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UAF Cooperative Extension Service

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UAF Cooperative Extension Service

Extension educates, engages and supports the people and communities of Alaska, connecting them with their university.

We provide factual and practical information while bringing Alaskans' issues and challenges to the university.

09/04/2026

Be on the lookout in September 2026 for Cooperative Extension Service’s mushroom classes in Delta and Palmer! Learn about the ecology, uses and identification of both edible and inedible mushrooms during this prime-time-foraging-fall season.

Delta Sept 11, 12 & 13: Mushrooms of the Interior at the Delta Career Advancement Center. $10/day. Contact [email protected] for more information and to register.

Palmer Sept 19: Mushroom identification workshop at the Matanuska Experiment Farm & Extension Center.
https://www.uaf.edu/ianre/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D1426642048

https://www.facebook.com/events/1273243411474270/?acontext=%7B%22event_action_history%22%3A[%7B%22mechanism%22%3A%22attachment%22%2C%22surface%22%3A%22newsfeed%22%7D]%2C%22ref_notif_type%22%3Anull%7D

Check out the Cooperative Extension Service publication on Collecting, Preserving & Using Morel Mushrooms for background. Or pick up an Alaska Edible (or Non-edible) Mushrooms poster from any Cooperative Extension office.

The Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Extension enriches the lives of Alaskans through research, education and outreach grounded in community needs.

09/03/2026

Meet an Alaska Woman Farmer: Evelyn Sarten
Ruby, Alaska

As we celebrate the 2026 United Nations International Year of the Woman Farmer, we meet a self-sufficient gardener in Ruby, Alaska—a small Athabascan village on the south bank of the Yukon River about 230 miles from Fairbanks.

Evelyn Sarten has been growing her own food in Ruby for nearly 25 years. With no running water, she makes-do with what she has and grows a wide variety of crops including carrots, lettuce, turnips, peas, pole beans, herbs, and really "anything that grows." She also grows vegetables, like zucchini, corn, and tomatoes, in a high tunnel. Evelyn reminds us that not all farmers work on big farms..

Heidi Rader is the Project Director for the Alaska Tribes Extension Program at the Cooperative Extension at the UAF Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension (IANRE). Checkout Rader’s In the Alaska Garden YouTube interview of Evelyn Sarten.

IANRE enriches the lives of Alaskans, including farmers, through research, education and outreach grounded in community needs.

See the video HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1LNAm37bcQ

09/02/2026

Garlic is grown all over Alaska. And researchers from the Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension (IANRE) are working to learn which garlic varieties grow best and how to successfully grow your own.

The Alaska Botanical Garden began multi-year garlic trials in 2013, and the Southeast Alaska Garlic Growers Association conducted trials between 2012 and 2013 in Ketchikan, Juneau, Douglas, Gustavus and Haines. In 2023 and 2024, garlic was evaluated for survival, bulb size and quality at IANRE’s Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station in Fairbanks.

If you are a garlic gardener—or you want to be—check out what researchers have learned at Growing Garlic in Alaska, a free publication from Cooperative Extension Service. Or watch
Growing Garlic - In the Alaska Garden with Heidi Rader, a professor of Extension at the Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension with the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension enriches the lives of Alaskans through research, education, GARLIC and outreach grounded in community needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYmnx5qn5x0

https://www.uaf.edu/ces/publications/database/gardening/garlic.php

09/01/2026

For almost 50 years, biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game plant grains to feed migrating birds at &G - Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge —a wildlife refuge spanning nearly 3,000 acres in the middle of Fairbanks—and there’s a group of mysterious geese that still seem to prefer eating the grain experiments at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm, operated by the Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension (IANRE).

So, why are some Experiment Farm geese not joining the 1,000+ geese at Creamer’s Field?

To help answer this question, biologists with ADFG’s Statewide Waterfowl Program marked geese intermittently over the last five years throughout Interior Alaska during spring and fall migrations to track their movements in town. The small GPS transmitters help biologists delineate important breeding areas, migration patterns and wintering areas for each species.

Over time, Creamer’s Refuge staff hope to better understand why some geese prefer eating IANRE grains. And Experimental Farm staff hope this helps protect their experimental grains.

The Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension enriches the lives of all Alaskans—including our avian visitors—through research, education and outreach grounded in community needs.

