Nancy Tarnai
907-474-5042
2/2/12

Years ago when Jennifer Ansley encountered goats at the Tanana Valley State Fair she was so smitten that she declared to her husband, “That’s what I want; they are so beautiful.”

Even though her husband, Gregory Kahoe, failed to see the beauty, Ansley achieved her dream and now has 11 goats and a thriving goat milk bath product business, Far Above Rubies.

By reading books and doing research, Ansley taught herself to milk goats (“It didn’t work like the book said,” she commented.), make cheese and create a product line. She couldn’t have predicted this lifestyle growing up outside of Philadelphia. Ansley earned a B.S. in environmental science and English at the College of William and Mary. While working as seasonal rangers in Denali National Park Ansley and Kahoe met and then settled in Fairbanks in 1996.

A teacher at West Valley High School, Kahoe has been extremely supportive of his wife’s farming endeavors, building barns, mucking them out and coming up with great ideas. “I couldn’t do it without him,” Ansley said..

Her goats are Toggenburgs, one of the oldest and purest breeds from the Swiss Alps and the first breed to be registered in the U.S. Some are crossed with Saanen but all are Swiss breeds. The large goats do very well in the cold and are good milk producers, Ansley said. “I love my goats; they are very personable and have lots of character. They are very intelligent.”

The goats follow her to the school bus stop when it’s time to meet her children. “They keep me in sight and stay right with me,” she said. “They don’t like cars.”

Showing off the goats in their barn, Ansley fairly gushes, “Aren’t they cute?” Indeed they are, but a lot of work too. They must be milked twice a day and fed. Their feet have to trimmed and sometimes they need help giving birth. Going against their reputation for eating old shoes and such, they are picky eaters, munching on hay, dairy grain ration and a salt mineral mix. “They stay healthy if they are fed properly,” Ansley said.

Ansley learned to milk by trial and error. The first book she bought, “Cheesemaking Made Easy” was not helpful. “We joked it should be called ‘Cheesemaking made Practically Impossible,’ “ she said.

When she found “Goats Produce Too!” she hit the jackpot. The recipes are specific to goat milk, not cow milk. Goat milk has smaller fat globules that make the milk easily digestible, Ansley said.

For her family’s consumption Ansley makes chevre, feta, ricotta, colby and cheddar cheese. She pasteurizes the milk herself and firmly believes it doesn’t compromise the nutritional value. “All you need is a pot and a thermometer,” she said.

Ansley even wrote to Cornell University about how goat milk changes when pasteurized and the answer was that the only thing affected is Vitamin C. “Pasteurization alters the protein so the body can utilize the proteins,” she said.

Her secret to tasty goat milk is to pasteurize it immediately after milking or the fat turns quickly to a goaty flavor. That is often what turns people off to goat milk, she said. They pay dearly for it in a shop and are disappointed by the nasty taste. That is not the case with the rich, creamy milk at Ansley’s house.

If people argue with her that raw milk is better Ansley is prepared to debate. “No matter how careful you are you can’t keep bacteria from milk,” she said. “It’s not worth it because you can get really sick.” People sometimes call her wanting to buy raw milk. “First of all, it’s illegal,” she said. “Some people listen and some say they know all about it.”

Some goat producers offer shares so they can legally sell the milk but Ansley isn’t interested in doing that. “I use up all my milk with the business,” she said. Her regret about the goat milk situation is that 4-H Club members miss out on dairy opportunities with goats. “I would like to see a legal way to share milk with neighbors but I don’t think that is going to happen.”

For nine years Ansley has been selling an array of soap and lotions at the Tanana Valley Farmers’ Market. She learned the basics and then created her own recipes, finding that her scientific background came in handy for figuring out the exact concentrations of ingredients. “It’s a lot of work but it’s a lot of fun,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought I’d be making soap but it’s a great business.”

The products are sold online and at Alaska Feed, Cold Spot Feed, Arctic Travelers, the Alaska Bowl Co., Chena Hot Springs Resort and the Ornamentary and the Bag Ladies shop in Pioneer Park seasonally.

The keys to Ansley’s success are good luck and hard work, she said.

Contact info:

www.alaskagoatmilk.com
(907) 457-3890
[email protected]

This column is provided as a service by the UAF School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences and the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station.

