The Chilkat Valley Historical Society received a 2-year grant from the United States Department of Food and Agriculture to begin an orchard project this fall. If you ask the society’s president Susan Chasen, the Chilkat Valley Orchard Project started with apples. Hundred year old apples, grown here in Haines.
“Sometimes history seems stuffy. So what’s the relevance of the past to the present?” Chasen asked.
Fruit cultivation in Haines isn’t a new idea–Charles Anway came to Haines in the early 1900s and grew dozens of apple and sweet cherry trees. But Chasen said it’s an idea that hasn’t been pursued in earnest for quite some time.
“And I guess the word is, ‘no Haines grown apples or sweet cherries have been marketed in over 60 years.’ But we think that our warming climate makes the conditions you know better for tree full fruit cultivation than ever before,” she said of the Historical Society.
Thy launched the “relevance of history campaign.” That blossomed into an attempt to bolster food security, tap economic potential in the valley, and nearly $27,000 in federal grant money.
“It is called a specialty crop block grants. And specialty crops include things like tree fruits,” Chasen explained.
Chasen worked with Burl Sheldon to craft a grant proposal to the USDA, which will be managed by the state’s Department of Natural Resources.
The Chilkat Valley Historical Society will work in partnership with the Chilkat Valley Bald Eagle Foundation (Chasen also sits on the CVBEF Board), with help from the Henderson Farm Committee and the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service.
The purpose of the grant is to expand community orchard knowledge. The award will fund a two year educational program that begins late this year and runs through 2022. Chasen plans to leverage local knowledge and bring in experts for a conference. After that, she’d like to work to identify property that could be used for cultivation and form a fruit cultivation group.
The project has local support.
“We got letters from landowners, we got letters from Klukwan, we got letters from HEDC. We got letters from local farmers,” Chasen said.
There’s robust community interest in local agriculture as an economic development opportunity. More than 90 percent of the Haines community supported agricultural development in the Haines Comprehensive Plan.
Growers are already flourishing here. Several small farms grow locally to sell at the summer farmer’s market and the Haines School District partners with a local conservation group to compost food waste for their garden.
For the Chilkat Valley Historical Society, this new project is a way to bring the past into the present, and grow something that lasts into the future.
You should do a story on the Alaska Bald Eagle Foundation telling the local growers that they aren’t allowed to use Henderson Farm this summer because of Covid 19 even though the state mandates allow for food production and Bob Henderson, the nice man who willed the land to Alaska Bald Eagle Foundation, was worried about food security and wanted local residents to farm his land after he passed. Sue Chasen sent out the email banning the growers because she is a big Whig at Alaska Bald Eagle Foundation Ask her about it.
Don’t kill the messenger. She was asked to write the letter by the board of directors.
Yes, please DO ask me, or any other Board Member of ABEF about the reasoning behind the decision. If anyone bothers to read the letter, that I was willing to sign on behalf of the Foundation, it says that the decision on use of the farm land will be re-assessed on July 1 OR when the mandates are lifted. I have no idea how “banning the growers” became part of the rumor mill.
Bullying is not acceptable behavior. I respond best to reason and compromise.
Thank you Larry! Attacking me personally makes me reconsider whether volunteering to do anything in this town is worth my effort.