Bush Farming - An Alternative

The agriculture development of land along the Kuskokwim River was first started around 1930 when missionaries of the Moravian church stablish the mission gardens here in Bethel. The missionaries probably can also be accredited for introducing the native culture in this area to their first vegetables when the first group came up the Kuskokwim to Bethel in the 1900s prior to that. People of this land depended primarily on subsistence foods such as berries fish and birds. A new taste was being introduced for the first time. But still the majority of the native cultures stayed with their more familiar food source. Long time residents of the Bethel area remember Schmitz far they hate the farm and the mission farm. The soil they tilled was rich and the crops were abundant with

potatoes turnips cabbage and other high producing crops for this area. Early farms on the upper Kuskokwim had a longer growing season and the soil was richer. Many homesteaders to that region supplemented their diets with garden vegetables. A project was started several years ago by the Kuskokwim native Association in any act to develop agriculture land in the upper Kuskokwim Delta it was hoped that the products produced on these lands would help supplement the diminishing subsistence food source. The project has had several directors since its beginning its present director Lowell Lambert was the first to be hired for more than just one growing season. We asked Lola Lambert about his first season. Well we are trying a lot of different kinds of vegetables varieties. Actually we have over 60 varieties on test of vegetables and potatoes. But acreage wise we are not much larger than they were last year but production wise we expect to be a whole lot more than last year. They had some

problems last year which I think we have overcome this year. This types of problems. Primarily root maggots. They didn't realize how extensive and how damaging they could be and I wouldn't either if they had if I hadn't had the warning from them. This is some of the continuity that you need from one year to the next which you don't get all of it by changing directors. What is the future that you see in this project. Well actually this project is very small now compared to what we expect it to be. We have a one hundred sixty acres down the road here a little ways which we now have a 99 year lease on as a demonstration an experimental farm. We'd like to start out with some grain production and then in order to market our grain we're going to have to have livestock because there is no market for grain here. So we will be in life stock production probably starting with chickens and and producing eggs hopefully enough eggs for the valley here and Bethel and

perhaps over on the Yukon sound and then using the same equipment we will more easily get into to hog production producing pork which we probably will butcher ourselves and sell the carcasses fresh locally. If it gets large enough project I would have to ship them out of the area. And then the next project would be a production of milk which needs different harvesting equipment Hany equipment and salvage equipment and things of this sort. So Actually I'd like to get in the milk sooner than that but because of the difference of even the equipment it'll take us a little longer to get into milk production. There is one thing that I wanted to ask you about the potatoes it seems like the potatoes here quite well. The future of marketing and potatoes going out of this region. Well at the present time we have no storage and this means that this year we'll

probably have 30 tons of potatoes which will have to market in a matter of about three weeks and this is pretty difficult. But we have the money now to put in storage. We have the money for a storage building which we'll put on our new farm site and we'll start with a metal frame building with. It'll be 50 by 80 feet inside of this will have our potato storage vegetable storage. With climate control in each of them and storage for fertilizer and seeds and chemicals our office will have a packing area in our tool shop. Everything is under 1 1 right. Sounds like you really need it. As far as marketing the crops that you grow here do you think that there is going to be a problem with life. Well in that area we're working to introduce these new tastes to the people who are not from here and the year with the new vegetables with Barbara Knapp family and the

nutritionist and with Pat Barker from the extension service and they are working with my wife we expect to have some demonstrations in the area at the different villages. Will most of this will be started next year and I have told them that any vegetable that they want to demonstrate that I will furnish in any amount that they want to use and hopefully they will prepare the vegetable in front of the women let them eat some of it and then give them samples they can take home so they can prepare it and and serve it to their family. How do you people that are interested in farm me to care. OK. We this year we furnished any gardener that wanted up to 20 pounds of potatoes for seed seed potatoes and we furnished anyone. Any four packets of vegetables that they like to make and four kinds of flower seeds they liked so and this was in all the villages in the West Wing native Association.