Ned Rozell
907-474-7468
1/30/2012

The latest meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in December 2011 featured hundreds of talks about Earth science, some of those relating to Alaska (and some of those comprehensible to a non-scientist). Here are a few items from the notebook I carried around the Moscone Center:

An Aleutian Island morphs at high speed: Chris Waythomas of the Alaska Volcano Observatory in Anchorage spoke of how Kasatochi Island in the Aleutians has changed in diameter since its explosive 2008 eruption. “Erosion by wave action has eaten away the coast at about (1,000 feet) per year. This may be a world record,” he said. That’s about three feet of shoreline disappearing daily.

Waythomas also noted that the northern part of the island has lost about 70 percent of the ash and mud deposited by the eruption four years ago, but that the ocean deposited much of it to the south end of the island. “It should be three or four more years until Kasatochi gets to its original size.”

Canada ice on the wane: Glaciologist Garry Clarke of the University of British Columbia said that the portion of the St. Elias Range in Canada will lose half its volume of ice by the year 2100, and almost all the ice in the north and central Rocky Mountains in Canada will be gone by then. “We’re going to be witness during the next century to the disappearance of glaciers in western North America,” Clarke said.

Double the midges on northern river: A second generation of midges hatched last summer along a stretch of the Kuparik River. Normally, only one generation per summer of the small flies emerges from that water, said Michael Kendrick of the University of Alabama. He said scientists once added nutrients to that section of river during a study, but he’s not sure if that, a longer ice-free season, or both made the midges spawn twice as many generations as before.

Atigun squirrels get a jump on summer: Brian Barnes of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Institute of Arctic Biology reported on two groups of ground squirrels that he and his colleagues have been studying for years on Alaska’s North Slope. Because of high winds in Atigun Gorge, a group of ground squirrels there has early access to leaves, berries and mushrooms that squirrels at snow-covered Toolik Lake do not have. “They don’t wait for greenup,” Barnes said of the Atigun squirrels, which emerge from hibernation two weeks earlier than Toolik squirrels. “Two weeks is a long time in the Arctic.”

We are still emitting too much carbon dioxide: James Hansen, the Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, shared a message about carbon dioxide at a press conference. He said our releases of the greenhouse gas are “overwhelming.”

“The C02 we’re putting in the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning will stay in the atmosphere a long time before it can be put back into carbonate at the sea floor,” he said. “That tells us we cannot burn all of the fossil fuels (that remain to be extracted from the Earth). If we burn all the fossil fuels, we would send our planet back into the ice-free state . . . If we’re hoping to maintain a planet that looks like the one humanity has known, we’re out of time. We’ve got to turn (carbon dioxide emissions) around.”

This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community.

Stevie Seibert
907-474-5229
1/27/12

As the Coast Guard Cutter Healy and the tanker vessel Renda moved slowly through sea ice toward Nome, University of Alaska Fairbanks personnel used unmanned aircraft to survey the terrain and plot the safest path for approaching the harbor. The aircraft captured images that allowed scientists to assess ice thickness in places that were too dangerous to traverse on foot. The deployment of UAF’s fleet to Nome is but one example of the aircraft’s application.

Poker Flat Research Range Manager Greg Walker will discuss the growing role of unmanned aircraft in Alaska at the first Science for Alaska Lecture Series presentation Tuesday, Jan. 31 at 7 p.m. in the Westmark Gold Room. The lecture, “Alaska – As Seen From an Unmanned Aircraft,” is the first in the 20th annual Science for Alaska Lecture Series.

Researchers at UAF are harnessing the rapidly developing technology of unmanned aerial vehicles and Geophysical Institute scientists are quickly learning the possibilities as well as the limitations of the aircraft as they deploy their fleet of flying machines from boreal forest to ocean. From climate change to emergency management, unmanned aircraft are able to observe and collect data from a vantage point impossible for human researchers.

Science for Alaska 2012 is sponsored by the Geophysical Institute, UAF and Alyeska Pipeline Service Company. The series runs on Tuesdays through March 6, 2012 and is free to the public. Hands-on activities for all ages begin at 6:30 p.m. inside the Gold Room. Families are welcome.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Greg Walker, Poker Flat Research Range manager, at 907-455-2110 or [email protected]. Amy Hartley, Geophysical Institute public relations manager, at 907-474-5823 or [email protected].

ON THE WEB: http://www.scienceforalaska.com

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Ned Rozell
907-474-7468
1/26/2012

One of the prettiest places in Southeast Alaska has felt some of nature’s most violent behavior.

