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)

The community is invited to help harvest the USDA Forest Service Sitka Ranger District/Sitka Tribe of Alaska Tlingít potato garden and learn information about the unique crop. Harvesting will take place from 1:30-3 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 26, and will include an oral history of the Tlingít potato and some traditional stories of these important little tubers. Volunteer and liability forms will need to be signed by all attendees.

The Sitka Ranger District provided the sunny plot of land to serve as the shared potato garden and tended the garden over the summer after volunteers from the Sitka Tribe’s Traditional Foods Program, the gardening class from Pacific High School, and others from the community planted the potatoes in April. School and Tribe volunteers are expected to assist in the harvest, but community involvement is also needed. Attendees are asked to wear boots and gardening gloves, and bring hand trowels or shovels. Bringing five-gallon buckets of kelp to incorporate into the soil after harvesting would be beneficial as well.

All of the potatoes will need to be dried and prepared for storage. Many of the potatoes harvested will be saved as next year’s seed potatoes. Depending on the size of the harvest, the group hopes to share the harvest among the volunteers and through the Sitka Tribe’s Traditional Foods Program, which provides traditional foods to elders through the year and seasons. 

For more details, contact Raeanna Wood at raeanna.wood@usda.gov or 907-747-4202.

By GARLAND KENNEDY
Daily Sitka Sentinel Staff Writer
    Harvesting vegetables that grew over the summer, students at Pacific High opened the school year Tuesday with a hands-on lesson in both gardening and collaboration at the garden plot behind the Lincoln Street school.
    At Pacific High, students can enroll in gardening or culinary classes, but the entire student body of about 40 teenagers was on hand Tuesday gathering the vegetables that will be incorporated into school meals, PHS teacher Mandy Summer said.
“This is a stewardship day – at the beginning of each school year we do what’s called orientation,” Summer said. “This is a six-day orientation. Sometimes it’s two weeks, but it is all stewardship projects, outdoor activities, community building activities to get students to know each other, to get to know staff. It really breaks down those barriers before we start in the academic classes.”
    Formerly Pacific High’s principal, Summer now teaches culinary classes and works with meal preparation both at PHS and nearby Xoots Elementary.
    Over the past decade, Pacific High’s farm-to-table program has grown from humble beginnings, Summer said.
    “About 12 years ago, we had one raised bed, and it was in the front of the building, on a grassy lawn, because that’s what the front was before our school was remodeled and the landscaping was put out there,” she said. “We had a ‘reading and weeding’ class… Garden plants were the theme of the class, and kids practiced different kinds of reading strategies by becoming the expert in that garden plant. So that’s really how we started incorporating gardening into the curriculum. And kids became very excited about watching their seeds grow and taking recordings of them and writing about them.”
    “In 2015 we had the one raised bed, we built maybe three or four more,” she continued. “And over the years, we built another two, another three, another four. Then we got a grant, a partnership grant, with Sitka Tribe of Alaska that provided the funding to purchase the greenhouse.”
    The school greenhouse, completed in 2023, is now in its first fully operational year and is brimming with plants. Near the greenhouse are a number of raised beds and a fenced garden with fruit trees.
    Andrea Fraga, who grows produce full time at Middle Island Gardens, is the school’s garden coordinator. At the orientation Tuesday she instructed students in proper techniques, from digging potatoes to cleaning garlic. She first began working with the school in 2021 under a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, and now holds the position thanks to a state Department of Natural Resources Specialty Crop Block Grant secured by the Sitka Conservation Society.
    “We’re doing a big harvest. We’ve got garlic and shallots today,” Fraga said. “In the greenhouse, folks are harvesting tomatoes, zucchini, bush beans, we have some mint in there. Outdoors here we have some cabbage and kale harvested, chives.”
    Part of the DNR grant, she said, is to examine “what can grow here. What does it actually look like to grow radish or carrot – and self-sufficiency.”
    Students gain a sense of place and pride in their work through the gardening class, Fraga said, and can eat the products of their labor at the end.
    “I try to align production with the school year, but then we have things like lettuce and tomatoes in the summer,” the teacher said. “We have a fair amount of volunteers, so they get to eat what’s available in the summer…  I’ve been growing produce for years on Middle Island, but I thought it’d be neat to try to teach younger generations how to do it as well, because Sitka really needs that.”
    PHS junior TJ Vaughn-Jeske has enjoyed seeing the garden develop and expand in his years at Pacific High.
    “The amazing harvest — there’s always a lot of vegetables and stuff to pick. A lot of new varieties this year,” he said. “Overall, I’m learning how to sustain myself and grow my own plants, in case I ever wanted to start a farm or garden. When I first got here, we didn’t have that big greenhouse or much of this at all either,” the junior said, gesturing at a series of raised gardening beds. “We used to only have cabbage, garlic and a few others. That’s really how much it changed.”
    His favorite aspect of the school and its gardening program is “definitely the people, the community that we bring together to pick everything… Just an amazing place in general. The community is super nice, everyone knows each other.”
    Hard at work cleaning fresh-picked garlic was freshman Skip Votaw.
    “We’re just learning how to process fresh food out of the garden, cook it,” he said. “It’s healthier than normal school food. This is fresh from a garden turning into our lunch.”
    He plans to continue his education with the school’s gardening and culinary classes, and appreciates that PHS offers such a comprehensive gardening program.
    “We have the best food system in all of Southeast Alaska for school lunches,” he said.
    PHS senior Katie Elder enjoys the gardening program, and has watched the garden grow dramatically through the years.
    “I’ve been here since I was a sophomore, so I’ve only had a few years’ experience here, and when I first got here, we didn’t have the greenhouse,” she said. “It’s been really nice to have through the summer and up until now even. And I loved helping with the plant sale in the beginning of spring. That was quite a bit of fun. We ended up making quite a bit for our garden program,” Elder said.
    “My favorite one to grow probably is cabbages, because they get so much bigger and denser than what you can buy in the store, or tomatoes, because fresh tomatoes are way better than store-bought ones,” she said. As a side project, Elder is working with edible mushrooms such as blue and pink oysters and lion’s mane.
    Pacific High’s gardening program has become a model for others, Mandy Summer said.
    “We have groups that come in and they want to see what Pacific High School is doing with this farm and food program, because it’s so unique,” the teacher said. “And a lot of other schools have tried small gardens or doing their own food, but I mean, we’re really doing it on what’s becoming a much larger scale. And so it’s just really exciting to see that other people are coming to learn from us as well.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF SITKA LOCAL FOODS NETWORK

