The Betty Eliason Child Care Center is one of three licensed care providers in Sitka. Local demand exceeds supply and rates are high, nearing $1000 a month for children under three years old. (Photo courtesy of Betty Eliason)

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Working parents looking for childcare can find themselves without many options in Sitka. There are only three licensed care providers for children: the Betty Eliason Child Care Center, Sheldon Jackson Child Care Center, and Kids First Day Care, an at-home provider.

The shortage of licensed care providers and high cost of childcare is a problem in other communities in Alaska. Juneau lacks enough care options. This fall, the Juneau Assembly voted down a ballot measure to raise property tax revenue to expand childcare services.

As part of our series “The Cost of Living in Sitka,” we spoke with Erica Whipkey, the Board President of the Betty Eliason Child Care Center. Speaking with KCAW, Whipkey talked about the balancing act of keeping rates affordable while maintaining operations. Betty Eliason has a staff of fifteen individuals and provides care for 60 families. They are currently looking for volunteers.

Whipkey and her husband are active duty members of the U.S. Coast Guard and moved to Sitka last year. She was joined for this interview by her one-month old daughter Amelia. “I also have a two year old at home,” Whipkey said. “When we moved up here from the Lower 48 last summer, it was really shocking to our budget how much it cost to put a child in childcare. Under three is no less than $1000 a month per child.

Ice cream is a non-essential food, a luxury item, but it has a noticeable mark-up in price compared to pricing in the lower 48. We tracked Tillamook ice cream up the coast to see where the price jumps (Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

What heals a heart more than ice cream? What if the heart is broken, or broke? It’s a treat to be sure and a bit pricey, but in Sitka it’s even pricier. In the next installment of food reporting for our series, “The Cost of Living in Sitka,” KCAW’s Katherine Rose decided to track her favorite ice cream up the west coast to see what it costs down south and where the price spikes on its journey to Sitka.

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I’m walking around a Sitka grocery store doing my most expensive weekly chore, stocking up on food for the next seven days.

“Get whatever coffee you want, I don’t care,” I tell my boyfriend Adam.
“Do we have coffee?” he asks

Adam and I shop for groceries together, and we split the cost right down the middle. We’ve gotten shopping on a budget down to a science over the past few months. But one treat we sometimes afford ourselves is ice cream. Well I do, at least.

“I used to eat ice cream all the time,” says Adam. “Now that I’m lactose intolerant, I can’t eat it at all. Luckily there are a lot of dairy alternatives, they just cost a lot.”

But even plain old ice cream is kind of expensive in Sitka. We look for the deals. But if I really want to treat myself, I buy a huge tub of my favorite: Tillamook Rocky Road ice cream, made in Oregon. Sometimes it’s on sale, but generally a ½ gallon of Tillamook Rocky Road costs $7.99 at Seamart and $7.79 at AC Lakeside in Sitka. But what does it cost down south?  

I called my mom in Berkeley, California. The price? $4.99. Moving North, I called a grocery store in Tillamook, Oregon, the ice cream’s origin city. $4.99. Further north still, I got the lowest price from a familiar voice in Washington state.

“This is Ed Ronco, and I am at a Safeway in Centralia Washington, about an hour and a half south of Seattle. Ah, let me open up the case here.”

The case creaks as he opens it and peers inside.

“There it is. It is $5.99 per container UNLESS you’re part of that saver club that a lot of supermarkets have, and then it’s 3.99 for a container.”

$3.99 is the regular price as long as you’re a member of the grocery store’s super savers club. That’s half of what it costs in Sitka. So why is the price of an Oregon made product nearly double in Sitka what it costs in the lower 48?

“Doing business on an island when you’re 850 miles away from a wholesaler, that’s a big deal,” says Roger Hames. He’s the Chairman and CEO of the Hames Corporation, the third generation of leadership for the family grocery business. They operate Seamart, one of two large grocery stores in Sitka. The other is AC Lakeside. Hames says he doesn’t want to put all the onus of price on the freight, but shipping costs play a key role in determining where grocers set the price of an item.

