Rural Alaska

Photos: Bethel farmer feeds rural Alaskans

The only farmer between Anchorage, 500 miles to the east, and Russia, about the same distance to the northwest, Tim Meyers wonders why he is so alone. When he looks out across the treeless landscape that rolls southwest in ponds, wetlands and tractor-high hills toward the local airport and the nothing beyond all the way to the Bering Sea, he sees what an earlier generation of Americans saw on the Great Plains: A rich, fertile and treeless landscape. A landscape where you can start farming without a bunch of time-consuming and costly land clearing. And a landscape with another big plus.

"It's a delta where there's been millions of salmon going up the river every year and washing out to sea," he said. Those spawned-out salmon float down the river to become natural fertilizer.

"I grew 50,000 pounds of food last year," Meyers said. "I've got a root cellar. I can ... sell all winter."

His goal is to store 100,000 pounds of potatoes, beets, rutabaga, carrots, turnips and cabbage, and sell them at an average of $1 per pound over the winter. His storage costs in an underground bunker are minimal.

READ MORE: Farm flourishes on the Alaska tundra

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