As you say that there is a growing amount of interest in gardening in this area and it does appear so. Do you think that part of the reason for that is the diminishing supply of games for so many years people were subsistence hunting and fishing and it's not the game isn't as plentiful as it was back then. What do you think about the old the old timers won't accept this yet but I think the young people have begun to realize that they have to. And then what we were speaking of before I also visit these villages I visit these gardens and furnish technical help to them also besides French and seen also offer an issue fertiliser for anybody that wants it so that we give all the assistance that we can. It's a free service to the community this is a free service of KNAU. The Kuskokwim native Association is very anxious to have this project be a success. They have the native lands and they are anxious to get them into some kind of production which is

of value to their their people. Well we are very interested in getting into commercial greenhouse production and we are being urged to get in a little bit faster than I want to. We expect to have a small greenhouse this coming year which will be up by our office. But the year following I hope to have a larger commercial unit down on our new farm greenhouse is a pretty difficult thing to get into unless you are quite experienced and I'm not really that experienced in green house work although I took some in college. And I like to go a little cautious and feel my way into it a little bit. I don't like to make to make too many serious mistakes. Are you interested in developing the greenhouse more for sci production. It will be to produce our own plants in the spring where the first concern and then I hope to produce probably tomatoes and lettuce on into the fall a

little ways as far as greenhouse is concerned I am not real anxious to get started in fast because of the technical difficulties and the extreme expense of getting in the first time. I am interested in doing some experimental work in solar greenhouses. I have just been doing some research on on solar greenhouses and I think they have quite a lot of potential for a small operator someone who wants to produce things for their own use and not have to put out the expense of the heating equipment. If you don't know how solar greenhouse works it might be interesting for me to say a little bit about them. I don't have solar greenhouse only has one wall that's glass. The rest of the wall is all reflector and it reflects the heat and the light onto the plants. So yeah the angles have to be correct for that location in relation to the sun

and then you use heat storage in. In that you use containers of water some people stack up 5 gallon cans of water. Some people use barrels of water but you store the water that you accumulate or that can store the heat that you kumin make during the day and it is released so you keep to the heat during the night and it's really quite a difficult thing to erect it just right. You have to have a shade on the window so that you don't lose too much heat up through the glass at night. And insulation on the other walls and reflectors because the greenhouse Thank you Hope you hear that. Probably our first but I'd like to some experimental work that so conservationists have only recently started realizing the value of the land along the Kuskokwim River even more so the upper Kuskokwim in the first publication of a study sponsored by the Alaska roll Development Council in 1974. Very little testing had been done of the soil in

this region since the KLA agriculture project has been started. The University of Alaska and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have sent people into this area to study this soil. So a conservationist Dan Allison talks about the soil in the Kuskokwim region. It is Charles in this particular area that is farmed is set type so I'll and it's a saw the positive by the river in a cereal flood maybe once or twice a year and the hazards of farming this oil is. It does flood in the spring and is wet and may cause a late planting and it can flood in the fall and you would lose your crops. Stony soil is not permafrost or Rocky all face here. Do you think that in your testing that there is a potential for a market in this area for vegetables. You know growing crops and selling them for this purpose. There is no problem by a growing vegetables commercially. As you know the market is distribution

and things like that to be a problem as far as growing the crops your cool crops here how to flower broccoli and your status. They grow wilder and what kind of problems or do you have to put any type of nutrients to add any nutrients to the soil. Yeah all vegetable crops require fertilizer to get good yields good returns and we determine the amount of fertilizer would need to take a soil test. They were sentimental cooperate extension agent and they would return it to the amount of fertilizer you need. Breaker What is the usual amount for say to set the type of soil is it doesn't require quite a bit of extra fertilizer. More so right after it's first cleared unless as you go along and exact mileage will vary with the mileage you put on the year before and how much has been taken out by the plants. This is compare at all to the man in the Sky Valley it's very similar to a wind blowing or water borne soils us that are deposited that type of soils there real fine silty type soils.

