community greenhouse

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• Juneau hosts second annual Juneau Farmers Market and Local Food Festival and other news

The Juneau Commission on Sustainability hosted its second annual Juneau Farmers Market and Local Food Festival on Saturday, and the Juneau Empire had plenty of coverage of Juneau’s only farmers market of the summer. Click here to reach the main story about the farmers market in Sunday’s edition of the Juneau Empire. Click here to read an editorial praising the idea of a farmers market and sustainable food.

In addition to the farmers market stories, the Juneau Empire also ran a feature about a Juneau gardener who is using aeroponics to grow his food. Click here to read the story.

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner on Sunday ran an article about the Fairbanks Community Cooperative Market, which is an effort to get 1,500 Fairbanks residents to buy $200 memberships in a new store that would emphasize local food and organic food choices (click here to read the story). So far the project has downpayments on about two-thirds of the memberships needed to launch the project.

Finally, this week’s Alaska Journal of Commerce has a feature story about alternative energy guru Bernie Karl, who uses geothermal energy to power 44 buildings over 450 acres at the Chena Hot Springs Resort, including the resort’s large greenhouses that can grow about 150,000 to 175,000 heads of lettuce a year and other crops. Click here to read more about the Chena Hot Springs Resort greenhouses and how they can be a good model for the Sitka Community Greenhouse project.

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• Community Gardens Act of 2009 introduced in Congress

According to the Vancouver, British Columbia, blog CityFarmer.info, U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) on July 15 introduced HR 3225 into the U.S. House of Representatives, a bill known as the Community Gardens Act of 2009 (click here to read the text of the bill).

In a nutshell, this bill creates a grant program that compensates community groups up to 80 percent of the costs of starting and maintaining a community garden (click here to read the CityFarmer.info article about the bill).

Activities eligible to receive grant assistance include acquisition of interest in real property, construction, community outreach, operations, and any other appropriate activity. When making grants, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will consider the geographic diversity among grantees and the number of individuals in a local community that are likely to participate in a community garden.

“I’ve introduced this bill to help local groups create new community gardens in neighborhoods around the country,” Inslee said in a press release posted on his Congressional Web site (click here to read it). “Community gardens provide local food sources, strengthen and beautify neighborhoods and let people in urban settings enjoy the benefits of local agriculture. As a parent, I’m also happy to note that community gardens engage families and children in growing their own vegetables, which studies have shown has increased the willingness of children to eat their veggies.”

According to a national study, 1 million households participated in community gardens in 2008, but an estimated 5 million households expressed an interest in starting a garden plot near their home. Groups eligible to apply for funds in Inslee’s new grant program include community-development organizations, schools, state and local governments, tribal organizations and other groups. By encouraging these groups to construct gardens in their communities, Inslee’s bill will promote nutrition, environmental awareness, and neighborhood development.

On the same day the Community Gardens Act of 2009 was introduced, Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) introduced a complementary resolution to designate August as “National Community Gardening Awareness Month.”

“I support the Community Gardens Act of 2009, as it will help Americans across the country establish new gardens and support those who want to take part in feeding their families and their communities,” Matsui said. “Community gardens are on the rise across the nation as Americans look to shrink their monthly grocery bills, introduce produce and more nutritious foods into their children’s diets, and as a way to create a connection between our communities and the food we feed our families.”

Encourage Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) to support this bill, and ask him to sign on as a co-sponsor. Also, write and ask Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) to sponsor a similar bill in the U.S. Senate. Feel free to take things a step further and notify your state representative and senator that Alaska needs a similar bill using this legislation as a model.

Click here to e-mail Rep. Don Young.

Click here to e-mail Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

Click here to e-mail Sen. Mark Begich.

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• Chena Hot Springs greenhouse a model for Sitka greenhouse project

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One of the five focus areas for the Sitka Local Foods Network is to build a community greenhouse in Sitka. This will serve several functions, such as extending our growing season, allowing us to grow a wider variety of produce and expanding our capacity to grow fruits and vegetables in Sitka. The Sitka Local Foods Network has been looking at several locations around town and recently submitted a proposal for a possible site (more details as they become available).

Anyway, there is a model for a successful greenhouse here in Alaska, and it’s worth looking at so people from Sitka can see the possibilities.

Chena Hot Springs, located about 60 miles from Fairbanks, is working toward becoming a more sustainable community and an important element of this vision is being able to produce more of their own food locally. In 2004, Chena Hot Springs Resort installed a 1,000-square-foot test greenhouse that has become the only year-round producing greenhouse in Interior Alaska (click here to read more).

