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Supporting and building a sustainable local food system on the
Kenai Peninsula.
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Local
Food News!
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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.
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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.
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Check
out the Transition
Homer blog to see discussions on making a more
resilient community or join a group on beekeeping, mushrooms
or permaculture.
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Grow- Your-
Own Suppliers
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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
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The
Wagon Wheel - Has seeds, starts, dirt, animal feed,
and most anything else you would need for a small farm
or garden. 235-8777
Soil and
Compost
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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.
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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.
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Check out our local
greenhouses and other resources on the Garden
Snaps web page
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We are lucky to have
a local freezing and canning facility
with Coal Point Trading Co. Nancy Hillstrand now has
the official capacity to purchase veggies as well as fish
for freezing. 235-3877.
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For general
questions, you can always call the Cooperative
Extension office in Kenai at 1-800-478-5824
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The local source for
Farm Tech greenhouses is in Kasilof.
Jeff Babitt has quite a crew manufacturing and building the
same kind of high tunnels that are popping up everywhere
with the NRCS/USDA grants. 252-5712
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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.
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Check out the UAF
Agriculture and Forestry Experiment Station Publications
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Read up on announcements and research
highlights from the UAF School of Natural Resources &
Agricultural Sciences on their SNRAS
Science and News blog.
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Glacier Valley CSA (Community Supported
Agriculture) is run out of Palmer and is the only year-round
CSA box around. Some of their produce is shipped up
from the Lower 48, but they fill it with as much local
produce as they can. If you sign up for a box, the
drop off is at the Ring of Fire Meadery.
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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.
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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.
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Edible Communities:
Cultivating Community Through Food
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Read about what the
Upbeet Gardener,
Marion Owen of Kodiak, proposes for a sustainable food
policy for Alaska
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Alaska
Permaculture Blog is a great way to share ideas and
questions with others around the state on what works in
Alaska for permaculture.
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Buying
local veggies at the Homer Farmers' Market
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High
Tunnel Tour Check out the tour
and tour map.
Homer
Garden Club has monthly meetings
with guest speakers on the fourth Sunday throughout the
winter. Check out what you can learn from the area's best
growers. To find out what is coming up, check out their website.
And fill out this
survey of plant varieties to help catalog what grows best
here.
NRCS/USDA High
tunnel greenhouse project
The deadline for grant applications is ongoing. Check
out the program
and
then call the Homer office for more information at 235-8177.
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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!
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