The Sitka Community Food Assessment Indicators Report was released on Monday, and the findings will help guide future food system planning in Sitka.
A 2012 Sitka Health Summit project, the Sitka Community Food Assessment has examined where Sitka residents get their food, what types they eat, what they grow, what they hunt and fish for, where they shop, what type of access people have to healthy food, and other questions about Sitka’s food supply. The findings of the food assessment will help Sitka improve its food security.
After Sitka residents chose the Sitka Community Food Assessment as a project at the September 2012 Sitka Health Summit, the work group received a grant to hire a coordinator and contract with a data person. A revised version of a questionnaire from a similar project on the Kenai Peninsula was posted online, available at the library, and discussed in focus groups, with more than 400 residents answering the 36 questions. In November 2013, some of the initial data was presented at the Sitka Food Summit, where about 60 residents discussed the results and noted any further research that needed to be done. Since then, the work group, in partnership with The Island Institute and others, fine-tuned the data before writing and editing the indicators report.
“We hope the Sitka Community Food Assessment Indicators Report can guide future food system planning and plant seeds for innovative responses that will strengthen Sitka’s food landscape,” project coordinator Lisa Sadleir-Hart wrote in the 26-page document’s introduction. “The Sitka Community Food Assessment Indicators Report uncovers many weaknesses in our food system as well as some incredible assets that define Sitka’s food culture — a rich ecosystem filled with nutritious gems from the land and sea plus a generous spirit of sharing with our neighbors. Now that we’ve defined the current foodscape in Sitka, let’s work together to build a more resilient food system that can deeply nourish the entire community for generations to come.”
The Sitka Community Food Assessment Indicators Report opens with Sitka’s demographics and several Sitka food facts. It then features data about how many people in Sitka hunt, fish, gather, and/or grow their own food, as well as some barriers. Next is information about where people in Sitka shop for their food, followed by how many people in Sitka are on some form of food assistance. The report also includes information about food in the schools, and local food manufacturing.
The findings will be presented to the community during an upcoming meeting of the Sitka Assembly, and the report will be posted online here (see below) and on The Island Institute’s website.
Bob Gorman, Extension Agent of the Sitka office of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service, shows some germinating seed starts during a free garden workshop on March 11, 2009.
The two-part class about Southeast gardening will include topics such as selecting and starting seeds, transplants, grow lights, greenhouses, growing media, and managing garden soils. These are the last three workshops Bob will teach before he retires after a long career with the UAF Cooperative Extension Service in Sitka.
Monday, April 21, 7-8:30 p.m., UAS Sitka Campus Room 229, “Extending the Growing Season.”
Plant starts in Sitka gardener Keith Nyitray’s greenhouse
The Sitka Local Foods Network and Sitka Food Co-op are teaming up to make garden starts available for Sitka food gardeners.
The plant starts will be available through the Sitka Local Foods Network on the next three monthly Sitka Food Co-op delivery days, from 4:30-6:30 p.m. on Monday, April 21, May 19 and June 23, at the Sitka First Presbyterian Church (505 Sawmill Creek Road). The sale of these plant starts helps benefit the Sitka Local Foods Network, and we thank the Sitka Food Co-op for the opportunity to sell them on their delivery pick-up days. The plant starts are from Sitka gardeners and are of plants that do well in Sitka’s climate.
For more information, contact Keith Nyitray of the Sitka Food Co-op at sitkafoodcoop@gmail.com or go to http://sitkafoodcoop.org/
Earth Day is on Tuesday, April 22, and Earth Week is April 20-26. Sitka will host a variety of activities for Earth Week, including some gardening classes, a youth eco-challenge, free bus rides all month, spring clean-up events, and the 13th annual Parade of the Species. Click the event names at this link for more activity details.
