Inside one of the plastic-tarped hoop houses on the Port Lions farm, there are some common staples growing in raised beds like broccoli, rhubarb and various herbs.
But in the second hoop house, there’s mainly only one thing growing in the center – fruit trees.
“So this is a cherry tree and the cherry trees that came with this one died, so it’s the only one," Joe Kewan said.
Kewan, the assistant farm manager alongside his uncle, Guy Bartleson, said the Port Lions farm bought multiple cherry trees online and shipped them in from Maine months ago. But he suspects during the long journey and because of poor shipping and handling, only one survived.
“Next spring we’ll order two more and put them here and there, and then that way, that cherry tree has a pollinator, because if you don’t have another cherry tree, it won’t produce any fruit," Kewan said.
Aside from the new cherry tree, the community farm in the village of Port Lions is also growing five apple trees. Each tree stands about five feet tall, with space between each slim trunk, in the middle row of the soil bed. None of them have produced fruit yet as they were just planted in the spring.
“They’re all semi-dwarf so they won’t get so big," Kewan said. "And I think that one’s a honey crisp, a crab apple, crab apple, coastal star, and then fuji; the one on the end is the fuji."
The fruit trees are surrounded by strawberries in potters which Kewan said will be transplanted into the garden soil.
Port Lions isn’t the only local community focusing on fruit. Ouzinkie, a roughly 15-minute flight north of Kodiak, about 12 miles by air, planted dozens of apple trees this year that came from a local fruit tree farmer living on a different part of the island, John Bartolino in Sailboat Cove across the water from Ouzinkie.
Max Lyons is the program director for the Kodiak Archipelago Leadership Institute, which oversees the community farms in Port Lions and Ouzinkie. He said both have planted more fruit trees in the last couple years as part of the larger effort to produce more locally grown food for the future.
“Fruit production is definitely, at least for trees, you’re planting, we really always say for the next generation. So trees are something that live for a long time, they take a while to grow and start producing." Lyons said. "So it’s something that you don’t see an immediate return on.”
Over time, he said, the fruit from those trees can provide for decades.
Right now, Port Lions, Ouzinkie and the community of Old Harbor – on the southeast side of the island – all have fruit trees in various stages of growth. According to Lyons, the Sitkalidak Sunrise Farm in Old Harbor planted 75 apple trees outdoors in the last couple years to see how an apple orchard would fare.
Kodiak Island does not exactly have the ideal conditions for growing fruit trees in the outdoor environment. So, Lyons said the institute and the archipelago's farms have been learning about best practices from fruit tree growers on the Kenai Peninsula, such as O’Briens Garden and Trees in Nikiski.
Lyons said Oceanside Farms in Homer has done, “virtual pruning sessions with some of the farms, where they’re calling in on Zoom and teaching the farms how to prune their trees in the off season.”
He estimates it will likely take two to three years before there is fruit hanging on the trees at the Port Lions farm to distribute to local residents.
Other fruit tree growers like Lorne and Elana White, the longtime owners of Strawberry Fields Garden Center/Nursery in Kodiak, which is now called Rooted and is under new management, have been growing apples on the island for decades. They also grew other fruit trees like kiwi and plum over the years.
