Join us at the garden site at the upper end of Jarvis Street, from 1-1:30 p.m. this Saturday, May 17, for our long-awaited groundbreaking celebration.
Aside from the satisfying sound of shovel striking dirt, we’ll have a pop-up tent housing a map of the garden with plot layouts, general information about garden membership, and a sign-up form for reserving your plot or confirming your interest if you’re already signed up.
Importantly, we also will be signing up volunteers to help with the initial construction phase of the garden, which will begin immediately. We expect to have three demonstration plots completed as soon as possible and planted for this summer’s growing season.
Member plots will be assigned next January or February for the full opening of the garden, spring of 2026. Initially, they’ll be assigned on a first come, first served basis, so don’t delay. Sign up on Saturday, or reply to this email with your name and contact information to be added to the list, or confirm your previous interest in a plot.
Sitka Farmers Market manager Debe Brincefield, right, presents the Table of the Day Award for the Sept. 7, 2024, Sitka Farmers Market to Kaleb Aldred, Andrea Fraga, and Elisabeth Schafer of Middle Island Gardens. They sold a variety of locally grown produce and flower arrangements. They received a certificate, a tote bag, a selection of Alaska Flour Company products, an Alaska Farmers Market Cookbook, some Barnacle kelp salsa, some Bridge Creek Birch Syrup, and Sitka Farmers Market special label chocolate bars.
The online vendor registration page for the 2025 Sitka Farmers Market has gone live and potential vendors can register now for our summer of markets.
This summer, for its 18th season, the Sitka Local Foods Network is hosting six markets from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays — July 12, July 26, Aug. 9, Aug. 23, Sept. 6, and Sept. 20 — at Alaska Native Brotherhood Founders Hall (235 Katlian Street), where we held 13 of our first 15 years of markets. This will be our 16th year at ANB out of 18 seasons.
One change this year is we no longer have half tables, and we’ve reduced the price of a full table to $35 per market (down from $40). We have a special rate of $175 for vendors who register for all six markets before the first market happens, which means you pay for five markets and get the sixth market free (it’s $210 if the six markets are not paid for before the first market). Vendors can register for one or two markets, or all six. We also have a youth vendor program for ages 14 and younger, which is $20 for all six markets (please let us know ahead of time which specific markets you plan to attend).
The Sitka Farmers Market is a community event hosted by the Sitka Local Foods Network, whose mission is to increase the amount of locally produced and harvested food in the diets of Southeast Alaskans. Our focus is on local — fresh produce, fish, baked goods, prepared foods, cottage foods, arts and crafts — and all products must be made in Alaska (preferably in Sitka or Southeast Alaska, cooked foods may use non-local foods so long as the food is cooked on site). Since our mission is geared toward food security and our space is limited this year, if we have too many vendors try to register our food booths will have a higher priority over arts and crafts.
After having to relocate for two years due to COVID-19, we returned to our ANB Hall roots in 2022 for our 15th season of markets. We have been back at ANB Hall again since the pandemic faded away. We will have indoor and outdoor spaces, but if we don’t have a lot of vendors we will move people inside.
Since COVID-19 is still around, we will encourage wearing masks inside the ANB Hall when Sitka is at the Moderate or High risk levels. While most people now are vaccinated against the coronavirus, there still are people who aren’t vaccinated and there are periodic hot spots when the illness flares up. We don’t want the market to be a place that spreads the coronavirus. Even with our outside booths, we encourage vendors and customers to wear masks, to use hand sanitizer, and to avoid bunching up while giving others six feet of space.
Please read the market vendor rules and responsibilities document linked below. All vendors using this site to register for the market will be held to these rules. We ask all vendors to register by the Thursday morning before the markets where they intend to sell. Unless you specify you want to be outside, we will try to find room for you indoors.
Vendors can pay using PayPal or credit/debit card. When you get to the Payment options, click PayPal (not Invoice) and it should give you the option of using a PayPal account or four different types of cards (Visa, MasterCard, AmEx, Discover). If you prefer to pay by cash or check, contact Charles Bingham at 907-623-7660.
We will provide a $30 refund for full-table and outside cancellations, but to get the refund you are required to let us know before Wednesday of the week of your registered market that you can’t make it. We are billed for transaction fees and other expenses, so the $5 covers those fees. There is no refund if you don’t let us know until after Wednesday.
Debe Brincefield is the Sitka Farmers Market manager this summer. Laura Schmidt is our lead gardener at St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm, where the Sitka Local Foods Network grows most of the produce it sells at the market. Charles Bingham is the assistant market manager and the president of the Sitka Local Foods Network.
All growers, entrepreneurs and local food enthusiasts are invited to gather, connect and share experiences of growing food in Sitka over a potluck dinner organized by the UAF Cooperative Extension Service. This event is at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 5, at the See House behind St. Peter’s By The Sea Episcopal Church.
