BUTTE — After a half century of farming in the Valley, the Matanuska soil is deep under Paul Huppert’s fingernails.

Huppert owns Palmer Produce, a marketing and distribution company that sells Alaska-grown produce to large commercial operations around the state. The company’s main label is Alaska Nugget Brand and is supplied by tubers and greens grown by Huppert’s family farms.

April and May is the shoulder season for Palmer Produce. The last potatoes have left the 2,000-ton storage facility to Wal-Marts Carrs and Fred Meyer. The fields are tilled for the next crop of vegetables headed for food wholesalers or military bases. Huppert walks the grounds, reflective under his mesh-backed hat and dark glasses.

(Use arrows above to view more photos)

Deep roots

Huppert moved to Alaska as a homesteader in 1952. He began working in a coal mine and in construction, but with an agricultural background, he was hired as the produce manager for Matanuska Maid. In the late 1950s, he offered to buy out the produce department after becoming in charge of distribution statewide. Mat Maid agreed, Huppert changed the name to  Palmer Produce, and he began selling produce directly to mom-and-pop stores and filling government contracts.

Among the seemingly derelict machines around the yard, Huppert points to a rusted and pale blue truck with the Palmer Produce logo painted on the door in yellow.

“I bought that Ford truck new in 1964. People ask me all the time if they can buy it and restore it as an antique,” Huppert said. “But we still use it to transport the plants to the field.”

New growth

Despite reminders of the past like the truck — and Huppert himself — the operation today is a model of modern farm efficiency.

Palmer Produce distributes mostly root and green vegetables grown with state-of-the-art methods in farms managed by Huppert’s daughter, Paula, and son, Jerry.

Paula oversees the green vegetables. Leaf lettuce, head lettuce and cabbage are grown using a technique called the Speedling system. A machine seeder inserts one seed into each of a tray’s 330 cells. The trays are placed 10 to 12 deep along either side of the farm’s 300 feet of greenhouse. A tracked cart with an arm over each side automatically waters the seeds as they grow into starts.

After five weeks, the starts are transplanted to the fields. Four farmhands sit on the back of a tractor with five trays on rotating shelves opposite of them. Six rotating funnels sit between the farmhands and the trays.

As the tractor moves forward, it digs small rows for the plants to sit in, and the farmhands drop individual starts down the funnel into the ground. When the funnels rotate, another start is dropped, and the farmhands simply rotate the shelves to get a fresh tray.

The vegetable farm raises about 1.5 million plants each year, Paula said. With staggered growing cycles, there is a new crop planted each week for the 12 weeks of summer.

The Speedling system is made more for Alaska than any other state in the union, Huppert said. Because farms up here cannot plant April 1, this method allows the farm to pick up another five weeks of growing season. It is a very controlled system, minute changes can maximize the quality of the plants and the seeds that don’t grow are not planted. Using this method, every foot of every row gets a good, healthy plant, Huppert said.

While the potatoes are still grown from eyes planted straight in the ground, the operation overseen by Huppert’s son Jerry is nonetheless high tech. The tractors are equipped with GPS-controlled electric motors on the steering wheels. A master transmitter at the barn guides the vehicles down the fields making the rows arrow straight and even.

National reach

On the distribution side of things, gone are the days of the personal connection with produce managers. Now, Huppert said, his orders come in from Phoenix or Portland.

“You can’t just walk in and sell to them,” Huppert said. “They want to know your past history and make sure you pass all the tests.”

Huppert said the regulations for large commercial farms in Alaska are more stringent than other farms claiming to be organic. For example, organic farms often use manure as a natural fertilizer. Huppert said horses are no longer allowed on his farms and farmhands cannot bring their dogs to work anymore.

“We practice Good Handling Practices and Good Agricultural Practices. GHP and GAP,” Paula said. “We are watching the crews to make sure they wash their hands. We are treating injuries so no blood drips on the ground. And we are testing the water every year.”

“You can drink this water. Try finding a farm in California where you can do that,” Huppert added. “We’re under a microscope because there are so few commercial farms in Alaska.”

Asked if he thinks food security is a problem in Alaska because there are so few operations like his, Huppert said he knows first-hand just how vulnerable the supply is. Last winter when snow closed the trucking routes from the farms in Washington to the Seattle airport, supermarkets called him starting to show signs of concern.

“But I think we’ll see a Berlin-type airlift is things ever get too bad,” he said.

Reaping what’s sown

Huppert turns 84 in June. He no longer deals in the day-to-day operation of the farms but keeps a eye on everything.

“I take care of the troubleshooting,” he said.

Driving by the potato fields, he looks down the rows just like he has for 50 years.

“I get on my son if I see a crooked one.”

Still in charge of the distribution and marketing of Palmer Produce, Huppert said he is trying to disengage himself totally.

His children and grandchildren are taking on more responsibility, but that is precisely his dilemma, he said.

Huppert tells a story about a heart surgeon from Anchorage who moved to the Valley to start a farm.

“‘What’d you go and do that for,’ I told him. He had all the education and success as a doctor, and here he was trying to start a farm. I just don’t get it,” Huppert said.

Sure enough, Huppert said the doctor started complaining about how hard it was to farm. Before too long, the doctor sold his farm and went back to open heart surgeries.

“Every farmer wants to get his kids well-educated in something other than farming. But they become the problem because they are the dreamers. They are raised on a farm and sent away to school, but then they start dreaming about farming and come back,” Huppert said. “What they soon realize is that in farming, there is no romance.”

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.