Fish guts, kelp and rotten wood could help put a little more green in Alaskans' diet. While our far North cousins have got plenty of open space, trees, wildlife and - well, you-know-who - one thing they haven't got is good dirt. The kind you can grow broccoli in. Or spinach. Or, preferably, potatoes. 
Why potatoes? "They're the only thing a moose won't eat," Jodie Anderson told Dan Joling, an AP writer who wrote a report published yesterday about a USDA grant program designed to help Alaskans cope with their anemic soils. Realistically, Anderson said, Alaska is never going to be self-sufficient in anything but mooseburgers. The green, leafy stuff has to be flown in and it's brutally expensive. The cold and the short growing season are challenges enough, but the soils are just as much of an issue. Anderson, pictured here in one of her test plots, is a community horticulture director for the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, and is helping to direct the USDA's $48,500 grant money to five experienced rural gardeners who will use locally available resources, like waste from salmon processing, to build up the indigineous soils. You can read about the effort here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100728/ap_on_bi_ge/us_food_and_farm_alaska_soil 

Wayne Newcomb, a cannery regular,
puts up a supply of tomato juice

     Community canneries - as many as 5,000 of them - grew out of America's response to the World War Two Victory Gardens program. But as Swanson's, Campbell's, et al replaced home-grown with store-bought, the canneries closed. But they never went away entirely. The New London Community Cannery in Forest, Virginia, is still thriving, doing a brisk, non-profit business and even upgrading its facilities. Just last year, for example, they installed new cappers. The cannery held an open house the other week, and Lancaster Farming Virginia correspondent Jennifer Merritt stopped in for a tour. She prepared a report which will be in our Saturday edition, or you'll be able to get an advance peek Friday afternoon with a visit to our website at lancasterfarming.com.


They couldn't have planned that, could they? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKlucE-5nIM