Well what kinds of advice does your department give to prophecy such as this and develop even better. OK when we do we can develop soils are developed to ensure every hundred thousand years. But we work with people determining which areas should be cleared first. We'll go with a person and we all walked or property and will determine where their best land is that's where they should start farming we work with them on that basis then we help them determine which crops are suited to their soils based on the climate and ph and the fertilizer needs of the soils. One of the best producing crops in Alaska is the potato because of near perfect growing conditions for the potato in Alaska. It's free of the common diseases that often plague potatoes grown in the lower forty eight potato expert Dr. Curtis H. Board talks about potato production in the Kuskokwim region and its potential. Yes I work with the potato and about all

phases of its growth all the way from planting the true seed like a tomato seed that we get from these little seed balls. You go all the way from that one to growing the seed from the inside of it to new plants that make little two bows and then we take the little too close to the feel and grow just to heal. One plant all of them together. Philip as good or better than we make a new variety. I mean you were telling me earlier you have about 4000 different types of potatoes than you have reading. Can you talk a little bit about the potatoes that you have sent to the canning project here in this matter of getting new potatoes. If we can get 4000 to 10000 little seeds to make new plants then we have a wide choice of what we

may be able to select from. And that's why I have so many I haven't yet selected them down to those choice ones. When I get to the stage where I think they're better than what we have in the commercial channels than I do is we have done here send them out to various places in the state of testing you know about them. When the test we have 10 of my riders most of them are numbered rooms so I speak of a variety as a co-op and all the time its main and so most of these here are just numbered selections that they go by until we decide on what we will call. We just named one clone that we had called 37 dash 19 with no name to Denali and that resisted it. Well it has some frost

resistance but it's not really as frost resistant as the variety that we have called Alaska Frost loss meaning that it doesn't freeze as quickly as the others. Just looking at one particular type of grow you ask me the kind of a question that no one really can answer truly to us we have to see them for at least three years at a location. But if I had to pick a potato out of those that we see here today I might have as much difficulty as you do because I would look at these plates and I would say all this will produce the most this will look the best. And is it really. Then I'd ask the question is this really representative of that whole role. Well you have to dig the whole Roland so we aren't really sure. But after Mr. Lambert has harvested this

he should be able to say this is the most productive. And if you spread them around to the people in the community they will probably tell him I like this one. I don't like this one. Things like that. So we will get an evaluation of these potatoes. Here we have them in the region. We have them in the talent all of the madness get out of the Kenai Peninsula. So we're pretty well spread around all over the map. Yes yes. In the Philippines Canada. Yes. When we get one we think is better than those that we have than we make it available for testing just a market. I think I'll have to answer that in two ways. First I think there's no question but what you can produce good potatoes here in such volume as you might put them on a

barge and put them down the river to go elsewhere. Whether or not there's going to be market locally in the immediate future is still a question. The people here have to become more accustomed to the different ways of preparing a potato for one thing to consume the maximum locally. And then someone will have to have a storage so that potatoes can be kept a year old. So there are still some things we need to know. But the potential is here that we expect to go into grain production and with grain production we have to have a market. So we will market it through life stock our first life stock project we expect to be egg production. We would like to produce enough eggs in this area to supply that this valley Bethel and perhaps or some other in the Yukon. So you feel that there is a market for farming. Oh absolutely and this is wonderful soil we have here this is this is a this

soil here it just couldn't be better. It's just excellent. In the future do you see such a project is raising chickens and cow. Depends on how much financing we get a whole lot. How do you finance now. Primarily through a but through some other funding also and we hope to get some more funding through Washington. Probably a special funding of some kind and next year we expect to raise our first grain but we have to have a harvester before we can harvest it. They had grain trials last year but they had no way to harvest it it looked great and it produced good. But when you can harvest of it it is of very little value. So next year we hope to have a harvester and there is a sale for a little bit of grain here in the area. There are few people some chickens and a few people with some pigs so maybe just what we produce next year we will

market locally. But the following year I hope to be in livestock. Oh so you think in about three years that that project will be underway. Perhaps in two years. That sounds real Lakeside. Are you pretty excited about the potential and the potential here just great. I really think that. I really think that Alaska should be doing not only producing all their own food. I think they should be exporting a lot of food in the Orient. We have tremendous potential potential here and we have people here that think even though they see projects like this they they just don't think it can be done that you can't consistently do it year after year it isn't economically feasible or something. But it is we've got a great future in Alaskan agriculture. If we just develop it.