“You’re paying for, most of the time, the pallets, the cardboard, the cans,” Hames says. “It’s all heavy.”

Most of Sitka’s groceries come in on the barge through a north/south route from Seattle to Ketchikan, and then Petersburg. Sitka is not visited by the mainliner for incoming freight, so all its goods are brought by an extra shuttle barge twice a week from Petersburg.

The mainliner barge departs from Sitka with outbound containers. This shuttle barge brings food from Petersburg to Sitka twice a week (Photo courtesy of James Pelletier)

“That extra barge that Alaska Marine Lines runs year round as a second barge is costly to us,” says Hames. “Freight adds 10 and 11% of our grocery products- is freight, is a freight factor. That has to be passed onto the consumer. We can’t absorb something like that.”

Everything arrives on that barge, including my favorite ice cream.

Then it’s transported to SeaMart and AC Lakeside by truck. Then onto the shelves where grocers set retail price. Hames says that is not a static process.

“Tillamook Rocky Road ice cream is X, and of that cost, 14.7 percent of that cost is freight,” Hames says.

So, freight is key. But what other factors might determine an item’s cost to the grocer and subsequently the price for the consumer?

After groceries arrive on the barge, the shipping containers are trucked to local grocery stores like Seamart and AC Lakeside (Photo/KCAW/Emily Kwong)

“I grew up in Northern California in Sonoma County. Started as a bagger for a family owned store. Worked with some great people, so I kind of stuck with it,” says Greg Dahl. He’s been working in grocery stores his whole life. The manager at AC Lakeside, he says every single ingredient in a half gallon of ice cream could impact its price.

“To make ice cream you got milk, cream, sugar, eggs are in there. Just an egg can cost more because of people’s eating habits halfway across the globe.”

And while the global food market plays a huge role in what shows up on Sitka’s shelves, Dahl says cost drivers at the local level are absorbed by the grocery stores too.

“There’s taxes and card fees and electricity and payroll. There’s all sorts of things we have to pay for here in Sitka to run a business,” Dahl says. “Since February this store has spent an extra $12,000 or $13,000 just on electricity – on top of what we usually pay – because of the rate increase. That’s a lot of money. Margins are pretty thin in the grocery business, so that $12,000 really takes a toll.”

With the most recent electric rate increase, both Seamart and Lakeside absorbed the added cost and did not pass it on to consumers. Both Hames and Dahl said keeping prices fair was important to them, not only to stay competitive, but also for the well-being of the community. And Dahl says it’s tough, as the last in a long line of players that determine the cost of food. To the consumers, the grocers are the face of rising prices. People always have to buy food. When they see the costs go up on their local shelves, they start to wonder why.

“Profiteering in Sitka? That’s not happening. There is competition here, not only between the two main stores, but also Juneau. We have Costco and Fred Meyers there. So we can’t be totally out of the ballpark in prices here in Sitka,” Dahl says. “Because people have that option to out-shop. And of course there’s online marketplaces, like Amazon.”

Well, this is almost true. Amazon Prime does not protect ice cream from melting. I guess I’ll have to keep getting my fix locally. But the next time I dig into a pint of rocky road, I think I’ll give a bit more consideration to the marshmallow and the nuts. Where did they come from? What factors drove the cost? And should I really be eating this entire half gallon by myself?

The Sitka Salvation Army cycles through 10,000 lbs. of food a month. Most of their stock is donated by local grocery stores. In the past year, attendance at the soup kitchen has nearly doubled. Some trace this to locals unable to renew their food stamps after the closure of Sitka’s public assistance office. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Earlier this year, the state re-opened Sitka’s public assistance office — to the relief of many. When the office was closed, the welfare caseload became severely backlogged. Locals who rely on benefits were not able to quickly renew, pushing many over the edge. Sitka’s pantries were put to the test.

