Dan and I were invited to speak at the Alaska Sustainable Agriculture conference in Fairbanks in March. We accepted immediately because we have always wanted to see Alaska. But as the time drew closer, we started worrying that we didn’t know much that would be relevant to Alaska growers. Kansas seems like almost the opposite of Alaska, with a long, hot growing season, and usually short, variable winters with little or no snow. Normally in late March we are busy cutting and selling tulips, weeding the hoophouses and planting in the field. In Alaska, we were invited to take a dog sled ride on the frozen river and warm up in the hot springs. It sounded great but, again, a far cry from life on our farm.

On our first day, our host Mike Emers picked us up at the hotel and drove us to his farm just outside of town. We bundled up — it was 9°F that afternoon — and crunched down a snowy path behind his house, through the tall spruce trees, Mike carrying his 2-year-old son, a couple of his sled dogs racing ahead of us. At the end of the path, we emerged through an opening in the woods into a broad, flat field. Hoophouses bordered one edge of the field, and behind them was a packing shed with a walk-in cooler, wash stations, boxes, and all the usual market farming paraphernalia. It all looked so familiar. As we talked with Mike that day, we realized that growers in Alaska have many of the same opportunities and problems that we have encountered in our two decades of farming in Kansas. Alaska growers are even working together to grow peonies, a traditional Kansas crop, and you’ll read more about that project in this issue.

For 17 years, I have been visiting farms around the country to report and write about them in Growing for Market. I have visited farms in at least half of the states, maybe more. I have been on farms surrounded by the ocean, farms surrounded by mountains, farms surrounded by tulip fields. And yet on that few acres of land where vegetables and flowers are grown for market, it’s always the same.  We use much of the same equipment, tools, production systems. Nearly everyone I have visited in the past few years has at least one hoophouse. Nearly everyone uses drip irrigation, has a packing shed and cooler. 

But even more than the physical similarities on our farms, I notice more important commonalities: warm hospitality to visitors, eagerness to talk and share ideas, a gentleness of spirit and attitude of benevolence toward the world. Is that because open-hearted people are attracted to this kind of farming? Or because this kind of farming molds the heart and mind? Probably a little of both, I expect.

We were back from Alaska for just a few days when we hosted a group from the national SARE conference, which was in Kansas City this year. As people descended from the big tour bus, we were astonished to find that we knew a large number of them, and that many were people we have visited in our journeys across the country. It felt like a reunion.

Mike Emers was one of the farmers on that bus tour, so we had the pleasure of immediately comparing farming in Kansas and Alaska. We agreed that things aren’t so very different on our farms, except for the dog sled. We only wish we weren’t so far apart.