Sitka Farmers Market manager Debe Brincefield, center, presents the Table of the Day Award for the Aug. 10 Sitka Farmers Market to Rock and Charlene Peterson of Jam-n-Peppers. Rock and Charlene sold jalapeno-pepper-flavored apricot jam. They received a certificate, a tote bag, a selection of Alaska Flour Company products, an Alaska Farmers Markets Cookbook, some produce, and Sitka Farmers Market special label chocolate bars. National Farmers Market Week was Aug. 4-10, and this was part of the celebration. The next Sitka Farmers Market is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 24, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Founders Hall (235 Katlian Street). Vendors can register online (by Thursday night) at https://sitkafarmersmarket.eventsmart.com. More details about the Sitka Local Foods Network and Sitka Farmers Market can be found at http://www.sitkalocalfoodsnetwork.org.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SITKA LOCAL FOODS NETWORK
Sitka Farmers Market manager Debe Brincefield, right, presents the Table of the Day Award for the July 27 Sitka Farmers Market to Cora Nisbet, left, and Jill Scheidt of the Sitka Cancer Survivors Society (not pictured is Bonnie Richards). The society sold quilt raffle tickets and also provided information about grants it offers to cancer patients needing help with treatment. They received a certificate, a tote bag, a selection of Alaska Flour Company products, a bag of salad greens, some rhubarb, and several Sitka Farmers Market special label chocolate bars. National Famrmers Market Week is Aug. 4-10, and the next Sitka Farmers Market is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 10, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Founders Hall (235 Katlian Street). Vendors can register online (by Thursday night) at https://sitkafarmersmarket.eventsmart.com. More details about the Sitka Local Foods Network and Sitka Farmers Market can be found at http://www.sitkalocalfoodsnetwork.org.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SITKA LOCAL FOODS NETWORK

TABLE OF THE DAY — Sitka Farmers Market manager Debe Brincefield, back row, second from left, presents the Table of the Day Award for the July 13 Sitka Farmers Market to the Sitka Spruce Tips/Alaska Way Of Life 4-H Club, including club advisor Jasmine Shaw (back row, left), Logan Miller, Aven Powell, Madeline Filipek, and AmeriCorps volunteer Romy Bekeris (not pictured is Noah Apathy). The club members, who sold arts and crafts, baked goods, and homemade preserves, were participating in the Sitka Farmers Market youth vendor program for those younger than 14. They received a certificate, a tote bag, a selection of Alaska Flour Company products, a bag of salad greens, some rhubarb, assorted stickers, and several Sitka Farmers Market special label chocolate bars. The next Sitka Farmers Market is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 27, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Founders Hall (235 Katlian Street). Vendors can register online (by Thursday) at https://sitkafarmersmarket.eventsmart.com. More details about the Sitka Local Foods Network and Sitka Farmers Market can be found at http://www.sitkalocalfoodsnetwork.org.