Lituya Bay, on the Pacific coast about 100 miles southeast of Yakutat and 40 miles west of Glacier Bay, is the site of the largest splash wave ever recorded. In 1958, a magnitude 8.3 earthquake triggered a tremendous landslide into the ocean. The wave that followed reached 1,740 feet above sea level on a hill opposite the slide. The slide also triggered a wave more than 100 feet high that raced down the bay.

Neil Davis, a Fairbanks author, geophysicist, and emeritus professor at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, flew over Lituya Bay in a Super Cub two days after the earthquake.

“When I got there, it was a truly amazing sight,” Davis said. “The bay was filled with icebergs and trees, and there was a tongue of trees and ice going out to sea outside the bay.”

Seven miles long, two miles wide, and shaped like a T, Lituya Bay is the only refuge for boats along a 100-mile stretch of the Southeast coast. The bay, carved by a glacier and nestled within the snow-covered Fairweather Range, impressed French explorer J. F. La Perouse so that he named it “Port of France” in 1798.

La Perouse soon witnessed the dark side of this beautiful place. The extreme tidal current at the narrow mouth of the bay killed 21 of his men as they explored in small boats. The current at the bay entrance reaches about 14 miles per hour, twice as fast as the Yukon River at Eagle. After a futile search for bodies, La Perouse named the only island within the bay Cenotaph, meaning “empty tomb.”

The shallow entrance to the bay was the most predictable hazard at Lituya Bay, but the absence of Native villages within the bay and distinct lines on hillsides that separated old trees from newer growth hinted at the other. The inland part of the bay lies dead on the Fairweather fault, a weak section of Earth’s crust, which, like the San Andreas fault, causes earthquakes when it fails and slips from side to side.

The 1958 earthquake shook loose millions of cubic yards of dirt and rocks from a 40-degree slope in the northeast corner of the bay. The rock mass displaced a large body of water, causing both the splash wave that rose to 1,740 feet and a gravity wave that was 150 feet high at the head of the bay. The waves sheared and stripped the bark from thousands of trees, some of them four feet in diameter.

The late geologist Don Miller flew over Lituya Bay 12 hours after the earthquake. Miller later interviewed the captains of two of three trolling boats anchored in Lituya Bay at the time of the earthquake. He described their experiences in the U.S. Geological Survey publication, The Giant Waves of Lituya Bay.

The wave sunk one boat near the entrance to the bay, killing a husband and wife. A second boat in mid-bay survived the wave by riding over its crest. Moving about 100 miles per hour, the giant wave carried the third boat over La Chaussee Spit and into the open ocean. The captain recalled riding the wave “like a surfboard” and looking down on trees of the spit as the wave carried him 80 feet above. The captain and his wife survived the trip outside the bay, though their boat did not.

The July earthquake in 1958 was not the first time a giant wave had raced through Lituya Bay. Miller dated the trim lines on the hills and confirmed witnesses accounts of a several giant waves in 1936, and also found evidence of similar waves in the 1850s and 1874. Despite the bay’s violent history, Miller didn’t discourage people from visiting there. He estimated the odds of a giant wave occurring in Lituya Bay on any given day as 9,000-to-1.

This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.

Theresa Bakker
907-474-6941

1/25/12

The University of Alaska Museum of the North has installed a new pipeline super pig on its grounds.

The pig, donated to the museum’s ethnology and history collection by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, replaces a pig given to the museum in 1984.

“That older, mostly steel and rubber pig has been on exhibit in the museum’s yard since it came to us. It sits in a vertical position in full sunlight,” said collection manager Angela Linn. “The rubber components have severely degraded over the past few years and the bumper pieces have been falling apart, so we approached Alyeska to see if they had a spare pig ready to be decommissioned.”

A pig is a device inserted into a pipeline to clean it, separate products or dewater the line; to inspect the pipeline; and to perform other special duties, such as plugging isolated pipelines. The trans-Alaska pipeline system is “pigged” every eight days.

Alyeska agreed to donate a S.U.N. Engineering “Super Pig Hybrid-B” that was in operation from about 2007 until 2010. This version has cutting devices in a configuration of disks and cups, but was decommissioned after the company transitioned to an all-disc pig in 2011.