Andrea Fraga of Middle Island Gardens and Laura Schmidt of St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm will share tidbits from the 2025 Southeast Farmers Summit, held Feb. 20-22 in Juneau.
As 2024 draws to a close, many Alaskans already are thinking about applying for their 2024 Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend check in January. As usual, Alaskans can share their wealth with a variety of Alaska nonprofits, including the Sitka Local Foods Network, through the PFD’s Pick.Click.Give. program.
For the past several years, the Sitka Local Foods Network has participated in the Pick.Click.Give. program, which allows people to donate in $25 increments to their favorite statewide and local 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations when they file their PFD applications from Jan. 1 through March 31.
When you choose to donate part of your PFD to the Sitka Local Foods Network, you support the Sitka Farmers Market, St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm, the Sitka Food Business Innovation Contest, education programs about growing and preserving food, the Sitka Kitch community rental commercial kitchen, Sitka Community Gardens, matching dollars at the Sitka Farmers Market for SNAP/WIC beneficiaries, the sustainable use of traditional foods, the Sitka Community Food Assessment, the Sitka Food Summit, and a variety of other projects designed to increase access to healthy local foods in Sitka. Starting in 2023, the Sitka Local Foods Network partnered with Transition Sitka on two food security projects — to update the decade-old data in the 2014 Sitka Community Food Assessment Indicators Report (recently released, see Documents section of website for link) and to build a new community garden at the top of Jarvis Street (recently approved by the Sitka Assembly).
In 2024, 40,095 Alaskans contributed $2.622 million to 614 Alaska nonprofit organizations, and more than $37.9 million has been donated since the program started in 2009. Some Alaskans choose to donate to just one group, while others may spread several donations around to many groups. There now are 614 total 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations participating in Pick.Click.Give. for 2025 (including multi-location nonprofits), including 23 from Sitka. In 2022, Alaskans donated $39,075 to Sitka-based nonprofits (note, total does not include donations to some nonprofits that are based in multiple cities, also final 2023 and 2024 totals not available).
So how do you make a donation to the Sitka Local Foods Network through the Pick.Click.Give. program? First, starting at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 1, go fill out your Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend application at http://pfd.alaska.gov/. When you get to the section of the application asking if you want to participate in Pick.Click.Give. Charitable Contributions program, click on the PCG link and search for the Sitka Local Foods Network. You also can look for us by using the town search for Sitka.
The Pick.Click.Give. program is available only to people who file their PFD applications online, and not to those who file by mail. Even though you can’t file a new PFD application after March 31, you can go back into your application and update your Pick.Click.Give. donations through Aug. 31 each year.
You still can donate to the Sitka Local Foods Network if you aren’t from Alaska or aren’t eligible for a 2025 PFD. To donate, send your check to the Sitka Local Foods Network, 408-D Marine St., Sitka, Alaska, 99835. You also can donate online by going to our online fundraising page on MightyCause.com, and clicking the Donate button to make an online contribution. In addition, there is an online giving page through the PayPal Giving Fund. If you are trying to make nonprofit donations before the end of the 2024 tax year, you can mail in a check or make an online donation. Please let us know if you need a receipt for tax purposes. For more information about donating, you can send an email to sitkalocalfoodsnetwork@gmail.com.
Thank you for supporting our mission of increasing the amount of locally produced and harvested food in the diets of Southeast Alaskans.
“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.
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.
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 Farmers Market manager Debe Brincefield, left, presents the Table of the Day Award for the Sept. 21 Sitka Farmers Market to Evening Star Grutter of Evening Star Arts, Soaps, and Salves. She sold a variety of locally made soaps, salves, and other products. She received a certificate, a tote bag, a selection of Alaska Flour Company products, an Alaska Farmers Market Cookbook, some Barnacle kelp salsa, some Bridge Creek Birch Syrup, and Sitka Farmers Market special label chocolate bars. This was the seventh and final Sitka Farmers Market of the 2024 season. The Sitka Local Foods Network will host the 18th season of markets in 2025. More details about the Sitka Local Foods Network and Sitka Farmers Market can be found at http://www.sitkalocalfoodsnetwork.org.
People harvest Tlingít potatoes during the September 2023 harvest (above). In the slideshow below, there are photos of the 2023 harvest and a photo from the spring 2024 planting.
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.
Sitka Farmers Market manager Debe Brincefield, right, presents the Table of the Day Award for the Sept. 7 Sitka Farmers Market to Kaleb Aldred, Andrea Fraga, and Elizabeth Schafer of Middle Island Gardens. They sold a variety of locally grown produce and flower arrangements. They received a certificate, a tote bag, a selection of Alaska Flour Company products, an Alaska Farmers Market Cookbook, some Barnacle kelp salsa, some Bridge Creek Birch Syrup, and Sitka Farmers Market special label chocolate bars. The final Sitka Farmers Market of the 2024 season is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 21, 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. If help is needed registering, prospective vendors can call Charles Bingham at 907-623-7660.
Sitka Local Foods Network 
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