October 14, 2015 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka Health Summit chooses three 2015-16 community wellness projects

Sitka residents decided to find ways to honor and support our elders, build an accessible community playground near Crescent Harbor, and build a community greenhouse on the roof of the city cold storage building (or a similar-flat-roofed structure), choosing those as the three community wellness projects Sitka residents chose to pursue in 2015-16 at the ninth annual Sitka Health Summit planning day Friday, Oct. 9, at the University of Alaska Southeast Sitka Campus.

These three projects (one broad topic, and two specific topic projects that tied as top vote-getters) each were awarded with $2,000 in Tier 1 seed money to help get them started. The three projects were picked after 57 Sitka residents brainstormed and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of a wide variety of community wellness projects. In addition to the Tier 1 awards, the Sitka Health Summit also made applications available for Tier 2 grants of $10,000 for projects dealing with nutrition (applications are due Oct. 23, contact Lauren Hughey at lauren.hughey@searhc.org or go to http://www.sitkahealthsummitak.org/ for more information).

The Sitka Health Summit also honored Lynne Brandon with a lifetime achievement award for her work promoting healthy lifestyles during her 13 years as Sitka’s Director of Parks and Recreation and now in her new position as executive director of Sitka Trail Works Inc.

Each of the three Tier 1 projects will host a kick-off event in the near future, and these events are open to the public and anybody who wants to help with the project. More information about the projects, their kick-off meetings, and contact people are listed below.

Design and build an ADA-accessible Sitka Community Playground, 6 p.m., Monday, Oct. 26, Sitka Community Hospital classroom, contact Kealoha Harmon, 747-3500 — This project is to create an accessible, attractive, low maintenance and safe community playground that will meet the needs of both children and their families. Right now Sitka does not have any playgrounds that are compliant with the Americans with Disability Act. Building the community playground was selected as a Sitka Health Summit goal in 2011, and a lot of important work has been done. Now it’s time to move this community-supported project forward.
Build a Sitka Community Greenhouse on the roof of the city cold storage plant (or similar flat-roofed building), 6 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 28, Sitka Pioneer’s Home Manager’s House (Brave Heart Volunteers building), contact Charles Bingham, 623-7660 or charleswbingham3@gmail.com — This project’s goal is to increase local food production and food security by using greenhouses, including ones situated on rooftops, a practice growing in popularity around the world. Everyone needs the nutritional boost that only vegetables provide and the more we grow locally the better. There are so many benefits to growing food here; freshness, nutritional value, sustainability and the economic benefits that come from keeping dollars in Sitka. Rooftop greenhouses also can capture waste heat and provide a flat, slug-free growing environment that will help us with food security. Rooftop greenhouses can be a point of interest for visitors, a point of learning for students, and a point of community pride for everyone who believes in innovation and using space wisely.
Create a way to honor and support the well-being of elders in Sitka, 3 p.m., Friday, Nov. 6, Hames Athletic and Wellness Center, contact Caitlin Blaisdell, 747-5080 — One of the largest and fastest-growing populations in Sitka is its elders. The Elder Connection action group is focused on organizing systems to support the health and well-being of seniors living is Sitka. We want everyone’s Golden Years to be just that, and we know that we can do more to support this critical group of wisdom keepers.

The Sitka Health Summit is coordinated by a coalition of local groups that includes the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC), Sitka Community Hospital, Brave Heart Volunteers, the University of Alaska Southeast Sitka Campus, and the State of Alaska Division of Public Health Nursing, with financial help from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco-Seattle Branch Community Development Division.

Over the years there have been a variety of Sitka Health Summit projects — create a local market for local fish and produce, build a Sitka community greenhouse, become a Bicycle Friendly Community, become a Walk Friendly Community, encourage more kids and families to get outdoors for recreation, support a community health and wellness center (Hames), plant fruit trees around town, get more local fish into school lunches, build a Choose Respect mural, Revitalize Sitka, the Sick-a-Waste compost project, the Sitka Community Food Assessment, Park Prescriptions, Together for a Meth-Free Sitka, and Sitka Kitch (a project to create a community rental kitchen and improve Sitka’s emergency food storage capacity). The 2014 Sitka Health Summit projects were Celebrate Katlian Street: A Vibrant Community and the Southeast Youth Resource Guide (which evolved into Family Fun Days at the Hames Athletic and Wellness Center).