Getting such a piece into the collection means more than having the donor drop it off, Linn said. “After many months of organization, we identified a location and then designed, custom-fabricated and installed a saddle mount.”

On Dec. 6, 2011, after more than two years of coordination, the pig was delivered.

The story of natural resource extraction is a part of Alaska’s history, Linn said. “The technology and equipment used through the entire process are a big part of telling that story.”

The comparison between the pig from the 1980s, which will be removed from exhibit this summer but preserved in an off-site facility, and the new super pig demonstrates the innovations in materials and technology that have improved efficiency in Alaska’s oil industry.

“This is one of the primary reasons we have research museums: for comparing and contrasting changes through time. Alyeska’s generous donation helps us tell this story in relation to the people of Alaska,” Linn said. “The ethnology and history collection depends on donations to expand the collection and the willingness of corporations such as Alyeska to pass along items to help us achieve our mission.”

Visitors can inspect the pipeline pig any time or day. Since it is too large to be curated inside, it is located on the northwest corner of the building, along the edge of the parking lot.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Angela Linn, ethnology and history collection manager, at 907-474-1828 or via email at [email protected].

ON THE WEB: museum.uaf.edu

NOTE TO EDITORS: Images are available for download www.uafnews.com.

TB/1-25-12/141-12

ASF#2097
Jan. 11, 2012
By Ned Rozell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home of the trans-Alaska pipeline, Alaska has been the setting for a few

epic engineering battles rendered against nature. The Million Dollar Bridge,
spanning the lower Copper River, is a reminder of another improbable Alaska
construction project.

Completed in 1910, the Million Dollar Bridge was the crux of the Copper
River and Northwestern Railway, built to carry copper ore 196 miles from
Kennicott to Cordova. Along that route were some of the greatest obstacles
Alaska offers: steep canyons, rivers, hurricane-force winds, mosquitoes,
and dozens of glaciers.

A fortune in high-grade copper locked deep in the Wrangell Mountains
inspired Outside investors, including the Guggenheim family and J.P. Morgan,
to risk building a railway from an ice-free port on Alaska’s southcentral
coast to the rich copper deposits at Kennicott. In 1906, planners
recommended four possible routes to the copper – including two from Valdez
to the Copper River via 2,000-foot passes – but railroad builders chose a
route from Cordova that would follow the Copper River north to Chitina, then
continue 60 miles to Kennicott.

Glaciers stuck out their tongues in defiance along the entire route, but the
pull of financial gain and human ingenuity overcame them. In one case,
workers laid tracks across the debris-covered ice of Allen Glacier for
five-and-one-half miles, according to my two sources for this column, The
Copper Spike by Lone Janson and Iron Rails to Alaskan Copper by Alfred
Quinn.

Two of the largest obstacles on the route were Miles and Childs glaciers,
both of which calve icebergs into the Copper River from opposite banks.
Erastus Hawkins, the engineer in charge of the railroad project, and Michael
Heney, the construction contractor, preferred to run the railroad alongside
the Copper River, but the Miles and Childs glaciers sprawl over both
shorelines at a pinch-point about 15 miles from the river¹s mouth. Not
listening to other engineers who thought the problem was insurmountable,
Hawkins designed a 1,550-foot steel bridge to span the Copper River at a
river bend between the two glaciers.

Geologists had found that the glaciers had fused during the past several
centuries, and the leader of a U.S. Army expedition up the Copper River in
1885 reported that the nose of Miles Glacier was then about 120 yards from
the site of the bridge. By 1908, both glaciers had receded to provide a gap
of about three miles.

Starting in April 1909, workers scrambled to complete the Million Dollar
Bridge, spurred on by a U.S. law that gave railroad developers four years to
complete a designated route. After four years, the government would tax them
$100 per operating mile per year. Contactors finished the bridge by
midsummer of 1910.

Soon after construction of the Million Dollar Bridge, which cost $1.4
million to build, the glaciers continued to threaten the railroad.

In August 1910, two glaciologists from the National Geographic Society
studied the sudden advances of both Miles and Childs glaciers. A northern
lobe of Childs Glacier began creeping toward the bridge in June, and by
August it was moving eight feet per day. On August 17, the 200-foot face of
the glacier was 1,624 feet away from the bridge.

Ralph Tarr, one of the glaciologists, speculated on what would happen if the
glacier continued to advance in 1911.

“It is absolutely certain that no corps of engineers could save the bridge
and railway if the glacier should advance that far,” he wrote.

