Progress 07/01/23 to 06/30/24

Outputs
Target Audience: The target audience of the Growing Rural Opportunities for Wellness (GROW) program is Alaskans who are more likely to be food insecure, including people with low incomes, Elders and children. Efforts to reach this audience include a monthly newsletter, social media presence, free webinars, and partnership with community leaders and service organizations working on food security. More specifically, this project aims to serve the food insecure populations in the communities of Lime Village, the Chilkat Valley and Cordova. In order to reach the target audience in these communities, RurAL CAP staff have partnered with community leaders and hired local residents to work as Community Garden Coordinators. Individuals have been hired in Lime Village and Chilkat Valley. The Community Garden Coordinator in Cordova is currently being paid from a different grant awarded to the Prince William Sound Economic Development District, with the intention for the same person to be hired as a RurAL CAP employee next spring when these funds are expired. Lime Village is a small remote Alaska Native community in the Bethel region. Based on Feeding America and SNAP data, the Bethel Census area ranks as the second most food-insecure community in Alaska. Given that Lime Village is a very tight-knit small community, the target audience is the entire community. This audience is reached by word-of-mouth and by calling and texting with the Tribal Administrator Ursula Graham, who lives outside of the community but remains closely involved with Lime Village residents to serve in her public role. The Chilkat Valley is originally home to the Tlingit people of the Chilkat Indian Village tribe. Unfortunately, the Chilkat Valley is largely food dependent on weekly barge deliveries and has experienced many disruptions in recent years due to ferry closures and supply chain issues. The Victory Garden and adjacent Four Winds Resource Center provides opportunities to Chilkat Valley residents to grow food and receive food donations - this year their goal was to target a younger population as well as the older crowd they have typically attracted. This year they had the strongest volunteer turnout and the most consistent- and youthful- participation ever. They reached their target audience with local radio promotions, advertising in local papers' Community Calendar, social media posts and most importantly by word of mouth- and lots of texting! With no road access, and continued state-level cuts to the Alaska Marine Highway System ferry service, Cordova's 2,366 community members rely on air freight for access to groceries. A week's worth of groceries for a family in Cordova costs 46% more than the same "market basket" groceries purchased in Anchorage (UA School of Natural Resources & Extension, June 2018). Many of the raised beds at the community garden and at residences are being used by those with little or no gardening experience, giving individuals and families the opportunity to find joy in gardening and growing healthy food. Additionally, beds have been set aside at the community garden for growing vegetables for the Cordova School District to be used for a summer lunch program. Efforts to reach the Cordova audience include sharing information through an email listserv where information is shared about the garden including events, volunteer opportunities, and tips for growing in a covered raised bed. Posting to a local Facebook gardeners' group has helped to get information out about the community garden and has helped to get donations of gardening supplies. Changes/Problems: Initially, the extended embargo period for this grant prohibited us from discussing our award with community partners outside of RurAL CAP, which delayed the start of work on this project until after the growing season in 2023. Due to Rosanna's Garden withdrawing from our partnership to deliver a Rural Grower Training in Seldovia, this planned training is no longer happening. However, the GROW program continues to host an annual Gardening and Local Foods training in Metlakatla through a partnership with the Metlakatla Indian Community Garden, funded with a sub-award from a grant awarded to UAF Cooperative Extension from the USDA 2501 Program. Therefore, our community partners for the CFP GROW project attended the training in May, except for Lime Village community partners as weather prohibited them from traveling. Regarding the partnership with Lime Village, progress on the community garden has been delayed by staff turnover, illness, and travel-prohibitive weather. The land for the community garden has been cleared, but nothing has been planted. Coordination with Lime Village community partners was delayed by staff turnover, as the RurAL CAP GROW coordinator originally responsible left the position and the person who was hired in her place quit soon after being hired. Since then, coordination has been taken over by co-PD Iva Karoly-Lister. A site visit to Lime Village was planned for fall 2024, but this was also delayed by weather and now the plan is to visit in spring 2025 to help finish land preparation and complete spring planting. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? The main opportunity for training and professional development offered by this project thus far was the Local Foods and Gardening Workshop held in Metlakatla this past May. This three-day workshop was primarily funded by a sub-award from a USDA 2501 Program grant awarded to the UAF Cooperative Extension to provide training and technical assistance to Alaska Tribes. CFP community partners' travel was funded by this NIFA CFP grant. Please see above for more details about the workshop. The workshop included sessions on community composting with UAF Cooperative Extension Agent Darren Snyder; hands-on community garden projects and low-tide foraging with Gatgyeda Haayk, Metlakatla Community Garden Champion; food preservation with UAF Cooperative Extension Agent Sarah Lewis; and garden planning with RurAL CAP Gardening Program Coordinator Emily Becker. Evaluations show that attendees rated the workshop as excellent and gained skills to grow food. As well as the in-person workshop, the GROW Program hosted eight webinars during the last reporting period. The topics covered included "Food Forest Gardens," "Alaska Food Forest Inspiration," "Fish Waste to Fertilizer," "Cold Storage and Root Cellars," "Community Composting Solutions," "Help for your Ag Project!," "Farmers Markets in Rural Alaska," and "Fruit Tree Pruning." The series reached hundreds of people from over fifty Alaska communities. These webinars featured a variety of experienced practitioners, from across Alaska, including farmers, technical assistance service providers, permaculturalists, community organizers and more. Note that staffing and webinars are supported by various funding sources and data on webinars are reported across all funding sources in the same way. As well, virtual check-ins between RurAL CAP central office GROW staff and community partners have provided an avenue for sharing resources and information. A site visit is being planned for a trip to Lime Village in spring 2025. Please read more in the section below about plans for the next reporting period.? How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? A site visit is being planned for a trip to Lime Village in spring 2025. Considering the difficulty and