Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

Give a person a fish and they eat for a day, teach a person to fish and they eat for a lifetime. That’s an adage we all know to be true. It’s the basics of food security, but not a well-rounded diet. The Victory Garden at Mosquito Lake Community Center teaches the community how to grow and preserve food for the long, isolated winters in Alaska. On June 6, 2020, the Chilkat Valley Food Hub was born as 60 local volunteers planted the 6,000 square foot Victory Garden.

A $10,000 allocation from the Haines Borough CARES Act Food Security Fund was granted, serving to highlight the importance of the MLCC as a community food hub. What is a food hub?

According to the USDA it is “a centrally located facility with a business management structure facilitating the aggregation, storage, processing, distribution, and/or marketing of locally/regionally produced food products.”

The Chilkat Valley Food Hub aims to provide:

• Arable land for community members to produce their own food

• Educational workshops to plant, tend, harvest and preserve local foods

• Access to kitchen and tools for preservation (Canning supplies, vacuum sealer)

• Disburse federal and state food boxes arriving to Haines

• Winter storage of root crops (potatoes, beets, carrots, onions)

• Business Resource Center for the local cottage industry

Teach a person to preserve their food and they eat in lean times. Let’s Bread Bread Together.