Field fresh

BUTTE — The greens at the grocery store are about to get a whole lot greener.

Crews worked Monday to harvest the first crop from Gold Nugget Farms off Bodenburg Loop. This morning, those same crops arrived at local Carrs, Fred Meyers and Wal-Marts under the Alaska Nugget brand name.

The crop began in the greenhouse as each seed grew in its own cell, said Gold Nugget owner Paula Giauque. They were transplanted to the field after five weeks inside, then workers spent the next seven weeks hoeing the weeds and checking the soil for water content.

Now, the wind is heavy with the smell of fresh cut lettuce. A crew of four walks down the row, lifting the head of green leaf lettuce and cutting its stem with deft swipe of the knife. One more cut cleans the bottom of any excess stem, and the lettuce is left upside down.

Four more workers gather the upturned heads six at a time. They put the lettuce in the box with the stems facing out. Six more are put in the bottom with the stems facing the opposite side of the box, and two more rows are put on top of the first two.

“The lettuce is packed with the butts toward the walls so the milk from the stems doesn’t get on the leaves,” Giauque said.

This box of 24 heads of lettuce is then stapled shut and packed in a truck. The truck heads across the Old Glenn Highway to Palmer Produce — the distributor — and their vacuum cooler. When it comes out of the ground, the lettuce is the same temperature as the ambient air, which can often be upwards of 80 degrees, Giauque said. At this temperature, the lettuce wilts very fast, essentially cooking itself in the cardboard box. To stop this, the boxes are put in the cooler.

“It pulls it down to 30 inches of vacuum,” said Paul Huppert, co-owner of Palmer Produce and Giauque’s father. “That’s like going to 80,000 feet. Within 15 minutes, it goes to 34 degrees.”

The boxes are stored overnight and distributed the next morning via refrigerated truck under Palmer Produce’s brand name Alaska Nugget. They head directly to the grocery stores in the Valley or go to a wholesaler’s warehouse on their way to stores in Anchorage and restaurants and military bases around the state.

“Most of the stuff on the shelves is harvested the day before,” Giauque said. “It’s much fresher than anything brought in from the Lower 48.”

This process of farm to shelf is repeated throughout the summer. Palmer Produce provides green vegetables through September, switching then to distributing tubers and root crops.

“We have a rough estimate of how much we’re going to sell,” said Jerry Huppert, Giauque’s brother and the other co-owner of Palmer Produce. “We plant more to exceed that, a certain amount of surplus to cover anything that may happen.”

When all three processes of transplanting, hoeing and harvesting are occurring at once, the farm can employ as many as 20 to 30 temporary workers, Giauque said. Everyone from students to grandparents find work in the field.

“Some work for four hours and quit. Some say they are going to the bathroom and never come back,” Giauque said. “Some stay for 20 years.”

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@fro ntiersman.com or (907) 352-2252.