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(Sound of curtain being pulled back)

Blossom Twitchell pulled back a curtain, revealing Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s pantry. “We have crackers and rice and noodles and chili,” she noted. Twitchell is a case worker for the social services department. The pantry is open to all tribal citizens regardless of income.

At the start of the month, staff go grocery shopping and stock the pantry with staple goods. Three weeks into August, when this interview was recorded, the shelves were mostly bare. “A lot of people are using their food money to pay utilities and rent and cost of living expenses. We are seeing a spike in our [pantry use] numbers,” Twitchell said.

Food insecurity in Sitka has deepened and also broadened. Jean Swanson, an outreach family caseworker, said she’s seen tribal citizens come into her office seeking help that never did before. “We were seeing families that usually are self-sufficient coming in. We were seeing them for the first time,” Swanson said. As a result, what used to last a month at STA’s pantry now lasts a week and half. Why?

Jean Swanson and Blossom Twitchell work for Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s social services department. They budget for a pantry, cycling through 400 lbs. of food a month. The pantry is open to all tribal citizens. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Both Swanson and Twitchell trace the upswing in pantry use this past year to the closure of Sitka’s public assistance office in June 2017.  The district office, operated by the state Division of Public Assistance, is where locals could walk in the door, apply for food stamps, Medicaid, and other benefits, and have a technician on hand to help navigate the system.

The closure was the result of attrition. It made financial sense to the state in an era of budget cuts. The Juneau office took over Sitka’s case load and did what it could to keep up with demand, but eventually, the backlog grew and grew…and grew. Individuals were unable to renew their food stamps, formally known as SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Without them, more Sitkans were going hungry. Approximately 10% of Sitka’s population uses food stamps. 

“A lot people would call the Juneau office and they would get a machine,” Twitchell said. “When you’re in that moment of needing assistance and needing answers to what they needed to do to get back on, they weren’t finding the answers.”

Susan Briles SEARHC and others began to submit complaints to the state ombudsman, as did other communities in Alaska experiencing their own delays. Twitchell and Briles even brought the issue before Sitka’s Health and Human Services commission. 

In 2018, the state ombudsman investigated the Division of Public Assistance and found a backlog of  20,000 applications. Their report was released in May of this year. You can read it here. And in June, to the relief of many, the state re-opened Sitka’s office.

The state has re-hired an eligibility technician and office assistant for Sitka’s public assistance office. Once located at 201 Katlian Street, the office is now on the ground floor of 304 Lake street. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

I visited the office, housed in the same building as Sitka’s trial court. Applications are still processed elsewhere – this time in Ketchikan – but the two local positions have been re-hired.

Southeast Regional Manager Victoria O’Brien says it will take awhile to train the new staff and get caught up on Sitka’s case backlog. “As of right now, we’re doing what we can with what we have and working as much as we can, encouraging our staff to work as quickly as possible as accurately as possible and to get as much done as they can in a day,” O’Brien said.

There have been other positive changes since the ombudsman’s report. The legislature approved funding for 20 new public assistance positions and the department is working on a statewide delivery model that would allow technicians to process applications from anywhere in the state.

Twitchell is relieved. “It’s not such a bottleneck now, but it definitely hit Sitka hard. It hit families hard. It hit elders especially hard,” she said.

STA wasn’t the only pantry cleaned out. Sitkans Against Family Violence has seen their stock dwindle. Salvation Army is feeling the pressure too. They are the biggest pantry in Sitka, cycling through 10,000 lbs. of food a month. About three quarters of local donations come from Sitka’s groceries stores. The rest is supplied through the U.S. Commodity Supplemental Food Program. But, it’s not enough to meet the need in Sitka.

Major Charleen Morrow administers the Sitka Salvation Army with her husband, Major Matthew Morrow. They took over the post in June and previously ran the Salvation Army in Sheridan, Wyoming. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Major Charleen Morrow moves through the dining area and greets the clientele, as steam rises from bowls on the table. It’s lunch time. She and her husband Matthew took over the job in June. In the past year, they’ve seen clientele at the soup kitchen nearly double, from 25-30 meals a day to 50 meals a day.

