Farm family sets example for Alaska

Some people are born to farm; some people get drawn into it unawares. And some people, like Ted Pyrah, find their agricultural calling through a higher power.

Ted and his family are being honored this week as the 2010 Alaska Farm Family of the Year. They’ll receive their award at a reception at the opening day of the fair on Thursday.

Ted Pyrah laughs that they ran out of other families to whom to present the award. There have been some notable Valley families among those around the state who have earned the distinction, starting with the VanderWeeles, who won the first award in 2001, and most recently the Oberg/Kenley family in 2009.

While it may have taken 10 years for the award to reach Pyrah’s Pioneer Peak Farm in the Butte, that’s no reflection on the “family” in the Alaska Farm Family of the Year award. The Pyrahs are a tight-knit group that understands the value of Alaska farming. While it is daughter Janet and son Lucas directly involved in the farm these days, each of the Pyrah children has spent their years making the farm what it is today, and some continue to make agriculture an important part of their lives apart from the business built by their parents.

It all started as a charity farm for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints managed by the Pyrahs; it was the mission chosen for them by the church and God. It’s become arguably the premier U-Pick operation in the state.

It’s often families that visit Pyrahs to harvest vegetables fresh from the silt-loam soil. It isn’t just a trip to pick up some broccoli and lettuce; it is an experience that imbeds itself into the minds of those families, building traditions and a connection to the land that people who grab their lettuce from under florescent lights in a plastic package just don’t have.

Families make the trip from Anchorage to experience what they cannot experience there — commercial agriculture that brings food to their tables.

Ted Pyrah is a man who could make a living a lot of different ways; he has. These days, he and his family choose to live on the land and draw forth food from that land to help feed Alaskans. In doing so, they do more than grow succulent turnips and kohlrabi to tempt the palate of even a vegetable-hater; they connect thousands of Alaska families with agriculture. They’ve made Alaska agriculture accessible to countless Alaskans and visitors alike.

And they do this, not only with the day-to-day operation of the U-Pick farm, but through an annual Fall Harvest Festival that brings thousands to the Butte to celebrate another farm season coming to a close.

As this year’s Alaska Farm Family of the Year patriarch and matriarch, Ted and Katie Pyrah, don’t just put “family” in the name because of their five children and 21 grandchildren (and counting). It’s the countless Alaska families for whom farm is synonymous with Pyrah’s.

Congratulations.