Childs Glacier did not engulf the bridge, but the glacier crept to within
1,475 feet in June 1911. Childs and Miles glaciers have since retreated,
sparing the Million Dollar Bridge, which served the railway from 1910 until
1938, when low copper prices forced the shutdown of the Copper River and
Northwestern Railway. The bridge survived nature’s whims until March 23,
1964, when the Good Friday Earthquake knocked the northernmost span from its
concrete piling, a flaw that state workers repaired in 2005.

This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute,
University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research
community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute. This column
first appeared in 2002.

Theresa Bakker
907-474-6941
1/13/12

The University of Alaska Museum of the North will host a free photo presentation Thursday, Jan. 19 from 6-8 p.m.

The event will feature the photographs of Piotr Naskrecki, including close-ups of insects, horseshoe crabs and other relic organisms with ties to the Jurassic Period. He will also sign copies of his books.

This event is part of the museum’s special exhibit, “Leggy! Live Spiders and Their Relatives,” showing Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. For more information, call 907-474-7505 or visit the museum online at museum.uaf.edu.

ON THE WEB: http://www.uaf.edu/museum/calendar/

TB/1-13-12/136-12

Marie Gilbert
907-474-7412
1/13/12

University of Alaska Fairbanks zoophysiologist Brian Barnes has been named a 2011 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

Barnes was recognized for distinguished contributions to leadership in arctic science and research in hibernation and cryobiology: the study of the effects of low temperatures on living things. Barnes is the director of the UAF Institute of Arctic Biology and the science director at Toolik Field Station.

An internationally recognized expert in hibernation, Barnes’ research focuses on physiological ecology and thermoregulation of hibernating mammals – especially black bears and arctic ground squirrels.

Barnes divides his research time between laboratory work on the UAF campus and fieldwork at Toolik Field Station, an international research facility located on Alaska’s North Slope. As director of IAB, Barnes supports the life sciences research of about 50 faculty members and 100 associated postdoctoral fellows, researchers and staff members.

Barnes is among 539 new fellows chosen nationwide for 2011. He will receive a certificate and a blue and gold rosette—representing science and engineering—at the AAAS annual meeting in Vancouver Feb. 18. He joins the ranks of more than a dozen Alaskans chosen as fellows over the years.

The tradition of AAAS Fellows, who are chosen by their peers, began in 1874. Members can be considered if nominated by the steering groups of the association’s 24 sections, by any three fellows who are current AAAS members or by the AAAS chief executive officer.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Brian Barnes at 907-474-7648 or [email protected].

ON THE WEB: http://www.aaas.org/aboutaaas/fellows/2011.shtml

MEG/1-13-12/135-12

Theresa Bakker
907-474-6941
1/12/12

Each semester for the past 30 years, Fairbanks school children have settled down in front of a docent to learn the secrets of the museum. The lessons they absorb from the collections and exhibits are a result of a legacy of teamwork between local teachers and the museum’s education staff.

Terry Dickey was the museum’s education director when the guided school tours program began in the spring of 1982.

“We met with teachers who helped us design topics that matched learning outcomes with classroom objectives,” Dickey said. “They knew that students learn in different ways and offered valuable suggestions about using hands-on objects, storytelling, and activities.”

After years of collaboration, the museum today features a core of volunteers who serve as docents. They are a major strength of the program, says Jennifer Arseneau, the museum’s education and public programs manager.

“These dedicated volunteers have a passion for learning and sharing the joy of discovery with kids,” she said. “It’s a real pleasure to work with them and see the unique assets each docent brings to the program. The interaction with multiple docents makes our program unique. Kids interact with several adults, all passionate about museums and discovery.”

People with a variety of interests and backgrounds have joined the team. All it takes is a willingness to commit to the museum and take part in one of two yearly training sessions. This week, the education department is preparing the next docent class, something school and community liaison Peggy Hetman says is vital to educating our community.

“We’re very fortunate to have the UA Museum of the North in our backyard,” Hetman said. “It’s the place to ask an expert and learn about Alaska’s diversity of people, animals, and land. Whether visiting with family, participating in Family Day programs or other special events, such as Halloween or the open house, the museum has something for everyone.”