Donations for the pantry are not enough, so the Salvation Army spends $600 a week on groceries to keep the shelves full. Frozen meat is one of the first things to go. “Meat is so expensive and lots of families go without,” Morrow said. “They’ll use canned meat, like chicken or tuna in place of meet, so when we get the meat in, we’re really excited to give that out.”

Morrow echoes what Sitka Tribe is experiencing: that clients aren’t just homeless individuals, but families and senior citizens. She worries about the physical toll food insecurity can take.

Morrow: We hear stories about people worrying themselves into the hospital. Like, “I was so worried about paying this bill, I got an ulcer and ended up going to the hospital.”

KCAW: Is it hard for those families to come to Salvation Army for the first time?

Morrow: Oh, absolutely. We have a lot of people that come in tears because they are embarrassed or ashamed. As a person that grew up with a single mom that relied upon food boxes, I know that embarrassment and shame is there. But we try to make it so that it’s not embarrassing or shameful.

Like Sitka Tribe, Salvation Army does not verify the income of a person seeking help. Their mission is built around the idea that anyone can fall on hard times and that times right now are especially challenging. “We don’t consider it a hand out,” Morrow said. “We consider it a hand-up.” 

Vicki O’Brien serves on the CoastAlaska board. The Salvation Army kitchen offers free lunch Monday through Friday at 11:30 a.m. Doors open at 10:30 a.m. The food pantry is open Tuesday through Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.  To round out our week of food reporting on “The Cost of Living in Sitka,” our next story is about the rocky road of food prices and the case of the missing eggs.

The Sitka Lutheran Church is the distribution point for a free brown bag lunch, available every Saturday at 12:30 p.m. (Karla James/KCAW photo)

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Sitka’s church community is working together to provide a free meal to locals on Sundays. Sack lunches are available every Sunday at the Sitka Lutheran Church from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Inside are two sandwiches, fruit, and other snacks.

Five churches share in the work of providing and distributing the sack lunches: Sitka Lutheran Church, St. Peter’s by the Sea Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church of Sitka, Sitka Seventh-day Adventist Church, and St. Gregory Catholic Church. Deacon Kathryn Snelling of St. Peter’s by the Sea Episcopal Church and Pastor Sandra Rudd with the Sitka Lutheran Church talk about the program.

Their collaboration was borne out of the closure of the Presbyterian Church, which used to provide a hot meal on Sundays. “Everybody in Sitka sees people who are hungry. It’s hard to ask for help and we want to make it less difficult and more acceptable, to know the people and know what their stories are. As churches, we don’t necessarily try to fix anything. We just try to love them,” said Pastor Rudd.

St. Gregory Catholic Church also provides a hot meal on Saturdays at 11:30 a.m. Sitka Lutheran also provides free soup supper on Wednesday evening. If your church is interesting in joining in the sack lunch program, contact Pastor Julie Platson at St. Peter’s by the Sea.

This Morning Interview conversation is a part of our series, “The Cost of Living in Sitka.”

There’s no data about the scale of Sitka’s online shopping, but a few visible signs. FedEx now operates four trucks and UPS three. The U.S. Post Office has seen the number of parcels, especially from Amazon, balloon. (Rachel Cassandra/KCAW photo)

Any way you slice it, food prices are high in Sitka. It’s a geographically isolated community and a small town. Increasingly, one way people are responding to these high prices is to buy food online. For our series, “The Cost of Living in Sitka,” KCAW looked into the trend of buying food — not in a cart — but with the click of a mouse. Also, a recent Supreme Court ruling opens the door for an online sales tax, but would that benefit municipalities? 