For more information about the Sitka Health Summit and its current and past projects, go to http://www.sitkahealthsummitak.org/.

October 8, 2015 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka gardening group to host presentation on beekeeping in Sitka

Join members of the Sitka Gardening and Horticulture group from Facebook as they host a presentation on beekeeping basics by Anchorage hive-meister, Joseph Linden, from 7-9 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 21, at the Sealing Cove Business Center on Alice Loop.

The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session featuring Bill Lehmann and Brinnen Carter, both of whom have beekeeping experience in the Lower 48. Brinnen, who works at the Sitka National Historical Park, is interested in bringing true Russian bees to Sitka (the Russians had beehives when they were in Sitka), and has a comprehensive library of beekeeping resources.

For more information, call Kari Lundgren at 738-2089.

October 5, 2015 by Charles Bingham

• Check out the October 2015 edition of the Sitka Local Foods Network newsletter

The Sitka Local Foods Network just sent out the October 2015 edition of its newly launched monthly newsletter. Feel free to click this link to get a copy.

This edition of the newsletter has brief stories thanking our Pick.Click.Give. donors, an appeal for new Sitka Local Foods Network board members, information about upcoming garden and cooking education classes, and an update about the Sitka Farmers Market ranking as the top market in Alaska in a national vote.. Each story has links to our website for more information.

You can sign up for future editions of our newsletter by clicking on the registration form image in the right column of our website and filling in the information. If you received a copy but didn’t want one, there is a link at the bottom of the newsletter so you can unsubscribe. Our intention is to get the word out about upcoming events and not to spam people. We will protect your privacy by not sharing our email list with others.

September 22, 2015 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka Economic Development Association to host Sitka Seafood Innovation Summit

The Sitka Economic Development Association (SEDA) invites anyone interested in developing the opportunities of our local and regional seafood industry to attend the Sitka Seafood Innovation Summit at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 1, in the Sheet’ka Kwáan Naa Kahídi.

Presenters will provide examples of some innovative products and processes now being developed and marketed. Learn how the Iceland Ocean Cluster model is working, and how Iceland, despite a 60 percent reduction in their codfish harvest, has used innovation to increase the value of each pound of fish harvested by more than 400 percent.

Want to learn more? Then come to this free event sponsored and hosted by the Sitka Economic Development Association. For more information, contact Garry White, 747-2660.

September 22, 2015 by Charles Bingham

• Alaska’s potential for increasing agricultural potential immense; hard work, clear vision needed

(The following is a commentary about increasing Alaska’s access to local food by Alaska Food Policy Council co-chairs Liz Snyder and Victoria Briggs. It originally ran in the Sept. 10, 2015, edition of the Homer News.)

By LIZ SNYDER

and VICTORIA BRIGGS

If you’ve visited a local farmers market recently, you’ll appreciate the bounty of delicious, healthy food that Alaska can produce when cultivated by knowledgeable, dedicated hands.

The prospects for increasing this bounty are immense. To take full advantage of our agricultural potential, we will need political will, consumer advocacy, recruitment and education of new farmers, financial support and incentives and a long-term vision. This vision, of course, will also need to take into account the changing climate in which Alaska farmers grow our food.

Imagine a glacier that retreats, then expands for several years, only to retreat again, repeating this process over and over. Such has been the history of agriculture in Alaska. We’ve experienced several booms and busts of both enthusiasm and productivity since the early 1900s.

Booms were the result of such things as co-development with gold mining, collaboration with local businesses, federal support of farming settlements and agricultural innovations. Busts came when challenges (that still exist today) got the better of farmers — the temptation to grow too big too fast, unsustainable and mismanaged support mechanisms, high costs and resulting debt; competition from the Lower 48, infrastructure designed for resource development instead of agriculture, inexperience and being far from home, a lack of replacements for retiring farmers, and, of course, climate.

