Welcome to the Butte, where the soil is said to be the best in the state

BUTTE— The Butte community is home to some of the best organic farmers today, according to the experts, both those who study local agriculture and those who farm in the area.

“Butte has the best soil of the whole state,” Dr. Stephen Brown, Agriculture and Horticulture facility professor at the UAF Experimental Farm in Palmer, said.

Alaska’s agriculture is actually many years behind the rest of the country in many ways, according to Brown.

“Many people are surprised to find out that Alaskan farmers are using equipment that’s 50 years old,” Brown said.

Unlike the lower 48, a majority of farmers in the Mat-Su and rest of Alaska still use open cab tractors, exposed to the elements with no air conditioning or heating systems.

“I think it’s a testament to the toughness of Alaskans,” Brown said.

Earl Wineck is one of the few remaining “Colony Kids.” Colonial farming up on Camp 10 (Butte) was like all aspects if a settler’s life. It required toughness, determination, grit and creativity. Wineck, 91, can still recall the specific dates and major milestones that the Butte, his family and all is colonial friends went through as mounds of timber was chopped, stumps were pulled, soil was tilled and memories were planted.

“We didn’t get a tractor until 1939 or 40,” Wineck said. “It was a lot of work too, even if you had the tractor, it was work.”

The Wineck family has a long history in Alaska. His grandfather worked in the Klondike gold rush and his father, Ed started up here as a cannery worker in Bristol Bay at age 19. The rest is history.

1917

John Bodenburg was the first settler to develop land in the Butte area, establishing the first Butte farm. He brought 19 cows with him, traversing through the Matanuska River, just below where the George Palmer Memorial Bridge stands now.

This is where the iconic Bodenburg Butte hill and the long stretch of historic road Bodenburg Loop got their names, a combination of the first settler’s name and the very definition of that type of land that’s bigger than a hill but not quite a mountain.

Bodenburg quit faming sometime after the old wooden bridge that connected Palmer and the Butte and spanned across the Matanuska River was torn out. Wineck said that Bodenburg was alive when he came to Track 174 in Camp 10 at 8 years old after his father secured the land along Bodenburg Loop, just a short walk to the hill.

“I never met Bodenburg. He was kind of reclusive I think,” Wineck said.

1935

The first wave of colonists settled in the Mat-Su Valley in 1935 looking for a fresh start under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Wineck credited FDR as the “one who got us out of the depression.”

During the original plotting of the land, each colony family picked lots out of a hat. Several families including the Sandvik family, swapped their tickets with other farmers until they got the lot they wanted. Kent Sandvik said that his father swapped six times before he got the lot within Camp 10, wrapping around Bodenburg Loop, the same road that locals and tourists alike go down to summit the famous hill. Each time a hiker goes up that almost-mountain, they are walking past generations of history.

1936

“The summer ‘36, we started building the barn and we were still clearing land at the time for crops,” Wineck said.

The Wineck family was among the first of the second wave of colonists, after several families and individuals up and left, leaving open lots and only the hardiest and most invested as neighbors.

“For one reason or another couldn’t stay, left the places that they had chosen” Wineck said.

Life in those days was an active decision, a life with hardship and scenic wonders and wild adventures, according to Wineck.

“Even at 20, 30 below (zero) it was nice and warm in the barn where the animals were,” Wineck said. “The animals in the now iconic barn moved to the Alaska State fair protected only by sturdy logs and no insulation, combined body heat is the answer here].”

Wineck’s father, Ed, died in 1983 after working around the state to support his family while his two boys took care of the farm. The Wineck farm grew one crop after the other, trying to keep up with the seasons and world at large, be it for work or for brief moments of fun.

“We’d rig up a sail out of gunny sacks, get out on the road, get on sled and raise up the sail and go like hell down the road,” Wineck said.

1945

“Of course the war came and all the guys who were eligible to get drafted,” Wineck said.

Throughout the years, the Wineck farm tried their hand at variety of crops, picking bugs out of cabbages and the like, throwing them into a can of gasoline. Like many farms across the Valley, the Wineck family raised mound upon mound of potatoes to sell to the military for the war effort.

Wineck loved to hunt with his brother in the woods but never liked violence. He was drafted into the Army.

“After I learned about all kinds of weapons to kill people,” Wineck said. “They shipped me out the Aleutian Islands and I never had to do that and I was pretty happy about that.”

2008

“The main thing that kept us going was my dad working we put more money into it than we got out of it as far as growing anything,” Wineck said.

Brown said that the confluence of glacial air from the Knik and Mat-Su glaciers brings a quarter inch of silt to the Butte every year, soaking the dirt with vital nutrients.

“Big dust storms in the winter, they don’t close the schools for snow, but they do for dust. That dust is what gives the Butte’s agriculture such a boost,” Brown said. “Compared to rest of country, the soil isn’t that good but compared to rest of Alaska, so it’s a bit of an irony… Some of our best organic farmers are there in the Butte.”