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The thing about online shopping in Sitka is that nobody wants to talk about it. I started out this piece thinking I would talk to a few people eager to share their online shopping tricks — bing-bang-boom. I posted to Sitka Chatters, a popular Facebook group, and got a few comments.

Several people were passionate about online shopping and food prices. But no one wanted to talk on the record about it. So, I decided to dig in on my own. I went to the recycling center.

(Sound of footsteps)
Cassandra: All right, I’ve made it to the dumpster…and I’m going to get inside. I don’t know if this is a good idea. This first box I see is Amazon. Got some bananas.
(Sound of moving boxes)
Cassandra: All right, here’s an Amazon box, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, a plain box…
Anonymous recycler: Do you need boxes?
Cassandra: Oh no, I’m doing a radio piece (laughs). That’s a big Amazon box. What did you get in there?
Anonymous recycler: Oh, we got a gift for my grandchild’s sixth birthday. Definitely an Amazon purchase. Embarrassingly so.

The dumpster told me that some people are buying big quantities of goods from Amazon. But why? After a few false starts, one of the women who responded to my post online said she’d meet up to talk.

Sue Brown said it’s not about having more options online, but about saving money.  “I’ve always believed in the fact that you shouldn’t pay more than necessary to get what you want so, I guess it’s a matter of taking the time to comparison shop,” Brown said. She emphasized that she does buy local much of the time and wants to support local shops.

“I don’t mind paying a little bit extra. However, it’s hard to reconcile paying 150% or 200% or even 300%. I have seen some items at the grocery store here in town versus when I can get them online with free shipping,” Brown said.

Talking to Brown told me a little about the typical consumer, buying food for the home kitchen. But what about people who operate a food business?

North Sister Juice and Crepe Company is in a tiny strip mall. Behind the immaculate counter, aproned employees handle produce and blenders. I met there with Caitlin Way, who owns Fish Eye Coffee and North Sister with her business partner Alana Peterson. 

Way said they buy almost all the food in their shop online wholesale: their produce, their sauces, sweeteners…everything. It costs 30-50 percent less and North Sister can get bulk sizes of necessities. Occasionally they’ll purchase small items from the grocery store or produce if they run out.

Way showed me around the storage areas. “This is the freezer items. Most of this comes from Azure, so we are able to get bulk amounts of all of these fruits. Big fifty pound bags of oats or flour and then same with sauces, vinegars and coconut oil and maple syrup …we’re able to order online bulk amounts which we need cause we go through so quickly,” Way said as she motioned to the items. When she inherited these businesses, they were already set up to buy food wholesale. That’s how she’s operated since the beginning.

Are Sitkans buying more online now than ever before? Multiple sources seemed to think so. I went to see Ed Conway, the manager of the Pioneer U.S. Postal Station on Lincoln Street. Conway has been working in the post office for the last 20 years alongside Deloris Doggett.

“What we’ve seen in the last probably six to eight years – and over the past 20 years – is an influx of parcels in our post office. Mainly what we’re seeing is Amazon boxes. That’s probably half of what we’re putting up each day.  It’s unbelievable really, how much we put through in Amazon boxes here,”

Conway says the biggest increase in Amazon boxes has been in the last four years. He doesn’t know how much is food and he imagines some of the boxes are being re-used. He also speculates that it’s probably bad for the local businesses here. “It’s just part of the times. It’s part of the times and me and Deloris here, we’re seeing it first hand,” Conway said.

It’s clear that Sitkans are buying more online, including food. I found out why they’re shopping online, and how much. But now, I wonder how much this online shopping is affecting the community.

KCAW’s Emily Kwong looked into it. Amazon did not respond to her press inquiry. No studies been done locally and neither the Sitka Chamber Chamber of Commerce nor the Southeast Economic Development Association were aware of any. There’s no statistics, only signs: the boxes in the post office, later empty at the recycling center. Over a decade ago, there were two FedEx trucks in Sitka. Now there are four. UPS operates three trucks as well. 

