Each week Alaska Pacific University invites different members of it’s community to host it’s take-over Instagram account, @makingmovesatAKpacific, to show what a week at APU looks like through the eyes (and lens) of students, faculty, and staff. For much of June, staffers at our Spring Creek Farm on Kellogg Campus took control of the account, showing us how they planted produce, geared up for the Farmers Market, planned for Community Supported Agriculture, partnered with Alaska Tilth and the Matanuska Experiment Farm UAF Cooperative Extension, and got their hands dirty. Here are some of the highlights.
Pictures and captions by Megan Talley, Kerry Nelson, and Phoebe Autry. For more from their month of hosting, check out the Instagram account. Interested in hosting? Email bberg@alaskapacific.edu.
Farm Assistant Phoebe and Farm Manager Joshua transplanting carrots. These two have been in the field the last few weeks prepping the soil and getting crops planted for the upcoming APU Farmers Market and CSA shares.
Getting up close and personal with purple basil.
Megan Talley sharing gardening knowledge with members of the Tyonek Tribal Conservation District.
Kerry Nelson is the Food Security Americorps VISTA at APU’s Spring Creek Farm. She loved her internship on the farm last summer so much that they convinced her to move up here full-time from her home in Milwaukee. This time around her position is focused on capacity building, marketing, fundraising and fostering relationships with the community and the farm that will ultimately strengthen food security in our region of Alaska.
Taken during a much needed rain. Irrigation is one of our biggest challenges here. We use a well system for the entire farm including it’s buildings, so we have to be wary of water rights usage. The current well is also downhill from the field, so even with an irrigation system rigged up the gravity is not in our favor. Needless to say, rain, rain don’t go away….yet.
A week of Community Supported Agriculture shares on display. Those interested in signing up for the program or who would like more information can find it here.
We have had a great partnership with the Matanuska Experiment Farm UAF Cooperative Extension the last few years. It has allowed us to use state of the art greenhouse space, where we currently grow all of our starts and where tomatoes and peppers live all season. The tomato and pepper buckets will turn the greenhouse into a forest mid-summer, trellising all the way up to the ceiling!
Big Blue looking majestic today. When the current farm managers Megan and Josh came out here four seasons ago, they only had a hand tiller to work with. We can’t imagine not having the tractor now, there’s no way we’d be able to produce on the scale that we do.
We grow all of our starts that go into the field in greenhouses off-site, but the iconic big red greenhouse on the farm has been put to use this season after a long hiatus. It’s been an uphill road to get to this point, so we’re really excited to be producing food out of here! The tiered bed system has been set up so that warm air is pulled down from the top of the greenhouse and forced back underneath the soil, promoting a longer, more robust growing season.
Spending a rainy morning in the greenhouse pruning and training our gigantic tomato plants at the UAF Experiment Farm. They are our collaborators in Alaska Tilth, which provides fresh local produce to families in need.
One of our farm animals, Whiskey, patrols the scallions for sneaky voles trying to snack on the crops.
