December 3, 2019
Since 2016 Pam Noland, of the Peel River Garden Society in Aklavik, has been keeping her hands dirty teaching residents how to grow produce.
With funding from ITI and the Canadian Agriculture Partnership, Noland has taken yearly training to hone her skills. She then passes on what she learns to other members of the Society so that they can benefit as well.
Together Noland and her colleagues have learned about soil, transplanting, spacing and more. Their training and hard work netted them over 450 lbs of produce this season - the majority being greens and herbs.
Related Story: Peel River Garden Society Pushes Greenhouse Limits
The Aklavik greenhouse runs on a communal system and everyone who helps out gets to share in the benefits. This allows each person to take home a larger variety of products. Some of this year’s growing beds were also used as market beds with the produce sold at the weekly Friday Aklavik Market.
In October, the Peel River Garden Society hosted an open house to show off their newly constructed tunnel greenhouse containing 22 beds and a seedling/classroom. The new space also has a vertical growing system which will enable the Society to plant more than 50 tomato plants and 1,200 strawberry plants to be harvested for next year’s markets.
The Society’s open house was also an opportunity to showcase the Society’s annual harvest to the town and included a cookout so everyone could have a taste of the locally grown foods.
Noland is appreciative of the help her Society gets from Can Agra, ITI, the Inuvik Greenhouse and the Hamlet of Aklavik. She intends to push for more success with the local gardens and hopes to grow a total of 1,500 pounds of food next season with the help of 23 society members.
The Peel River Garden Society’s greenhouse project was funded through the Canadian Agriculture Partnership and the GNWT’s Northern Food Development Program.
Interested in how the Canadian Agriculture Partnership can help your ideas take root? Click here.
Learn how ITI is supporting local food production through our Agriculture Strategy.
