potatoes. Her favorite thing to make with the specialty potatoes is a soup or chowder.
“There’s a lot of clan history around it that’s not associated with my clan, so I’m not going to tell the oral history, but what I do know is that Tlingit potatoes came up to Southeast Alaska through trading and canoes, and they’ve been here in Alaska for quite a long time,” Reid said. “One of the things that make them special is they’re associated with our traditional harvests. A lot of folks would, on their way to fish camp, plant the potatoes. Then in the fall, when they’re returning back to their winter village, the potatoes are ready to harvest. They tie in nicely with the seasonal harvests that are already happening.”
Reid worked with people in town during the Sustainable Southeast Partnership retreat and Sitka Native Education Program students during April and May 2026 to prepare the garden beds and plant the potatoes, respectively. Tlingit potatoes are also planted in the Sitka Ranger District plots.
The tribal garden project is funded through a $385,000 grant awarded by a private organization called the Native American Agriculture Fund, which has supported STA before in a raspberry plant distribution and a new gill net for its traditional foods program.
“They’re very generous and open-minded, so it’s a special opportunity for us. A lot of tribes they work with down south are farming and ranching on a large scale, but [they recognize] that we still provide a lot of food, but in a different way. They’re one of the funders that’s remained more stable for us,” Reid said.
Reid’s hope for the tribal garden is twofold: growing more traditional foods for Sitka Tribe’s internal food distribution programs, primarily supporting elders and low-income individuals; and providing space for tribal citizens and SNEP students to have hands-on food sovereignty opportunities.
She said about half the beds will be dedicated to each purpose.
“I think food is a really core part of our cultural identity, as well as our physical health and our well-being. Making sure that our tribal citizens have access to traditional foods, or just foods that connect them to plants and outdoors and with each other, is a really critical part of the work we do,” Reid said.
While the tribal garden is under development, Sitka Community Garden is open to all Sitkans. There are nine more 10-by-20-foot plots, which cost $55 to rent. The next community meeting and potluck will be 6-8 p.m. July 8 at the St. Peter’s See House, with a presentation about preserving gardening harvests.
“It’s a self-sufficiency undertaking. It’s not exactly subsistence as much as it is a kind of self-reliance,” Hanson said. “I think as isolated as we are here in Southeast Alaska, we need to be a little bit more self-reliant, especially in politically uncertain times like we seem to be in right now.”
Sitka Local Foods Network 
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