SITKA LOCAL FOODS NETWORK

We grow much of the produce sold at the Sitka Farmers Markets at the St. Peter's Fellowship Farm communal garden (located behind St. Peter's By The Sea Episcopal Church, 611 Lincoln Street, in Sitka) and at a couple of satellite gardens around town. We started St. Peter's Fellowship Farm in the spring of 2008, and had produce to sell at our first three Sitka Farmers Markets held later that summer. Since then we have been able to increase our production of local produce so we now can support seven markets this summer as well as selling produce at other venues and for school lunches. St. Peter's Fellowship Farm has a Certified Naturally Grown designation. It also holds a People's Garden designation from the USDA (for gardens that return produce to the community)

The SLFN Education Committee offers a variety of gardening and food preservation education opportunities to Sitka residents (and others). We host a variety of free or nearly free gardening classes in the spring, and we offer a one-on-one garden mentoring program to first-time gardeners where mentors provide families with six classes during the growing season (these classes are open to the general public). We also partner with the Sitka Kitch community rental commercial kitchen, University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service, and other programs to provide a variety of food preservation and cooking classes.

We are hosting our sixth annual Sitka Food Business Innovation Contest in early 2023 (the entry deadline is March 17), which is a way to encourage local entrepreneurs to use local foods in their products and services. We provide two $1,500 prizes, and our 2022 winners are a couple of women who are making fish broth from parts of the fish usually thrown away and a woman who has a Japanese-Hawaiian-Alaskan pop-up restaurant. Past winners include businesses using seaweed and other sea greens, a bakery, a mushroom cultivation program, a food truck, a fermented food business, someone making ice cream desserts, and an egg producer. We also gave a small special award to a 12-year-old girl who was making custom spice mixes.