Capital City Weekly

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• Local foods in the news this week

Many of Alaska’s newspapers had articles about local foods this week. Here is a sampling of some of the offerings.

Click here to read an article called “Beware of wild things in the blueberry patch” from the Capital City Weekly, about slugs, bugs and bears.

Click here to read an update on the Second Annual Juneau Farmers Market and Local Foods Festival from the Capital City Weekly. This event is from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 29, at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.

Click here to read an item in Capital City Weekly about a tree planting and pruning workshop here in Sitka on Monday, Aug. 24, at Harrigan Centennial Hall.

Click here to read an article and photo package from Fran Durner’s “Talk Dirt To Me” gardening blog in the Anchorage Daily News about Dan Bilyeu of Nikiski, who grows and sells gourmet oyster mushrooms.

Click here to read a “Berries of the Kenai Peninsula” feature from the 2009 Peninsula Clarion Recreation and Tourist Guide.

It’s not from an Alaska publication, but the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service has a story (click here to read it) about new research into phytochemicals and other healthy plant compounds in potatoes.

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• Capital City Weekly covers Sitka Farmers Market

Capital City Weekly screenshot showing the Table of the Day Award winners from the second Sitka Farmers Market of the summer (Aug. 1)

Capital City Weekly screenshot showing the Table of the Day Award winners from the second Sitka Farmers Market of the summer (Aug. 1)

This week’s edition of Capital City Weekly (a free Southeast Alaska regional weekly newspaper that comes out on Wednesdays) had some good coverage of the Sitka Farmers Market.

Click here to see a photo honoring Table of the Day Award winners Pete Karras and Mimi Goodwin from the second Sitka Farmers Market on Aug. 1. This photo ran in the Health section of the paper.

Click here to see a package of four photos taken by Capital City Weekly reporter Libby Sterling when she was in Sitka for the first Sitka Farmers Market on July 18. This package ran in the Outdoors section of the paper.

By the way, the third Sitka Farmers Market of the summer takes place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 15, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall, 235 Katlian St. Some booth space is available, so call Linda Wilson at 747-3096 (nights and weekends) for more information.

The Sitka Local Foods Network (the 501(c)(3) non-profit group that sponsors the Sitka Farmers Market) welcomes any volunteers who want to help set up the market before it opens and take it down once the market is over. Also, the Sitka Local Foods Network accepts donations of extra locally grown produce and berries people may have to sell at the network’s booth at the Sitka Farmers Market. The money raised at the network’s booth helps fund Sitka Local Foods Network projects (the market, community gardens, seed money for the community greenhouse project, educational speakers, etc.). Just drop your extra produce off at the network’s booth, usually outside right next to the building on Katlian St., at the start of the market.

And finally, there was one last story of interest in this week’s Capital City Weekly. Click here to read an article and photo package about the variety of plants being grown at the Jensen-Olson Arboretum in Juneau.

A screenshot from the Capital City Weekly photo package about Sitka's local foods from the first Sitka Farmers Market of the summer (July 18)

A screenshot from the Capital City Weekly photo package about Sitka's local foods from the first Sitka Farmers Market of the summer (July 18)

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• Local foods articles in Capital City Weekly and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

This week’s issue of Capital City Weekly, a free weekly newspaper distributed throughout Southeast Alaska, included four local food-related stories. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, a daily paper in Fairbanks, also has had a couple of local food-oriented stories the past couple of days. Here are some links to the articles.

Click here to read a Capital City Weekly article on a new community garden being built behind the Glory Hole homeless shelter in downtown Juneau.

Click here to read a Capital City Weekly article on the Montessori Borealis Adolescent Program’s vegetable garden project in Juneau’s Mendenhall Valley.

Click here to read a story about a couple of upcoming University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service classes this weekend in Juneau about how to market specialty food products (geared toward people selling at farmers markets).

Click here to read a Capital City Weekly article on home canning of crab and geoducks by Sonja Koukel of the Juneau office of the UAF Cooperative Extension Service.

Click here to read a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner story from Wednesday’s paper from Roxie Rodgers Dinstel of the Fairbanks office of the UAF Cooperative Extension Service about how fireweed (which grows wild in Sitka) can add a subtle flavor to different meals.

Click here to read a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner story from Tuesday’s paper about how Fairbanks students are turning their schoolyards into blooming gardens as part of the EATING (Engaging Alaska Teens IN Gardening) program run by the Calypso Farm and Ecology Center. Click here to read more about the EATING program on the Calypso Farm site.