Today, farmers and consumers are enjoying a boom of interest and enthusiasm around local foods. While it’s true that we send about 1.9 billion Alaska dollars out of the state each year to import food (which supplements the impressive $900 million worth of subsistence and personal-use foods), the good news is that direct sales between farmers and consumers are strong (13 times greater than the national average), Alaska farmers are notoriously tenacious and innovative, and demand continues to motivate increases in supply.

What we have now is a fantastic opportunity to throw a wrench into the boom/bust cycle, expand on the status quo and ultimately pump about $2 billion into, instead of out of, the Alaska economy each year — in effect, supporting the local farmers we know and love, strengthening our food system, lowering food costs, and increasing food security and resilience.

Of course, strengthening our food system will require both short-term goals and long-term planning. When it comes to climate change and agriculture, we’ve got three courses of action to consider:

reduce our impact;
respond to current changes; and
prepare for future changes.

In the Lower 48, agriculture is a major contributor to climate change with high fossil fuel use (to manufacture pesticides and fertilizers, and to operate machinery) and greenhouse gas emissions from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

In Alaska, however, the relative scales of agriculture and pest pressure are small. Our primary agriculturally related contribution to climate change is through the importation of approximately 95 percent of our food, which requires the burning of fossil fuels to power transport. Just think of the impact we could have if we expanded Alaska agriculture in thoughtful, sustainable ways to simultaneously produce more food and reduce total greenhouse gas emissions.

With respect to responding to current changes in Alaska’s climate and preparing for the future, we have a host of actions that are either already being taken or need to be taken. These actions should use the best natural, economic and social science information available.

Such preparations include the conservation of arable land; crop diversification and expansion into new growing zones; anticipation of changes in water distribution and quality; measures to address changes in pest, disease and invasive species pressures; education and support of new farmers focused on sustainable agricultural development, and construction of weather-resistant food caches and transportation routes.

Of course, in reality there is an even longer list of recommendations that can be made to strengthen Alaska’s food system, but all of these recommendations will need to be made in light of the climate changes we’re experiencing now and those that lie ahead. The Alaska Food Policy Council is dedicated to helping develop, share and advocate for policies that will result in an Alaska food system that is sustainable, resilient and healthy — and we ask our local, state, and federal leaders to tune in to the issues of food security and climate change and make them a priority. The health of our great state depends on it.

Liz Snyder and Victoria Briggs are co-chairs of the Alaska Food Policy Council, or AFPC. To learn more about food security in Alaska, find the following research resources on the AFPC webpage (akfoodpolicycouncil.wordpress.com):

• Building Food Security in Alaska (a report commissioned by AFPC).

• A three-part series of articles (Part I, Part II, Part III) on circumpolar agriculture by Stevenson et al. (2014) and

• An article entitled “Food in the Last Frontier” by Snyder and Meter (2015).

September 18, 2015 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka Local Foods Network receives 2015 Community Impact Grant

The Sitka Local Foods Network has been awarded a 2015 Community Impact Grant from the United Way of Southeast Alaska in the amount of $1,765 to assist with the network’s garden education program.

These funds will be used to create a downtown teaching garden (hopefully at Baranof Elementary School), creating a centralized garden that can be used to teach a variety of garden education classes throughout the year. The United Way of Southeast Alaska awarded Community Impact Grants to 11 Southeast nonprofit organizations in the areas of health, education, and income.

“The Sitka Local Foods Network appreciates the support of the United Way of Southeast Alaska,” said Michelle Putz, a Sitka Local Foods Network board member and member of the network’s education committee. “We look forward to developing a centrally located instructional food garden and a community education program that acts as a center of learning. This garden space will give us a new opportunity to teach local beginner gardeners of different ages how to produce their own food using the garden as an outdoor classroom. Next year we will be able to invite the community and gardeners of Sitka to an open, public location for bi-weekly classes for children and adults throughout the gardening year, focusing on different topics.”

