GROWTH OPPORTUNITY

PALMER — At 16, Mark Simon has his future mapped out: a business degree from Western Washington University, an MBA from New York University and success in commerce. But the Palmer teen never predicted his early success would be in stinging nettles.

Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) is often best avoided, as the name implies. But for Simon, there’s no profit without a little pain.

It all started last year when Simon, a member of the Palmer Future Farmers of America chapter, needed a supervised agricultural experience (SAE) project. FFA Adviser Don Berberich pointed to a bumper crop of nasty nettles around the Palmer Ag Building next to Palmer High and suggested Simon start a nettle tea business.

Simon was skeptical, but he gathered the nettles, dried the leaves, crushed and packaged and took them to the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market. He sold out before noon.

“I realized, ‘Wow. People really like this stuff,’” he recalled.

That was the unofficial launching of his business, Alaska Wild Botanicals.

Simon, who will start his junior year at Mat-Su Career and Technical High in the (no surprise here) business pathway, is selling at Palmer’s Friday Fling as well as the South Anchorage Saturday Market. He said some of his most enthusiastic customers have been Europeans who are very familiar with the health benefits of nettles. Simon lists beneficial components like a kindergartner reciting the alphabet: “Vitamins A, B, C, D and E, iron, phosphorus, calcium, beta carotene and Vitamin K.”

There is no sugar or other sweeteners added. While he does buy peppermint leaves from All About Herbs to make his peppermint-nettle blends, the entrepreneur has plans to change that with a patch of herbs at the family’s new home near Colony High.

“Hopefully by next year we’ll be able to produce our own peppermint,” Simon said.

It’s a business that involves his entire family. His parents, John and Cindy, who both work for Mat-Su Borough School District, and older brother Jacob all get involved. Mostly, it’s the picking.

“Back in May, we thought we’d picked enough to last through the season, and he sold out in a month,” Cindy Simon said.

“I just know I’m picking nettles all the time,” quipped John Simon.

The family has a bead on some of the best patches around. There a good patch in Hatcher Pass and another along the Matanuska River Trail. But one of the mainstays is Fishhook Golf Course, where the owners are more than happy to have the stinging nettles removed.

It isn’t as simple as scything down a patch of nettles. The nettle leaves must be young and without bug damage. During a walk through a patch of nettles at Fishhook Golf Course, Cindy and Mark both reject many more nettles than they collect. It’s the end of the first cutting of nettles, so to speak. The early crop is going to seed. In a few weeks, there will be a fresh crop of small, tender plants that make the best product, they said.

John calls them “beautiful nettles.”

It can be hard to tell hemp nettles, which are less irritating, from stinging nettles. Mark Simon has a simple solution — he runs his hand through them. Gloves don’t seem to help much, he said. At some point, chemicals from the stinging hairs (trichomes) seep into the leather. Either way, the pickers pay the price.

“The next day you just can’t feel your hands,” John said.

On a mid July day, Mark and Cindy trek into thick woods to find the few remaining “good” nettles under large shade trees.

Once collected, the nettles go into food dryers in the Simons’ garage. When desiccated, they are hand crushed and packaged — with instructions. Mark Simon said he got tired of early morning calls from his customers wanting to know how to brew the tea.

But the leaves aren’t just used for tea. Simon hands out recipes for nettle pesto and nettle soup.

Besides the nettles, Simon processes spruce tips and rose hips for use in recipes. Those have proven so popular that he’s had trouble keeping up with demand. The head chef at Orso, an Anchorage restaurant, bought his stock of rose hips. Simon will be out picking hips again soon. He keeps an eye on a rosebush in his yard to know when to go foraging so he will have a good supply — perhaps enough to hit the holiday bazaars this fall.

Simon sees his business expanding even more next summer.

“Next year my big hope is to have multiple markets going at the same time,” he said. He thinks he can double his sales by hitting two Anchorage markets, for example, on the same day. Of course, that will mean more helpers.

Then there are the other lines. Right now, Simon is the chief seller of FFA produce at the markets. He also sells eggs for fellow FFA students, and has expanded to help some local farmers market their products.

“His business is kind of taking on multiple facets,” noted John.

With Mark on a learner’s permit, John and Cindy are hauling their son to pick up produce and to the markets. They said they look forward to next summer when he can drive himself.

It’s a lot of support from parents who weren’t quite sure what to say when their son came home from an FFA social event and said he wanted to join a group known for its ties to farming.

Mark Simon tells the story of how former state FFA officers Rachel Kenley and Derek Monarch, both then Palmer High seniors, invited him to be part of the fun. As a “lowly, nameless freshman,” he was appreciative of the outreach. Kenley asked if he was doing anything on an upcoming Saturday, and Simon said, “No.”

“Basically, the only reason I joined was because I wasn’t doing anything that Saturday,” he said, smiling.

Berberich, his FFA adviser, said he’s been impressed by how Simon has attacked the project.

“He just takes sales really serious,” Berberich said. “He thrives on the sale.”

More than anything else, Berberich said, an SAE project like Simon’s gives the student a realistic look at production. The student sees how production costs bite into profits, and how unexpected expenses or a crop failure can wipe them out entirely.

“It’s just a great program,” he said.

Simon benefited from a grant program started by the Mat-Su Chapter of the Alaska Farm Bureau. Simon received $500 in startup money, which he used to pay for business licenses and two new dehydrators.

He hopes to compete next year for state and national FFA awards for his unique and successful SAE project, which he says he will continue during the summer after he leaves for college.

That’s if he doesn’t run short of raw material.

He smiles: “Once you find a way to profit from it, it disappears.”