Giving Earth Week an early start is a presentation at 1 p.m. on Saturday, April 12, in Room 106 at the University of Alaska Southeast Sitka Campus, when Gordon Wrobel will discuss his three-year USDA project to build local food systems in Elfin Cove. Contact the Sitka Local Foods Network at sitkalocalfoodsnetwork@gmail.com for more information.
Lauren Oakes will discuss yellow cedar ecology and long-term vegetation changes in temperate forests impacted by climate change at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 17, at the UAS Sitka Campus as part of the ongoing Natural History Seminar Series.
Bob Gorman of the Sitka District office of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service will give two presentations at 7 p.m. at the UAS Sitka Campus — on Monday, April 21, about extending the growing season and greenhouses, and on Tuesday, April 22, about sustainable wood heat.
There will be clean-up events from 9-11
a.m. on Saturday, April 19, for 4-H club members and other youth, and from noon to 2 p.m. on Tuesday, April 22, for Sitka Conservation Society members and other community members, both at locations TBA. There also is a community-wide spring clean-up event from April 26
through May 11, when people can bring in a variety of large items and hazardous materials to the Sawmill Cove Scrap Yard, hosted by the City and Borough of Sitka Public Works Department.
The Sitka Community Ride bus service will provide free bus rides during the entire month of April in its annual recognition of Earth Day.
The youth eco-challenge is from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, April 26, at Sitka National Historical Park. School-aged youth teams will test their skills of compass navigation, bear safety, and fire building while they make their way through the Sitka National Historical Park. Sign up in teams of four, or as individuals and be put on a team. Teams of multiple ages are recommended. It’s a race. Contact Mary Wood to register, 747-7509.
Finally, the 13th annual Parade of Species, hosted by the Sitka Conservation Society, is on Friday, April 25. Parade participants are invited to dress as their favorite animal or plant and gallop, slither, swim, or fly with us. We will meet in Totem Square at 2:30 p.m. and parade down Lincoln Street to Harrigan Centennial Hall at 3 p.m. There will be a number of community organizations with hands-on Earth Day inspired activities for the whole family from 3-4:30 p.m. Prizes will be awarded for Best Use of Recycled Material, Most Realistic, and Best Local Plant/Animal. For more information contact mary@sitkawild.org or call 747.7509. Click here for photos of 2013 Parade of Species costumes.
We would love some mentorship and modeling to help us out and build community between our youth and gardeners. If you are interested in sharing your skills and spending a few hours with youth this summer, contact Mary Wood at the Sitka Conservation Society, 747-7509 or mary@sitkawild.org.
Mary said the 4-H club has space at St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm, so they are looking to meet with local gardeners and see what they are doing; so more like site visits. She’s hoping the gardeners also might be interested in taking volunteer leadership roles with the club and developing mentoring partnerships, which will help make the club program sustainable.
Sitka’s 4-H club is a positive youth development organization that gets youth civically engaged and physically active. Sitka has three 4-H projects: Baking, Shooting Sports, and the Alaska Way of Life outdoor education program. Sitka 4-H Community Club meetings are held at 12:30 p.m. the second Saturday of each month (April 12 is the next meeting) at the Sitka Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall (408 Marine St.).
Shooting Sports: Contact Paul Rioux for more information, paulg.rioux@gmail.com.
Baking: Contact Amy Sweeney for more information, a_sitka_sweeney@yahoo.com.
Alaska Way of Life: Get outside, explore the Tongass, and build community with 4-H. Visit the Sitka Conservation Society website for more information on current events. Summer club registration for hiking, and gardening, and other activities is coming soon. Contact Mary at the Sitka Conservation Society for more information, 747-7509 or mary@sitkawild.org.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article first appeared on this site in April 2010. It is repeated because much of the information remains current and newsworthy.)
As you start to plan your garden for this spring and summer, don’t forget to Plant A Row For The Hungry. The Plant A Row For The Hungry program (also known as Plant A Row or PAR) is a national campaign by the Garden Writers Association of America that got its start in Alaska.
