Bakers picked as 'Farm Family of the Year'

PALMER — Craige Baker and his wife, Kathy, have one of the biggest lawns in the Valley — 20 acres of bluegrass.

“I have a 20-acre lawn and I have to treat it just about like a lawn,” Craige Baker said. But don’t ask to see his riding mower. Those don’t get the job done. “I have tractor mowers so I do it a little bit faster.”

Craige Baker spoke Wednesday, just a day away from a reception in his family’s honor after the state chose the Bakers to be this year’s Farm Family of the Year. In addition to the sod, Gray Owl Farm has a greenhouse, selling flowers and some vegetables. The Bakers are natives of the Midwest.

“I grew up in Iowa and Kathy grew up in Nebraska,” Craige Baker said. “We both grew up on farms.”

They met in college, where both were being trained as teachers.

“We came up here in ’84 like I said, and in the early ’80s in the Midwest things were tanking badly. There were century farms going broke,” Baker said, explaining a “century farm” is a farm that’s been in the same family for 100 years or more. “I was farming with my brother and there wasn’t enough for two families to do.”

The Midwest has undergone a process of consolidation, where one person farms hundreds, maybe thousands of acres, with help from a handful of seasonal workers. At the time, Baker said, he and his brother were farming 600 acres.

“That’s just not enough anymore,” he said. “There’s so many small family farms that have just quit, they’re not big enough. The scale of farming down there has changed a lot.”

Alaska, though, is different. He and his family are making a living on just 40 acres.

“It would be ridiculous to be able to say that down in the Midwest,” Baker said. Maybe you could do it with sod, but maybe not. “I think even then you’d have to supplement it somehow.”

Alaska is also different in terms of its growing season and what it takes to farm the land here.

“We had to re-learn when we came to Alaska. It’s a whole different ball game,” Baker said. “It’s so far north that you almost throw out the window what you’ve already learned.”

Back to the family’s story — Craige and Kathy came north in 1985 so Craige could work to set up a dairy farm at Point MacKenzie. Kathy started teaching right away at Wasilla High School. After driving a truck and managing the Musk Ox Farm, Craige also went into education in 1991. Kathy taught English, speech and theater.

“I did exactly the same thing at Palmer High School,” Craige said.

A press release announcing their selection as Farm Family of the Year notes the couple brought their theater talents out of the school and into the community.

“The Bakers are very involved in their community. They have been artistic directors for the Valley Performing Arts (VPA) while their children acted in its productions. They are committed to agricultural education and offer greenhouse and farm tours to elementary school students in the spring,” according to the press release.

Craige Baker said that even while teaching, he and his family kept their hands in the agricultural community. They bought their 40-acre farm — 20 acres are for growing seeds — in 1993.

“We started the greenhouse in ’98 and before that about five or six years we were getting ready to start,” Craige Baker said.

But it’s not like they set up the farm and got to quit their day jobs.

“We had to work two jobs for quite awhile,” he said — the farm being the second job. “Which is pretty typical, I would think. You’ve got to knock that debt down for a while.”

As far as sod goes, Craige said it’s more or less a niche business. Sod is more expensive than hydroseeding. He doesn’t begrudge hydroseeders — he uses the process himself to grow his sod — but their clientele is different. Hydroseeding is for people who can wait three months for a good lawn. Sod is for people who need a full-grown lawn right away.

“A couple three weeks you can be on it,” Craige said. “There is a market, but it’s small, it’s a small market.”

But for those people, Gray Owl is a full-service farm. The Bakers will roll up the sod, bring it to your place and put it in. Craige said he sells maybe four to six acres of sod each year. He said Gray Owl is not the only sod farm in Alaska, but he can count the rest on one hand.

As for the greenhouse, that side of the business is a different world. Just about every farm you care to name has a greenhouse. You need them, really, to get plants started. Not all of them are growing flowers, but enough are to make the business competitive.

Craige said he and his wife are always keeping an eye on the farming economy, given what happened in the Midwest to send them north.

“We’re used to understanding that the farm economies can go bad quickly,” Craige said. So far, at least, Alaska has been very good to the Bakers. “We wanted to find a niche that worked for us and it’s been just a wonderful move for us.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.