“We always have more demand and requests for funding than we are able to give but in this competitive grant process the Sitka Local Foods Network ranked high in meeting targeted needs in the community,” said Rustan Burton, Chair of United Way of Southeast Alaska. “We are happy to partner with the Sitka Local Foods Network to meet this/these community need(s).”

United Way of Southeast Alaska is an independently governed, non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening lives, helping people, and improving community conditions in Southeast Alaska. United Way of Southeast Alaska and its partner agencies work to create real, lasting change by addressing the underlying causes of problems within our communities. Additionally, United Way of Southeast supports community programs and initiatives that help those in need and also prevent problems from happening in the first place.

The Sitka Local Foods Network’s mission is to increase the amount of locally produced and harvested food in the diets in Southeast Alaskans. To accomplish this, the Sitka Local Foods Network hosts the annual Sitka Farmers Market in the summer, operates the St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm communal garden (which grows produce to sell at the Sitka Farmers Market), and offers a variety of garden and food preservation classes throughout the year (including an innovative garden mentoring project for beginning gardeners).

To learn more about the Sitka Local Foods Network, go to http://www.sitkalocalfoodsnetwork.org/. You also can like our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SitkaLocalFoodsNetwork, and you can follow us on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/SitkaLocalFoods (@SitkaLocalFoods). For more information about the United Way of Southeast Alaska, go to http://www.unitedwayseak.org/

September 14, 2015 by Charles Bingham

• Baranof Elementary students pick veggies they grew at the Russian Bishop’s House garden

CABBAGE PATCH KIDS — Baranof Elementary School first-grader Alice Ann Ricketts, 6, carries a cabbage out of the Russian Bishop’s House garden Friday, Sept. 11, 2015. First-graders were harvesting the vegetables they planted last spring when they were kindergartners during the annual event. Teachers and students were planning on making a soup with their harvested vegetables. (Daily Sitka Sentinel Photo by James Poulson, this photo appeared on Page 1 of the Monday, Sept. 14, 2015, edition)

September 12, 2015 by Charles Bingham

• New Silver Bay Seafoods cannery gives bonus to Sitka Sound Science Center

Workers pack sockeye salmon on the final day of seasonal canning operations Tuesday (Sept. 8, 2015) at Silver Bay Seafoods. (Daily Sitka Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)

(Note: The following article ran on Pages 1 and 10 of the Friday, Sept. 11, 2015, edition of the Daily Sitka Sentinel. It is reprinted here with permission.)

Sitka Sound Science Center Director Lisa Busch, left, and the center’s board of directors receive a $75,000 check from Silver Bay Seafoods CEO Rich Riggs and plant manager Wayne Unger recently at SBS’s new canning facility. From left are Busch, Linda Waller, Steve Clayton, Unger, Riggs, and Trish White. (Daily Sitka Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)

By TOM HESSE
Daily Sitka Sentinel Staff Writer

In a story that’s going to have a lot of digits, the number 12 might be the most important.

All canned goods have a coded number on the bottom that gives the location of where the food came from, when it was canned and who packaged it.

If the code on the bottom of canned salmon starts with a number 12, it means it was canned in Sitka. It also means the Sitka Sound Science Center received a one-cent donation for the production of that can of salmon.

And — if you’re Silver Bay Seafoods CEO Rich Riggs — it’s also a call-out to the fans of your favorite football team.

“So if you’re a (Seattle) Seahawks fan, that’s good news,” Riggs said.

Silver Bay has just wrapped up the inaugural year of its canning operation. The $7 million capital investment was the latest expansion of the Sitka-based company, founded in 2007 at the old Alaska Pulp Corp. mill site where it processed salmon for the fresh and frozen fish market.

Before Silver Bay Seafoods started canning fish there hadn’t been a cannery in Sitka for more than 50 years.

Earlier this week Riggs gave a tour of the canning line to the Sitka Sound Science Center board of directors. It was to celebrate a partnership between the two in which Silver Bay donated one cent for every can that rolled off the line.