expense of traveling to this very remote community, GROW is collaborating with partners (with some costs being shared) at Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Alaska Resilience Farms, Intertribal Agriculture Council of Alaska, and National Resource Conservation Service of Alaska. The goal of this site visit is to provide training on building healthy soil, seed starting and garden planning, while also strengthening relationships between Lime Village residents and GROW staff, and other technical service providers. Another intended outcome of the trip is to complete a large amount of work to prepare the soil for planting, plant some seeds and plant starts, and set up a water pump and storage system for the garden that relies on water from the nearby river. Other goals yet to be achieved include: a community garden coordinator from each partnering community will provide a workshop based on what they learned from the in-person training, each community will form a gardening or food security committee, and each community will identify methods to generate income for their project(s). GROW RurAL CAP staff will work with community garden leaders over virtual check-ins to provide support to work toward these goals.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Goal 1 - Participants and Communities will gain the knowledge and expertise to growfood Outcome 1.1 - 45 direct T&TA sessions will be provided for roughly 180 peoplethroughout the project period At least twenty hours of direct T&TA has been provided to community partners through virtual meetings. Community partners in Cordova and Chilkat Valley have also provided T&TA to community members through hosting educational volunteer hours and workshops. In Chilkat Valley, the Community Garden Coordinator has delivered educational demonstrations to volunteers on how to make soil blocks for seed starting; how to divide starts and up-pot them; how to use a broad fork; how to transplant; how to plant carrot seeds in clay soil; the importance of row cover to prevent root maggots and add warmth to soil in cold Alaska environment; how to weed; and how to thin root vegetables. These demonstrations were delivered to 239 volunteers over the course of 23 events. Outcome 1.2- GROW will host 15 webinars per year and collect post-webinar surveysthat display growth in knowledge and expertise among participants GROW hosted eight webinars during the reporting period. An annual survey of webinar participants will be conducted this fall. Note that staffing and webinars are supported by various funding sources and data on webinars are reported across all funding sources in the same way. Outcome 1.3 - A representative from each community partner (Cordova, Chilkat Valley and Lime Village) will attend Rural Grower training at Rosanna's Garden in Seldovia and complete pre and post knowledge assessments Community Garden leads from Haines and Cordova attended a three-day Local Foods and Gardening Workshop in Metlakatla in May 2024. Over 14 participants from 11 communities across the state engaged in hands-on learning about growing food in rural Alaska, composting, community engagement, low tide foraging and food preservation. The workshop included sessions on community composting with UAF Cooperative Extension Agent Darren Snyder; hands-on community garden projects and low-tide foraging with Gatgyeda Haayk, Metlakatla Community Garden Champion; food preservation with UAF Cooperative Extension Agent Sarah Lewis; and garden planning with RurAL CAP Gardening Program Coordinator Emily Becker. Evaluations show that attendees rated the workshop as excellent and gained skills to grow food. Outcome 1.4 - Community partners who attended Rural Grower training will each host at least one workshop/training in their community based on knowledge they gained. No progress on this outcome thus far has been made. Goal 2 - Communities will experience increased access to fresh, nutritional foods Outcome 2.1 - Produce will be dispersed on a weekly to monthly basis to at least 100community members more likely to be food insecure, including: low-income families andindividuals, Elders and children This 2024 growing season, produce was grown in Chilkat Valley and Cordova and distributed regularly to community members. Three beds at the Cordova community garden are planted with vegetables for the Cordova School summer lunch program, which provides lunches through the summer to children who are more likely to be food insecure. Lime Village is still in the planning stage with harvest expected for next year. Goal 3 - Communities will experience increased local food production Outcome 3.1- Estimated 10,000 pounds of produce donated to food insecurecommunity members (where measurement is available) As of the end of this reporting period, since it was in the beginning-to-middle of the 2024 growing season, only 40 pounds of produce were harvested at the Victory Garden in Chilkat Valley, which was distributed to ten community members more likely to be food insecure. No data for the Victory Garden's 2023 growing season is available. The 2023 growing season at the Cordova Community Garden produced mainly leafy green vegetables as it was a short growing season with the garden boxes being assembled throughout the summer. An estimated 21 lbs were harvested. For the 2024 growing season up to July 30 there was higher yield from the garden boxes as they were able to be planted much earlier, with an mid-season total of 77.5 lbs harvested by the end of this reporting period. Total for the reporting period was 98.5 lbs of vegetables harvested. Due to multiple delaying factors (see Problems & Challenges section below) Lime Village is still in the planning stage with harvest expected for next year. Goal 4 - Communities will move forward beyond the years of the funding period with theinfrastructure for long-term, sustainable community engagement around food production Local champions have been identified and hired to coordinate community garden projects in all communities, each with the intention of returning to their position in the following growing season. In Chilkat Valley, the Victory Garden hosts an annual plant sale that produces income for purchasing supplies for the garden. Over the winter, RurAL CAP GROW staff will work with other community partners to identify income-producing activities and begin planning for implementation in the 2025 or 2026 growing season. There is also an opportunity for peer support from community partners in Chilkat Valley who can share their experiences with other community partners. Similarly, a food security/garden committee exists at the Victory Garden and this winter RurAL CAP GROW staff will work with other community partners to plan for the creation of committees and coordinate peer support with Chilkat Valley community partners.

Publications

• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Submitted Year Published: 2023 Citation: RurAL CAP GROW staff presented a thirty-minute talk on Growing Rural Opportunities for Wellness: Supporting Community Gardens in Rural Alaska Communities at the 2023 Alaska Food Policy Council Conference. The presentation covered GROWs multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) model rooted in food sovereignty and community driven action, connecting community leaders to resources and offering individualized and peer-to-peer support. GROW staff reviewed projects and shared future plans.