In the cold winter of 1994, Anchorage Daily News garden columnist and former Garden Writers Association of America President Jeff Lowenfels was returning to his hotel after a Washington, D.C., event when he was approached by a homeless person who asked for some money to buy food. Lowenfels said Washington, D.C., had signs saying, “Don’t give money to panhandlers,” so he shook his head and kept on walking. But the man’s reply, “I really am homeless and I really am hungry. You can come with me and watch me eat,” stayed with Lowenfels for the rest of his trip.
Jeff Lowenfels
The encounter continued to bother Lowenfels, even as he was flying back to Anchorage. During the flight, Lowenfels came up with an idea when he started writing his weekly garden column (the longest continuously running garden column in the country, with no missed weeks since it started on Nov. 13, 1976). He asked his readers to plant one extra row in their gardens to grow food to donate to Bean’s Café, an Anchorage soup kitchen. The idea took off.
When Anchorage hosted the Garden Writers Association of America convention in 1995, Lowenfels took the GWAA members to Bean’s Café to learn about the Plant A Row For Bean’s Café program. The Garden Writers Association of America liked the idea, and it became the national Plant A Row For The Hungry campaign (also known as Plant A Row or PAR). In 2002, the Garden Writers Association Foundation was created as a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit to manage the Plant A Row For The Hungry program.
“I am not surprised by the growth of PAR,” Lowenfels wrote in an e-mail to the Sitka Local Foods Network. “It is now in all 50 states and across Canada and there are thousands of variations of the original program — from prison gardens for the hungry to botanical gardens donating their produce from public display gardens. This is because gardeners always share information and extra food, so the idea was a natural.”
It took five years for the program to reach its first million pounds of donated food, but the second million only took two years and the next eight years saw a million pounds of donated food (or more) each year. Since 1995, more than 14 million pounds of food have been donated. Not only that, the program is getting ready to expand overseas to Australia, England and other countries with avid gardeners.
“We have supplied something in the vicinity of enough food for 50 million meals,” Lowenfels wrote in his e-mail. “Gardeners can solve this hunger problem without the government. And we don’t need a tea party to do it! Or chemicals, I might add, as author of a book on organic gardening (Teaming With Microbes, written with Wayne Lewis)!” (Lowenfels recently released a second book, Teaming With Nutrients, which is a follow-up to his first book).
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one out of every eight U.S. households experiences hunger or the risk of hunger. Many people skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going an entire day or more without food. About 33 million Americans, including 13 million children, have substandard diets or must resort to seeking emergency food because they can’t always afford to buy the food they need. In recent years the demand for hunger assistance has increased 70 percent, and research shows that hundreds of children and adults are turned away from food banks each year because of lack of resources.
While many people credit Lowenfels for creating the Plant A Row For The Hungry program, Lowenfels says the real heroes are the gardeners growing the extra food and donating it to local soup kitchens, senior programs, schools, homeless shelters and neighbors. You can hear him pass along the credit to all gardeners at the end of this interview last year with an Oklahoma television station (video also embedded below).
“One row. That’s all it takes. No rules other than the food goes to the hungry. You pick the drop-off spot or just give it to a needy friend or neighbor. Nothing slips between the lip and the cup, I say,” Lowenfels wrote in his e-mail.
For people wanting to Plant A Row For The Hungry in Sitka, there are several places that would love to help distribute some fresh locally grown veggies or berries to those who are less fortunate, such as the Salvation Army, Sitkans Against Family Violence (SAFV), local churches, Sitka Tribe of Alaska and other organizations. The food the Sitka Local Foods Network grows at St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm communal garden goes to the Sitka Farmers Market.
The Sitka Local Foods Network also takes donations of local produce to sell at the Sitka Farmers Markets, and all proceeds are used to help pay for SLFN projects geared toward helping more people in Sitka grow and harvest local food. For more information, contact SLFN President Lisa Sadleir-Hart or one of the other board members at sitkalocalfoodsnetwork@gmail.com.