Sitka Sound Science Center Director Lisa Busch said it’s one of the best examples there is of an industry supporting research in its own field of business.

“We are linked with the fishing industry and we really wanted to find some stable support, basically from the fishing industry,” Busch said. “We want to be partnered with fishermen and the fishing industry.”

Riggs said the rationale for that connection is obvious at any fish hatchery in the state. And then there’s the fact that the Sitka Sound Science Center is heir to the fishery science program pioneered by Sheldon Jackson College, which closed in 2007.

“You look and a lot of managers in the state have had some educational component at SJ. We firmly believe that sustainable fisheries are critical to Alaska’s communities and Alaska fishermen,” Riggs said.

Canning operations started in the second week of July, with three lines for three different sized cans. The largest cans run through the system at a rate of around 250 per minute, and the other sizes at around 215 cans per minute.

To the Sitka Sound Science Center, 60 minutes of canning results in a donation about equal to the hourly rate of some attorneys.

“I’m really excited that they’re so into this idea,” Busch said. “I feel like it’s really going to allow us to move forward to have somewhat stable funding from the fishing industry.”

Because of business interests, Silver Bay Seafoods won’t disclose how many cans it produced this year, but the first payment to the Sitka Sound Science Center was for $75,000.

The new canning line expands the total Silver Bay Seafoods warehouse footprint to more than 80,000 square feet, Riggs said.

The expansion was headed up by Mike Duckworth, who has 34 years of experience building and maintaining canning lines. One of the first things he had to do was acquire all the pieces, because most of the key elements for canning salmon date back to before his career even started.

“The filling machine has actually not been replicated the same,” Duckworth said. “There have been companies that’s tried to replicate them, but they found out it’s not feasible. They literally put millions of dollars into it and just couldn’t make money off of them.”

The technology dates back to the 1930s and ’40s, and Duckworth said the last major production of filling machines ended in the ’60s.

“Our equipment was probably cast in the late ’40s to the ’50s,” Duckworth said, adding that rebuilding those filling machines is a key piece of canning salmon in Alaska.

“It’s something everybody does. If you’re going to be in the industry then once every 7-10 years you completely rebuild these things,” Duckworth said. “We spent the last year (rebuilding). We had a crew of seasoned, Alaska canning machinists that were working with me in rebuilding and setting up the equipment and getting it ready for installation.”

The old equipment is then blended with new systems to create the modern canning system.

“That plant, it’s just a good blend of the old technology and the new,” Duckworth said.

A special slime line handles the salmon destined for canning, processing them in the usual manner. The fish are fed into one of the three canning lines where more than a dozen employees help monitor the process.

As salmon move along the line, they are packaged in cans that drop down a track from a room in the second story of the warehouse. A machine fills the can while employees check for bones and quality. Between the machine that affixes the lid and the track that kicks out defective cans is a printer that marks each can with a code, all of which start with the number 12.

Once sealed, the cans are loaded onto carts and taken to a separate station to cook before being stacked, wrapped and loaded into trucks to send them as far away as Australia.

Despite a low salmon year, Riggs said the canning operation was close to its projected target this season and there’s room to grow next year.

Tuesday (Sept. 8) was the last day of canning for the year, and it was frozen Bristol Bay sockeye that went through the process. The majority of the fish processed this year, however, cam from Southeast Alaska.

“The concept is the salmon season is over in Southeast, but then we can continue to operate the plant with the sockeye season in Bristol Bay going on,” Riggs said. “So we wanted to increase our capacity to process local fish as well as pick up some of those other Alaska fisheries, and the canning line allows us to do that.”

And if things continue to run as they did this year, the canning line also will allow for continued research into fisheries at the Sitka Sound Science Center.

“It funds all science center things,” Busch said. “So it goes toward research and education programs here in town and also toward our hatchery.”

Funding for independent science centers in Alaska can be tough to come by, and Busch said it can often be from unrelated industries, such as oil. Silver Bay Seafoods has worked with the Sitka Sound Science Center in the past, for example in the center’s cost-recovery fishery, and this new program is a logical continuation of their partnership, Busch said.

