The idea for a farming business goes back to 2021 for Kelly May, whose team then researched restaurants, grocery chains, food distributors, and school districts, asking what they most needed.
“What we came up with, is they needed more access to leafy greens. Whether that's in the wintertime and also in the summertime,” he said.
May, who is originally from Hooper Bay, then researched what it takes to grow those preferred vegetables and herbs: lettuce, arugula, mustard greens, basil, sage, oregano, and thyme.
“And now we, just moved to a larger location where we have a 400-square-foot microgreens farm and an 800-square-foot hydroponic leafy greens farm.”
The farm is called Alaska Native Greens, in North Pole. And the farm is indoors, so it grows produce all year long.
Right now, there’s no retail outlet – you can’t just drive up to the building and buy lettuce. But you can subscribe for six months, nine months or a year to have microgreens or leafy greens delivered to you.
“After a couple years of figuring out unit costs, what plants grow the most and what we're seeing in prices in the store, we figured we could sell directly to customers at, for a lot of the products, a cheaper price,” May said.
May and his team have room in their system for 160 subscriptions for weekly deliveries of “greens bags” which contain lettuce, leafy greens and herbs, and 100 subscriptions of microgreens.
Recently, May heard about the billion-dollar cuts made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, half of which was to the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which buys food from domestic producers and sends it to pantries nationwide. That affected the Stone Soup Café at Bread Line here in Fairbanks. May said his team wants to help.
“We are just seeing how the current political ecosystem is kind of what wrong for the most vulnerable people in our community. And we're like: if we could set aside 5% of our farm space for feeding those people who need it the most, then you know, we could do our part," May says.
May says they already delivered a load of microgreens to Bread Line last week.
In a similar vein, May and his team are giving away free microgreens to families this Sunday in honor of Mothers Day. For that you will have to drive to the hydroponic farm. May says to bring a reusable container.
“Part of our farm is we want to use the least amount of single use plastics as possible. And so we're asking everyone to bring their own containers, reusable containers.”
May says to look up Alaska Native Greens on Facebook for directions. Or text the farm at 907-687-4245, and May or another team member will give you directions.