The hoop house greenhouse was able to maintain an interior temperature of 78 degrees Fahrenheit, even when outside temperatures dipped to minus-56 (the 134-degree difference is the largest ever recorded for a controlled environment facility in the U.S.). The greenhouse is heated by geothermal energy from the hot springs (165-degree water running through pipes embedded in concrete floor slabs). Click here for a downloadable report (as a PDF file) on the economic benefits of the project.

After the successful first year or two of production, Chena built a new 4,320-square-foot greenhouse to provide the resort’s restaurant with a greater variety of fresh produce on a year-round basis. Under optimal conditions the nearly 14,000 lettuce plants can grow nearly 150,000 heads of lettuce in a year. They also have 450 different tomatoes, including six Dutch varieties, a cherry tomato variety, a grape tomato variety, a beefsteak tomato variety and three intermediate cluster varieties. They also grow green beans, peppers, cucumbers and numerous greens and herbs (click here for a photo gallery). Chena Hot Springs Resort is working in partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station (click here for a link to the UAF AFES).

Chena Hot Springs Resort, which uses geothermal and other waste heat for power, will host the Fourth Annual Chena Renewable Energy Fair on Saturday, Aug. 22. Click here for more information.

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• Vote for Sitka Farmers Market in the America’s Favorite Farmers Market contest

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America's Favorite Farmers Markets

Do you enjoy the Sitka Farmers Market? If so, vote for us in the America’s Favorite Farmers Market contest sponsored by the American Farmland Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving America’s agricultural resources.

To vote, click here and then search for the Sitka Farmers Market by using the zip code or state directories. The deadline to vote is midnight EST on Saturday, Aug. 8 (8 p.m. Alaska time on Friday, Aug. 7). The online voting form asks what you like about the market, so be prepared to type something in the box. The top small, medium and large markets win a large quantity of “No Farms, No Food” totebags to distribute at a market in September.

By the way, the next Sitka Farmers Market is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. this Saturday, Aug. 1, at Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall (235 Katlian St.). We’re looking forward to seeing you at the market.

This weekend’s market will feature nearly 30 vendors with local fish, produce and arts and crafts. There also will be music on the stage by Ted Howard and friends, and the jam tent outside. As usual, there will be children’s activities.

If you have extra produce from your garden, the Sitka Local Foods Network table (outside by the Sitka Farmers Market sign) accepts donations and does buy some produce to sell at its booth. All money raised by the Sitka Local Foods Network booth goes into various projects sponsored by the 501(c)(3) non-profit group, including the Sitka Farmers Market, community gardens, the proposed Sitka Community greenhouse and other projects.

Click here to vote for the Sitka Farmers Market in the America’s Favorite Farmers Market contest

Click here to learn more about the America’s Favorite Farmers Market contest hosted by the American Farmland Trust

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• Welcome to the Sitka Local Foods Network blog

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Hello and welcome to the Sitka Local Foods Network blog. The Sitka Local Foods Network is a 501(c)3 non-profit group dedicated to promoting the growing, harvesting and eating of local foods in Sitka, Alaska. This blog will be used to keep people updated on what we’re doing and let people know how they can participate in this community effort.

The 2008 Sitka Health Summit planted the seeds for the Sitka Local Foods Network when Sitka community members got together and chose two local-foods-oriented projects as community health priorities. The Sitka Health Summit participants wanted to start a public market so Sitka residents had easier access to local fish and produce, and the participants wanted to build a community greenhouse and expand the community garden programs so more local produce could be grown in Sitka. Since there were a lot of tie-ins between the two projects, the Sitka Local Foods Network was created to streamline the work efforts.

The Sitka Local Foods Network now has five major focus areas:

* Creating and operating the Sitka Farmers Market, where people can sell locally grown produce, locally harvested fish and locally produced arts and crafts.

* Expanding local community gardens, so people who don’t have their own plots of land can grow their own fruits and vegetables. Sitka currently has the Blatchley Community Garden where families and other groups can get their own plot, and the new St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm which is a cooperative community garden with most of the food being sold at the farmers markets or used by non-profit groups.

* Planning and building a Sitka Community Greenhouse, which can help extend the growing season and allow us to grow additional crops.

* Promoting the use of traditional foods (subsistence foods), such as local salmon, halibut, cod, deer, berries, seaweeds and other foods that were in the Tlingít diet before non-Natives arrived in Sitka.

* Providing educational opportunities, technical expertise and encouragement so Sitka residents who want to build their own gardens have the knowledge and support they need.