• Homer Farmers' Market is the best place, besides your own garden, to get local veggies.  Support a local infrastructure of farming without all the shipping.  Besides, it's a fun place to go!  Runs June through September officially, though there is often folks selling veggies way into November.  Keep up-to-date on their Facebook page or sign up for a Homer Farmers' Market e-Newsletter by emailing a request to info@homerfarmersmarket.org.

• Homer Garden Club is a vital resource of local knowledge.  Meetings are held on the fourth Sunday of every month during the winter with speakers on topics ranging from permaculture to greenhouse gardening to flower garden design.  Want to start growing your own food?  Don't be intimidated by the expertise in the room when you go, just ask questions!  Their summer garden tour will inspire you. There are lots of good stories and advice in their old newsletters too.

• Homer High Tunnel Growers is a loose collection of folks who have received a high tunnel grant through NRCS or have built their own hoop house. Check out their Facebook page to see what people are growing, ask or answer questions about growing in or building or shipping high tunnels.  If you want even more, check out the Kodiak Growers Facebook page.  Want your own high tunnel?  There are lots of options: 

  • NRCS High Tunnels - Our local NRCS office has awarded more high tunnels from this grant program than any other office in the state.  Or any other office in the country!  So Homer is a little high tunnel crazy.  Rumor has it the funding is going to continue through 2013, so go ahead and apply.  To qualify, you need to have produced (not sold, just produced) $1000 worth of food on your property for 2 of the last five years.  There are more restrictions, so call the NRCS office at 235-8177 ext 3 to see if you qualify or stop in to meet them at the office upstairs in the blue tile building at the corner of Lake St and Pioneer.

  • Build your own!  There are articles in Mother Earth News (of course) as well as some local descriptions written up by farmer and fruit grower John Bittner; check out these links to his articles:  Hoop Dreams and Hoop Mania 

  • Bend your own!  To build a hoop house you need to bend something to make it round, right?  PVC pipe is common because it is so flexible, but metal electrical conduit is actually cheaper and sturdier.  Even better is chain-link fencing rail.  For anything metal you will need a bender.  Don't buy one, there are plenty around, curved perfectly for hoop house construction.  Call John Bittner at 235-7264 or try Joseph Belcastro at 235-2503.  Maybe you can get a peek at their amazing gardens while you visit to bend your pipe!

• Local freezing and canning facility is possible with Coal Point Trading Co.  You can steam, vacuum pack and flash freeze your veggies!  Nancy Hillstrand also has the official capacity to purchase veggies as well as fish for freezing. Call 235-3877.

• Homer Green: Trade Share, Give, Receive: this is what Facebook is for.  A constant open dialog of announcements varying from chickens to sell, grains to trade for firewood, raspberry plants you can have if you remove - you name it, it's traded here.

Grow- Your- Own Suppliers

• Ground Control - Though they have a booming landscaping business, John and Alisha Mahoney are dedicated to helping folks grow their own food with the help of irrigation supplies and more at their Ocean Drive location.  235-1521

• Anchor Point Greenhouse - Al Poindexter runs wonderful greenhouses full of plants, but he is also the creator of Fishy Peat and can load your truck with your desired mix of topsoil, peat, and/or sand.  He also carries irrigation supplies.

• The Wagon Wheel - Has seeds, starts, dirt, animal feed, and most anything else you would need for a small farm or garden.  235-8777

• Ocean Earth Compost - Jim Van Oss has quite the operation out East End Road with large-scale compost piles he can load into the back of your truck.  It is seasonal, so give him a call to find out if any is available at 235-1314.

• Check out our local greenhouses and other resources on the Garden Snaps web page

• For general questions, you can always call the Cooperative Extension office in Kenai at 1-800-478-5824

• Everything you will ever need to know about canning can be found in this video series from Cooperative Extension.  But that's not all.  Three of the latest DVDs in Extension’s Preserving Alaska’s Bounty series are “Cold Storage,” “Roses and Fireweed” and “Processing Game Meat.”  The DVDs sell for $5 and are available through extension offices or by calling Extension toll-free at 877-520-5211.  Interactive online lessons on many of the same topics are available on extension’s website. You can also see a list of all their publications; there are TONS of subjects varying from raspberries to potatoes.

• Read up on announcements and research highlights from the UAF School of Natural Resources & Agricultural Sciences on their SNRAS Science and News blog.

• Keep in touch with the pulse of agriculture in Alaska on the Alaska Community Agriculture Facebook page.

• The AK Root Cellar Blog is for those of you who would like to add more local foods to your diet, meet local farmers, learn new recipes based on seasonal eating and preserving the summer harvest.

• Global Food Collaborative:  Working in Alaska to connect businesses to each other and to other strategic companies and technologies --all for the purposes of a world-class industry with optimal supply chains.

• Read about what the "Upbeet Gardener", Marion Owen of Kodiak, proposes for  sustainable food and gardening for Alaska by checking out her articles in the Kodiak Daily Mirror.  (you may need to subscribe to read them, but it's worth it!)

• Alaska Permaculture Blog is a great way to share ideas and questions with others around the state on what works in Alaska for permaculture.

• Edible Communities:  Cultivating Community Through Food

HOMER FACT:

Because of our distance from major metropolitan centers, Alaskans have historically been very self-sufficient in terms of food production; hunting, fishing, and the gathering of local plants.  Over the years this has diminished and in our present-day Alaska much of our food comes from the grocery store. 

When looking into different areas of sustainability, a community must evaluate where its food comes from and how much energy it takes to get it.  In consideration of rising energy costs and the sizeable distance our food travels to get here, Alaskans must begin to see the importance of encouraging more local food production more than anyone in the Lower 48. Presently, Alaskan farmers only produce about 2% of Alaskans' food.

There is nothing better than eating what our local area has to offer, a practice that at the same time supports a local economy of producers and distributors.  So go to your local Farmers Market!