Photo by Edwin Remsberg, July 2026.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gS3unDoIWq6W9NiHP6sMNZc_YP1dZi11/view?usp=drive_link

08/31/2026

It’s berry-picking season in Alaska. And the Cooperative Extension Service is a one-stop-shop for regional berry information on 14 different varieties of berries. Our publications are written and reviewed by berry experts; then published online and distributed free to the public. Visit the Cooperative Extension Service Berry page and learn ways to pick, dry, freeze, jar, juice, jelly, and eat your favorite Alaska berry. Or visit the Extension YouTube channel for dozens of videos on local berries made by local people.

https://www.uaf.edu/ces/food/berries/

https://www.youtube.com/user/UAFExtension/playlists

Photo by Edwin Remsberg July 2026.

08/29/2026

Curious cattle gather in a pasture with Alaska’s mountains rising in the background. Just another beautiful summer day in Alaska agriculture!

Photo by Edwin Remsberg

Photo Description: Several cattle of different colors stand together in a green pasture, looking toward the camera, with trees and rugged Alaska mountains in the background.

08/28/2026

Join us for a free Zoom class about how people's bodies process food, build muscle, regulate blood sugar and absorb nutrients. Hosted by the UAF Cooperative Extension Service in Southeast Alaska, the class explores the key biological changes that affect health over time and why many people hit a plateau despite “doing everything right.”

Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of why personalized nutrition is often necessary to support long-term energy, resilience and well-being.

Register at https://bit.ly/HealthyAgingSitka

Photo Descriptions: An arrangement of colorful fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, including tomatoes, apples, broccoli, peppers, potatoes, blueberries and Brussels sprouts.

08/27/2026

Folks in Palmer, Alaska—at the Cooperative Extension Service’s Matanuska Experiment Farm—are gearing up for an annual potato harvest of hundreds of varieties of different types of potatoes. Community members sign up to help harvest the potatoes, including elusive varieties such as the indigenous Tlingit and Haida potatoes that are not available commercially. And the potatoes are shared with community members and local nonprofits.

The Matanuska Experiment Farm potato harvest is the definition of how agriculture research ultimately enriches the lives of local Alaskans. “We can’t buy these potatoes anywhere,” former executive chef for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) Alaska Native Medical Center Amy Foote said. “So, the goal was to see how many we could grow.”

Last year they grew 270 pounds of Tlingit and Haida potatoes. Stay tuned in September to see what 2026 holds …..

Learn more at Land Grant Impacts: From Magic Molly to Yukon Gold: Palmer Potato Harvest Tests Varieties, Feeds Community.

Photo courtesy of the Matanuska Experiment Farm and Extension Center.

08/26/2026

The approaching fall season reminds us that Alaska is an ever-changing, complicated land. The mighty Yukon River—the longest river in the state—empties into the Bering Sea at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in southwest Alaska.

In this false-color satellite image, Sumana Sahoo (Ph.D. student) and Santosh Panda (Professor of GIS at the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station of the UAF Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension), capture a snapshot in time of this changing river.

Panda’s team uses satellite images like this one to study landscape-level forest change over time, insect defoliation (aspen leaf-miner), stand-level tree mortality and above-ground tree biomass estimation. For more on their work check out these recent papers Advancing aboveground biomass mapping in Alaska’s boreal forest using UAVSAR polarimetric features and NDVI-normalized field data and Interplay of topography, fire history, and climate on Interior Alaska boreal vegetation dynamics in the 21st century.

And the satellite images aren’t just informative—they are works of art. See more at: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/3232bf4aaf5b4388bb763d196c7e7918

Photo Description: False-color satellite image of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in southwest Alaska, where the Yukon River branches into numerous channels before reaching the Bering Sea. Bright yellow, orange and red tones highlight the land and vegetation, while dark blue and green show the river channels, lakes and coastal waters.

08/25/2026

Did you know nearly half of all Alaska farmers are women?

The United Nations named 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer to honor the role women play worldwide in food production and Alaska’s women farmers are no exception.

According to the USDA National Agriculture Census, 48% of all Alaska farmers are women the greatest percentage of women farmers in any U.S. state.

We would like to shout-out to all the women farmers and young 4-H girls learning to farm who inform and strengthen the Institute for Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension (IANRE) at UAF. We wouldn’t be here without you, and we are proud to support you!

Watch for profiles of Alaska women farmers throughout 2026.

Photo caption: Girls learning livestock skills at the 4-H showmanship camp at the Alaska state Fairgrounds in Palmer in July 2026. Photo by Edwin Remsberg.

Address

1751 Tanana Loop
Fairbanks, AK
99775

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 5pm
Tuesday	8am - 5pm
Wednesday	8am - 5pm
Thursday	8am - 5pm
Friday	8am - 5pm

Telephone

+19074745211

Website

http://www.uaf.edu/ces, http://www.uaf.edu/afes, http://www.uaf.edu/ianre

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