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Photo by Sam Harrel

Photo by Sam Harrel

Community Supported Agriculture is growing, literally.

As the cost of food goes up, more local farmers are branching out and selling produce to accommodate the population.

Though there are several Interior co-op farms, meeting local demand continues to be a challenge as nearly every farm in the Interior is running at maximum capacity.

Pete and Lynn Mayo of Spinach Creek Farm on Murphy Dome were the first to explore the idea in Fairbanks in 1997.

The goal behind the Community Shared Agriculture (C.S.A.) program is to provide sustainable agriculture that is environmentally friendly and doesn’t rely on fossil fuels.

It is intended to promote a relationship between food, the land on which it grows and those who grow it.

Spinach Creek Farm serves about 40 members.

“We had to form a waiting list this year,” Pete Mayo said, “and we’ve never had to do that before.”

Mayo has about 10-12 people on his waiti list for next year’s growing season.

“We even had to raise the prices a little to cover fuel costs, but it didn’t seem to faze anyone,” he said.

The 10-acre farm is operated by the Mayo family and a few teenagers as part-time hires.

But come harvest time, the teens are back in school and Pete and Lynn are often challenged with trying to find help.

“At this point, we’re pretty well maxed out as to how much we can do here, but we’d love to see more local farmers grow veggies to contribute,” Mayo said.

It’s not that the Mayos don’t have the land capacity to grow more vegetables. It’s the man hours, cost of supplies and mechanisms needed to operate a larger piece of land that often requires fossil fuels to run industrial-sized farming equipment.

“It’s just so much space to manage on our own,” Mayo said. “Keeping a smaller, manageable farm is inherently safer,” he said.

Many locals have taken on the C.S.A. philosophy and have even branched out to include other services.

Every C.S.A. program operates independently but with the same idea of sustainable farming.

Susan Willsrud and Tom Zimmer took on Calypso Farm back in 2001.

They founded it as a nonprofit program to educate locals about subsistence farming.

“Our whole mission was to encourage sustainable agriculture through hands-on education,” she said.

Calypso Farm supports an average of 200 Interior families and is growing additional farms in local school gardens that will serve another 20 families.

“We’ve had to eliminate the wait list, now its a first-come, first-serve,” Willsrud said.

The farm can only use 2.5 acres because much of the north-facing land is difficult to grow vegetables on.

Though the farmers at Calypso are aware of the demand, their focus is to teach other members to set up small establishments of their own to serve a broader community.

“If we were dependent on just one farm in town they’d have to triple or quadruple their size and then we’d have to depend on the mechanization and of course, oil prices,” she said.

Bill and Cheryl Wood are avid home gardeners who have also been active members of the Calypso co-op for four years.

They continue to share a seat on the Calypso Farm co-op’s Board of Directors, but they’ve branched out and started their own local farm.

“We’ve been growing our own garden for many years and every summer we were just giving food away because it was more than we could use,” Cheryl Wood said. “So we thought, ‘Hey, if we’re giving it away, why not make a business out of it?’”

This summer marks their second season and they’ve doubled their vegetable shares, going from seven to 15 since last summer.

“We’re hoping to max out at 20,” Wood said. “Our land can’t support much more than that.”

Wood, her husband and their two children operate their small but plentiful farm on 2 1/2 acres of their own land.

The two young children, ages 11 and 12, help out tremendously over the summer, weeding an hour a day and helping out with the harvest.

Running a farm is no easy task no matter what the size, but the Woods seem content with the work they’ve done.

“It’s been pretty challenging to develop, but Bill and I see it as a long-term operation and something we can do as a family forever,” she said.

Contact staff writer Rebecca George at 459-7504.