Community Garden project manager Joel Hanson stands in front of a demonstration plot at the Sitka Community Garden with construction in the background (KCAW/Cotter)
With the sun shining and no-see-ums buzzing around, excavation contractor Troy Bayne cuts out pieces of tarp over a patch of muskeg.
“This is a barrier to keep the rock from sinking into the muskeg. It just adds stability to the rock,” Bayne explains.
Bayne has been hired by the Sitka Community Garden for the past few weeks to prepare the land for the next phase of construction. One of the main things he is working on today is building a layer of gravel that will serve as an area for street parking, as mandated by the city government.
“So this will all be gravel for the timebeing, possibly a concrete slab underneath the shed roof. This will be the access from the parking lot to the garden beds right through here,” says Bayne. “We’ll have a dump truck here in a minute, and you can see the process of actually putting the rock on the fabric.”
Troy Bayne operates an excavator to fill a 20 by 30-foot hole with gravel (KCAW/Cotter)
This construction is being funded by a $345,000 grant awarded to the community garden by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency. Joel Hanson, the project manager for the community garden, is assisting Bayne in preparing the land for excavation. He found out the week prior that he won the grant he applied for. He says he’s been collaborating with Transition Sitka and the Sitka Local Food Network on this project for the past two years.
“It’s pretty exciting. I didn’t think we’d get this far along,” says Hanson. “There’s still a lot of work to do, but at least some number of community members will be able to start growing gardens in their rented plots next year.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Indian River, a 40,000 square foot area of muskeg has recently been approved to be the home of a new community garden in Sitka.
“We’re at the very end of Rudolph Walton [Circle], and the garden will be off to the right here, off the little cul-de-sac.”
That’s Jeff Feldpausch, the resource protection department director for the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. The organization recently won a $385,000 grant from the Native American Agricultural Fund to develop a community garden to support their current traditional foods program, as well as to provide tribal members with accessible food, even potentially encouraging them to grow their own, much to the delight of Feldpausch.
“I’m jazzed! As soon as we got the funding, it’s like my mind started racing about all the things we need to do,” says Feldpausch.
Cliff Richter, Sienna Reid, Jeff Feldpausch, and Lucas Goddard stand on the land approved for Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s upcoming community garden (KCAW/Cotter)
The Native American Agricultural Fund previously funded a collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service in developing raised beds for Tlingit potatoes and 100 raspberry plants, which inspired the development of a community garden. The Tribe is partnering with the Baranof Island Housing Authority, known as BIHA for short, which helped them scout and finalize the plot of land the garden will eventually be built on. The two organizations found themselves working with the same people.
“BIHA plays into this a lot too, because they have renters who don’t have property, the ability to have gardens of their own at the same time,” Feldpausch says. “A lot of their clients are tribal citizens. So we felt it was a good match there.”
The grant will be used to fund garden development, as well as the salary of three Sitka Tribe staff who will be supporting garden programming.
As they begin executing this project, their staff have researched what other community gardens across Southeast Alaska have done. Hanson, from the current community garden, also reached out to the Tribe shortly after hearing of their grant. What both groups have in common is their resolute belief in the importance of community gardens given the current state of the economy.
“I think home kitchen gardens are going to become more and more important to people in Sitka in order to get by with rising prices and wages stagnating,” says Hanson.
Additionally, BIHA executive director Cliff Richter argues that community gardens create an opportunity for residents to explore gardening when they wouldn’t have the space to do it at their home.
“When you’re in apartment living or higher density, there’s usually not a lot of room to do this sort of thing on your own property,” says Richter. “And so this is going to provide an opportunity for people to spread out and do some things they may not be able to do, and get creative with it too.”
While there are still development logistics to work through, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska hopes to begin construction on their garden next spring.
If you are looking to get involved in either community garden, you can reach out to Joel Hanson at sitkajoel@gmail.com or call at 907-747-9834. For Sitka Tribe of Alaska, contact Sienna Reid at sienna.reid@sitkatribe-nsn.gov or call at 907-747-7111.
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