Community Supported Agriculture in Southcentral Alaska

The Alaska State dish is back after a bit of a winter hiatus, and will be here the rest of the year to tell you about great Alaska restaurants and ways that you can support the producers of great Alaskan foods.

In many hip, progressive places in the Lower 48 with longer growing seasons, many CSA programs have probably already filled up and are starting waiting lists. Here in Alaska, they are just starting to get geared up for the 2012 season. While I think CSAs are a great idea, this is the first year I have signed up for a CSA share. At some point I would like to have a substantial vegetable garden of my own, but in the meantime I want to make sure I’m getting as many local vegetables as possible and supporting local farmers. So here’s a quick user’s guide to Community Supported Agriculture in Alaska. If you want more information on any farms, visit the Alaska Food: Eating Local page, which has a listing of farms in Alaska, and links to their pages if they have one. This site is a lot more current than a site like Local Harvest- many Alaskan farms are not included and even more are listed but haven’t updated their pages in years. Of course, the best way to learn is to visit your farmer’s markets this summer and talk to the farmers yourself.

The CSA I just signed up for is run by Spring Creek Farm in Palmer. Spring Creek is actually an educational farm, run by the folks at Alaska Pacific University as part of the Department of Outdoor and Environmental Education. All of the educational institutions in Alaska have been very important in supporting local agriculture. The University of Alaska Cooperative Extension Service holds classes for the public on vegetable gardening, raising chickens, and other agricultural topics, and have a lot of resources for gardening and food preservation on their website. APU also holds lots of classes at Spring Creek Farm, including lots of classes for local young people, including ones for Girl Scouts on sustainable living, and a “farm school” for home-schooled students.

A CSA share in Southcentral Alaska usually costs about $550-$600 for the season, and usually produces from early June to early October, but of course this varies with the weather. There are CSA programs in the Tanana Valley, too, but their growing season is at least a couple weeks shorter. They don't have a traditional CSA, but there is even a farm in Bethel, out on the Y-K Delta, that has a farm stand where they sell their organic produce, and they will send you a box of vegetables if you live in one of the surrounding villages.

The cost for the season for a CSA in the Anchorage area averages out to about $30-35 a week for a giant box of produce, so among other advantages, it’s cheaper than getting all your vegetables at the farmer’s markets. I can spend $40 on a summer Saturday without even trying! Of course, the most important thing is that you’re helping your local farmers by giving them a base income, and giving them an income early in the season, when they incur most of their costs. Also, it’s important to know that up here these are truly vegetable shares. Few fruits grow well up here, and they’re not profitable for most farms. There is a limited supply of berries, tomatoes, and apples available at some farmer’s markets in late summer (see below), but expect to be getting lots of green vegetables in your farm box.

Other local (Southcentral Alaska) farms that have CSA programs include Arctic Organics, which has been run by Sara and River Bean for over 20 years. They are one of the few local farms that has gone through the process of actually becoming Certified Organic – many local farms practice sustainable, pesticide-free methods but are not actually USDA certified. Sun Circle Farm is another option for those shopping for a CSA. They have both large and small shares, and they also offer whole and half pig shares. Do note, though, that they only sell in the Valley at the Wasilla Farmer’s Market and at their own farmstand, and CSA shares also have to be picked up in the Valley. Unless you know some other people who have Sun Circle shares that you can share pickups with, I wouldn’t recommend that. Cottonwood Creek Farm doesn’t have a vegetable CSA, but they have a co-op and offer goat shares for unpasteurized goat’s milk, and you can also increase your share to get fresh eggs.

Most of the farms in southcentral Alaska that have CSA programs also sell produce at the farmer’s markets, so you can talk to the staff and try their vegetables before you sign up the next year. I learned about Fireweed Farm that way, at the Spenard Farmer’s Market, but unfortunately they had to discontinue their CSA program after 2011. And don’t think that I won’t be going to the farmer’s markets at all just because I have a CSA share! First of all, I still need fresh eggs, and butter and cheese from Matanuska Creamery (I can usually get their milk at the store). Late in the season, I may still go to pick up carrots, potatoes, parsnips, and onions for winter storage, depending on how much I get with my share.  Plus, sometimes farmers just have great things – there are some very nice ladies at the South Anchorage Farmer’s Market that I swear have the best tomatoes in Alaska, and another farmer at that same market has great organic strawberries.

It’s hard to run a farm in Alaska, and Fireweed isn’t the only one that’s stopped their CSA program. Glacier Valley Farm also had a CSA up until this fall. Theirs was a little non-traditional: they tried to offer a year-round share, with their own produce and that of local farms supplemented in the off-season with organic produce from Outside. I’m not sure how I feel about the high shipping costs and environmental costs of something like that, especially for folks in Anchorage who can go to the store. If you want to help local farmers in other ways, you can support the Alaska Farmland Trust, which works on preserving available farmland for farming, and otherwise building Alaska's agricultural infrastructure to increase our food security and the farming economy. Read this post about a wine tasting fundraiser I went to for them.

Speaking of high shipping costs, there are also options for those Alaskans in the Bush who still would like fresh produce. The $30 pineapple at the Bush store can now be avoided with a subscription to Full Circle Farm. They send weekly boxes of produce anywhere in Alaska for around $30-$55 a week, depending on the size of the box, and they send boxes year-round. According to an article I read last year, subscribers in rural Alaska got more produce for less money than at the store, and the produce was all in far better shape than they could get elsewhere. This farm seems pretty successful- one day last September I flew into Haines (see previous post), and at least half the mail they unloaded off the plane consisted of Full Circle farm boxes.

I can hardly wait until early June when I start getting fresh salads and herbs! I'm already collecting recipes for soups and other ways to preserve all the vegetables I will get. I do get jealous of my friends outside that have fresh, local foods year-round. Pretty much all the local foods I can get at the moment are eggs, milk, potatoes, and carrots. But that's okay: if I want to get serious about eating seasonally in Alaska, I'm going to have to get used to eating more potatoes, carrots, and parsnips in the winter, right?