Have questions about Alaska Food Code exemption requirements? Want to know more about recipe formulation, product testing, labeling, safe preparation packaging, or starting your own business? Are you curious which homemade foods can be sold at farmers markets and festivals, and which ones require a commercial kitchen?
The 12-page handout features the answers to these questions and many other topics discussed during the training sessions about food regulations for farmers markets, hosted in February by Kate Idzorek with the UAF Cooperative Extension Service, and by Lorinda Lhotka and Morgan Poloni with the Alaska DEC Food Safety and Sanitation office.
View and download a copy of the publication online, or contact the UAF Cooperative Extension Service’s Sitka office at 747-9440 for a hard copy.
Gordon Wrobel will give a presentation at 1 p.m. on Saturday, April 12, in Room 106 (note room change from original post) at the University of Alaska Southeast Sitka Campus about gardening in Southeast Alaska, in particular in Elfin Cove where he is completing a three-year USDA project to improve local food systems.
Gordy will provide an overview of his project, including the challenges and opportunities (such as available land, soils, pests/diseases, climate/temperature, markets, and crop/seed selection). His project objectives and results included creating access to fresh produce in the rural Southeast Alaska community of Elfin Cove, evaluating the economic viability of a floating island garden, evaluating the strategies of a floating island, container, hoop garden and greenhouse, creating a composting program for the community of Elfin Cove, and evaluating the potential for a sustainable produce business in Elfin Cove. There will be a short question-and-answer session after his presentation.
For more information, contact Sitka Local Foods Network board members Michelle Putz at 747-2708 or Charles Bingham at 738-8875.
Sitka-based Alaskans Own seafood recently announced its subscription prices for its 2014 community-supported fisheries (CSF) program in Sitka, Juneau, and Anchorage. The prices appear to have gone down a tiny bit since the 2013 season.
Alaskans Own was the first CSF program in the state, modeling its program after the successful community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs that let customers deal directly with harvesters so they can buy subscription shares to the year’s crop/catch. In addition to the CSF program, Alaskans Own usually has a table at the Sitka Farmers Markets during the summer.
This is the fifth year of the Alaskans Own CSF program, and there are four-month and six-month subscriptions available. The six-month subscriptions allow people to keep receiving freshly caught seafood through October instead of August, when the traditional four-month subscriptions end. Half-subscriptions also are available. Subscriptions include a mix of locally caught black cod (sablefish), halibut, king salmon, coho salmon, lingcod and miscellaneous rockfish, depending on the commercial fishing season and prices.
The Alaskans Own program is associated with the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust. The Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust’s mission is to strengthen Alaskan fishing communities and marine resources through scientific research, education, and economic opportunity.
Here is Alaskans Own CSF program information for 2014 provided in a recent email sent to the program’s past subscribers and other interested folk:
Hello, Sitka!
It’s that time of year again. The days are getting longer, the herring are back, and Alaskans Own CSF is gearing up for our 2014 season.
This summer looks to be another season filled with even better quality seafood than before. We’d love to have you join us and get access to the great local seafood the Sitka has to offer.
It is difficult to tell, at this point, how prices will trend through the season. Please be assured that we will always bring you the very best value, highest quality seafood that we can, meeting or exceeding the total number of pounds for the plan that you choose. We will make adjustments in specific items to preserve this value. Our small staff gratefully receives assistance from a number of volunteers to help keep costs down. Any and all ‘profits’ go to support the scientific work of the Fishery Conservation Networks.
Six months, Full share: $760 (60 pounds, ~ 10 lb. /month)
Six months, Half share: $400 (30 pounds, ~ 5 lb./month)s
Four months, Full share: $520 (40 pounds, ~ 10 lb./month)
Four months, Half share: $280 (20 pounds, ~ 5 lb./month)
To renew your subscription with Alaskans Own, please send me an email, or give me a call on the Alaskans Own phone 907-738-2275(*). Subscriptions can be paid for using cash, check or credit card. You can learn more about what we offer and the work we do on our website: www.alaskansown.com.