“We’re doing stuff that the fishermen are interested in,” Busch said. “To me this is so great that a big company, and a local company at that, are this invested in what we’re doing.”

Or, as Silver Bay Seafoods and the Sitka Sound Science Center are putting it, salmon makes cents.

September 5, 2015 by Charles Bingham

• First Natural History Seminar of the 2015-16 school year to be about mushrooms

The first Natural History Seminar of the 2015-16 school year will feature guest speaker Noah Siegel giving the talk, “To Live and To Dye For: Edible, Poisonous, and Dye Mushrooms of Alaska,” at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 10, in Room 229 at the University of Alaska Southeast Sitka Campus.

Noah Siegel also will lead mushroom forays on the following weekend, with details to be announced at the talk. He also was a featured speaker at this year’s Girdwood Fungus Fair and Cordova Fungus Festival.

Siegel has developed extensive field mycology skills over two decades through photographing and identifying macrofungi across North America and on multiple trips to Australia and New Zealand. His mushroom photographs have won numerous awards from the North American Mycological Association (NAMA) photography contests. His technique and attention to detail are unrivaled, arising from a philosophy of maximizing utility for identification purposes while maintaining a high degree of aesthetic appeal.

The Natural History Seminar series features regular talks (usually monthly) about natural history topics of interest to Sitka. The series is sponsored by the University of Alaska Southeast Sitka Campus and the Sitka Sound Science Center. For more information, contact Kitty LaBounty at 747-9432.

August 30, 2015 by Charles Bingham

• Scenes from the fifth Sitka Farmers Market of the 2015 summer, and the Sitka Slug Races

Sitka Farmers Market Assistant Manager Francis Wegman-Lawless, left, and Sitka Farmers Market Manager Debe Brincefield, right, present the Table Of The Day Award to Rock Peterson of Jam-N-Peppers at the fifth Sitka Farmers Market of the 2015 summer on Saturday, Aug. 29, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Founders Hall in Sitka. Peterson sells an apricot and pepper jam/glaze. He received a gift bag with fresh chard, kale, beets, and other veggies. The market also featured the inaugural Sitka Slug Races, won by Linda Wilson’s slug Moses, with Sophie Nethercut and Maybelle Filler’s slug Thug The Slug second, and Thomas Witherspoon’s slug Slugzilla third. This is the eighth year of Sitka Farmers Markets, hosted by the Sitka Local Foods Network. The last market of the summer is from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 12, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Founders Hall, 235 Katlian St. For more information about the Sitka Farmers Markets and Sitka Local Foods Network, go to http://www.sitkalocalfoodsnetwork.org/, check out our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SitkaLocalFoodsNetwork, or follow us on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/SitkaLocalFoods. (PHOTO COURTESY OF SITKA LOCAL FOODS NETWORK)

For the first time this summer, we had a minimal amount of moisture at the Sitka Farmers Market, with a brief rain during our Aug. 29 market. But the slugs in the Sitka Slug Races love moisture.

The highlight of the Aug. 29 market was the inaugural Sitka Slug Races, which included a preliminary heat before the main event. The top finisher was Moses, handled by Linda Wilson. In second place was Thug The Slug, handled by Sophie Nethercut and Maybelle Filler. In third place was Slugzilla, trained by Thomas Witherspoon.

The next market is from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 12, at the ANB Founders Hall. This will be our last market of the summer.

A reminder, due to health codes we can’t allow any pets in the ANB Founders Hall or the parking lot other than service dogs. We also don’t allow tobacco (smoking or chewing) at the Sitka Farmers Market because this is a health event (our event started out as a Sitka Health Summit project).

Finally, if you’ve ever wanted to be a vendor you can learn more by clicking this link or sending an email to sitkafarmersmarket@gmail.com. We always need new vendors, especially those selling produce from their home gardens, commercially caught fish or locally baked bread.

A slideshow from the fifth Sitka Farmers Market is posted below.

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