PALMER, AK

July 27, 2011

Palmer is surrounded by lush pastures and dairy and vegetable farms as it is located in the fertile Matanuska Valley. For thousands of years the Matanuska Velley was covered by glaciers. The Mat-Su Valley covers an area roughly the size of West Virginia.  The fertile silt left behind when the glaciers recedes and the long daylight hours provide a perfect environment to grow world record veggies.   The Alaska State Fair is held here the 4th Thursday of August for 12 days.  The town of Palmer is famous for its giant vegetables. Cabbages can grow to more than 125#. Darn!  We will miss Friday Fling, the weekly market that offers locally grown produce. 

Today we went to the Palmer Visitors Center saw a showcase garden and then movie clips about a 1935 Colony, part of President Roosevelt's "New Deal" program.  During the Depression a relocation program was established to create 100 new cities.  In Alaska,  202 farm families from Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota were given a chance at a lottery to distribute parcels of land to farm and raise dairy cattle.  We listened to a lady who was the daughter of one of the Colony families.  She gave a tour of a restored Colony home that was representative of one of 4 basic house plans available to Matanuska Valley Colonists.  We had a great lunch at the Inn Cafe(circa 1935) across the street.

Later in the afternoon we visited a musk ox farm to get up-close with these Ice Age survivors. This is one of  only a few domesticated musk ox farms in the world.  Musk oxen died out in Alaska by the late 1800s but were reintroduced in the 1930s when some were brought here  n the 1930s.  They are not technically oxen as their closest relatives are sheep and goats.  The shaggy prehistoric
animals are valued for their fine underwool called "quivut" (pronounced kiv-ee-oot).  It is supposed to be 9 times warmer than wool.   Quivut is knitted for hats, scarves and sweaters.  At $90 a skein, it is extremely pricey!  (I did purchase a ticket for a blanket -- can't wait to have my name drawn on Dec 11th.)