Thank you for all your support. I hope you’ll join Alaskans Own again this season to enjoy the best seafood from the finest fishermen in Southeast Alaska.
* With the Sitka Sound Science Center under construction, we won’t be in our normal office space — email and the new AO phone will be the best way to reach us, and to schedule an ‘in person’ meeting.
The Sitka Fish to Schools program came out of the 2010 Sitka Health Summit, when local residents chose as one of its community wellness projects to serve more local seafood in our schools. Since then the program has grown so that all students from Grades 2-12 in Sitka have a local seafood lunch option at least twice a month. This includes the Sitka School District schools, Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary School, Blatchley Middle School, Sitka High School, and Pacific High School, plus other local schools, the state-run boarding school Mount Edgecumbe High School and the private K-8 The SEER School.
Sitka is one of the first districts in the state to serve local seafood through the National School Lunch Program and has become a leader in the State of Alaska in getting local foods into schools. In the last three years, the number of schools interested in serving local seafood has increased ten-fold. Haines, Dillingham, Kodiak, Galena, and Juneau are a few of the districts that are now serving seafood in their meal programs.
In an effort to support regional and statewide efforts to serve local foods in schools, the Sitka Conservation Society developed a “how-to” guide to serving fish in schools. Using Sitka as a case study, it outlines procurement and processing strategies, legalities, tips, and recipes. Also included are case studies from around the state that offer tips and suggestions based on the success of their programs.
The Sitka Fish to Schools program has seen an increase in meal participation on fish lunch days, likely attributed to the participation of students who typically bring a sack lunch. One student who reported never liking fish started to eat fish after a local chef came to her classroom. Others students circle fish lunch dates on their school lunch calendar, refusing home lunch that day. And why are they so excited? A middle school student put it this way, “It’s healthy and good for you and you feel good after you eat it.” Others give reasons of wanting to become a fisherman or cite the economic value to their community.
In addition to this guide is the “Stream to Plate” curriculum, a unit of seven lessons that connect salmon to the classroom. The lessons address the ecological significance and human relationship to salmon. These lessons have been tried and refined the last three years with third graders at Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary School.
Chris Bryner, teacher and collaborator on the salmon unit said, “The Fish to Schools curriculum connects my classroom to the community. Students not only learn about a resource relevant to their daily lives, but come away with an understanding that learning happens inside and outside of school.”
As the ninth largest seafood port in the country, Sitka is paving the way for locally-sourced meals. Their efforts are part of a larger national movement, Farm to School, to get local foods in schools. The Alaska Farm to School program honored Sitka’s Fish to Schools program for its innovation a couple of years ago.
“The beauty of Fish to Schools is that it provides a practical, local solution to a multitude of current global issues,” Fish to Schools Co-Founder Lexi Fish said. Local sourcing reduces the environmental impact of foods grown and raised thousands of miles away and ultimately supports a more resilient food system.
Local fish in school lunches not only tastes “delicus” (stet), as one third grader put it, but also addresses food justice, nutrition, community sustainability, and conservation. To get a free copy of the guide and curriculum, visit http://sitkawild.org/2014/03/a-guide-to-serving-local-fish-in-school-cafeterias/ or contact Sitka Conservation Society Community Sustainability Organizer Tracy Gagnon at 747.7509 or tracy@sitkawild.org.
Also, don’t forget to stop by the Celebrate Fish to State event from 6:30-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 20, at Blatchley Middle School to learn more about the efforts to expand the Fish to Schools program statewide.
The Sitka Community Food Assessment Indicators Report was released on Monday, and the findings will help guide future food system planning in Sitka.
Sitka Local Foods Network 
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