More than 386 Fairbanksans have been museum docents, including Denali Elementary School principal Tim Doran, Amy Iutzi, director of the Alaska Adult Education Association, and CTC culinary arts program assistant professor Jennifer Jolis. Almost 72,000 elementary school students have participated in guided field trips since the program’s inception.

As part of the program’s outreach to the local school community, the museum is hosting an Educators’ Night on Thursday, Jan. 26 from 4-6 p.m. for teachers to explore the museum’s offerings and plan a school trip for their class. Pre-registration is required by Jan. 20.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Jennifer Arseneau, education and public programs manager, at 907-474-6948 or via email at [email protected], and Peggy Hetman, school and community liaison, at 907-474-5360 or via email at [email protected].

ON THE WEB: museum.uaf.edu

TB/1-12-12/133-12

By Nancy Tarnai

January 11, 2011

 

A historic moment occurred Dec. 7 in a tucked away barn at a Delta Junction farm. No bells, fireworks or champagne marked the occasion, but it was a joyous moment for Bryce Wrigley and his family when they ground barley to make flour.

 

The news of the first time in decades a commercial flour mill has operated in Alaska has been met with enthusiasm. Not long after Wrigley set up his Alaska Flour Co. Facebook page he attracted nearly 500 fans and had calls from as far away as Nome, Dillingham, Cordova and Valdez requesting flour. “We won’t be extending that far this first year,” Wrigley said.

 

Asked why he chose to invest in such an expensive operation, Wrigley said he and his wife Jan wanted to do something to provide food for Alaskans. They started their journey by visiting flour mills around the Lower 48 when they were on vacation last year.

 

This fall he ordered equipment for the mill from Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Michigan and has been working hard ever since to get the business up and running.

 

“The food security stuff really kicked it off,” Wrigley said. “Since Hurricane Katrina, it’s been on my mind.” He said when looking at the food pyramid, Alaska can grow something in every category. “Why can’t we get to the point of raising enough food in the state for three months?” he asked. In the event of a pandemic, Wrigley said the government has addressed masks and rubber gloves but not food. “It takes 90 days for a pandemic to run its course,” he said. “We have a one-week supply of food in state so all we need is two months and three weeks.”

 

He has high hopes that the state and university can continue agricultural research. “We are the most vulnerable state,” he said. “We have to take care of ourselves, otherwise the time will come when we can’t.”

 

Wrigley, who is a grain farmer and president of the Alaska Farm Bureau, said he tried to get other folks interested in starting a mill. “In June I decided it was going to happen and I should look into what it would take.” His research included all the details of not only grinding grain, but packaging and marketing flour.

 

The impressive electric-powered mill can produce a 20, 40 or 100-mesh grain (the higher the number the finer the grain) and Wrigley is working with Ingal wheat and Sunshine hulless barley to produce flour. He grows both on his own farm and is hoping to convince neighbors to join the endeavor. “It will change the crops we raise,” Wrigley said. He plans to plant 200 acres of barley and 300 acres of wheat this year.

 

The mill capacity is 700 to 1,000 pounds of flour per hour. “My goal is to do 100 tons the first year then 900 the next year and 1,500 in five years. We’re going to ramp up production as fast as we can sell it. If I can’t keep up with store demand I’ll be tickled.”

 

Pricing will be similar to other specialty flours, Wrigley said. “I’m not trying to complete with Gold Medal.”

 

Through UAF Cooperative Extension Service studies, it has been found that mixing half barley flour with half wheat flour produces the best results. It’s better to mix the two because barley holds moisture. For barley flour recipes, including cornbread, brownies, banana bread, pancakes, carrot cake, cookies, crackers, muffins, noodles and pie crust, visit the Extension publications website.

 

For the future, Wrigley is considering the production of brownie, cake and pancake mixes. “We want to try different things,” he said. The flour is sold in Fairbanks at Alaska Feed and Homegrown Market and in Anchorage at the Natural Pantry.

 

One huge bonus to opening the mill has been that while the Wrigley farm hadn’t been making enough money to keep the adult children employed and they had all moved Outside, the eldest son Dallen has moved home from Idaho with his wife and four children to help with mill operations. “I’m excited to pass this farm to subsequent generations,” Wrigley beamed.

 

Contact information:

 

www.alaskaflourcompany.com

907-895-4033

[email protected]

and on Facebook

 

 

This column is provided as a service by the UAF School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences and the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. Nancy Tarnai is the school and station’s public information officer. She can be reached at [email protected].