The dollars leaving Sitka through online shopping – and the loss in potential sales tax revenue – is a statewide problem. Through email to Kwong, Ken Alper with the Department of Revenue said Alaska sees $1 billion a year in online purchases.

The state could not mandate an online vendor – say Amazon or eBay – to collect and remit a sales tax…until now. In June, the case Wayfair vs. South Dakota appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court. NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported on the outcome. She wrote, “Writing for the five justice majority, justice Anthony Kennedy said that in the modern economy, the rule linking tax collection to a physical presence in the state unconstitutionally deprives states of the ability to collect taxes and perform critical public functions.”

The five-to-four decision was a victory for South Dakota, which relies on a  sales taxes to fund state government. Their attorney general called it “a victory for Mainstreet America.”

But Alaska is unique. There is no state sales tax; only local sales taxes. Municipalities benefit from that. So would Alaskans be willing to pay both? The Alaska Municipal League (AML) thinks not.

Historically, AML has preferred the state not pursue a sales tax. The Wayfair decision opens the door for that. It was a hot topic at the League’s meeting in Denali a few weeks ago.

Executive Director Nils Andreassen said the room had more questions than answers. “There’s a lot to wrestle with in terms of what the impact would be for municipalities, for the state and for Alaskans,” he said.

The Alaska Municipal League is taking the lead to research the implications. They are putting together a working group to answer questions about the legal mechanisms of Wayfair and whether the state or municipalities could and should leverage it. 

Chelan Produce Co. has been in business since 1978, when owner Dave Kensinger got stuck with a truckload of apples in Seattle and hopped the ferry to sell in Juneau. Customers around Southast have been loyal ever since. He and his wife Mona Christian now sell exclusively in Sitka and Petersburg on alternating weekends. Martha Pearson shops at Chelan’s mid-July market, a peak time for berries, apricots, peaches, and plums. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

For the month of September, Raven News brings you “The Cost of Living in Sitka,” a series about the perfect storm of cost drivers shaping quality of life in our island town — and the people working on solutions. This week is devoted to the cost of food. We begin with an origin story from one of Southeast’s freshest food suppliers and learn how they’re riding the waves of rising food costs.

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For the past forty years, Dave Kensinger and his wife Mona Christian have been running Chelan Produce Co., bringing fruits and vegetables to Petersburg and Sitka on alternating weekends in summertime. It all began with, you guessed it, an apple.

Kensinger was in Seattle in the mid-1970s. His friends were growing organic apples and he was selling. One day, he got stuck with a truckload from Chelan, Washington that wouldn’t sell. They were coated in Diatomaceous earth, which appeared suspect to customers used to waxy fruit. Luckily at the time, the Alaska Marine Highway Service left from downtown Seattle. “So I put my truck on the ferry and went to Juneau and started selling apples. And that’s how I started doing it,” Kensinger said.

Dave Kensinger of Chelan Produce. His market is assisted by multiple volunteers; he estimates he’s worked with over 1000 people in the last 40 years.  (Photo from Chelan Produce Co website)

Forty years later, Chelan is a household name in Southeast, bringing honey mangoes from Mexico and cherries fresh from Rainer. Kensinger named the business after those fated apples. He’s like a traveling salesman for the senses, building pallets and picking produce he knows customers will like. I visited the market on a bright day in July and Kensinger piled my hand with fruit samples: cherries, peaches, and his favorite – honey mangoes. His favorite apple? Jazz. 

Some of his customers have been sampling since the beginning, like the Fleming family. Tori Fleming’s first memory of the fruit man was when a watermelon rolled out of the back of her family truck. “The watermelon rolled out of the back of the truck and splattered all over Sawmill Creek Road in front of all my friends. I was mortified. There was Dave flagging us back to come back and he gave us another watermelon. Since then, my family has been great friends with Dave,” Fleming said.

Keeping prices low is a difficult enterprise in a world where farms are shrinking, shipping is more expensive, and state ferry system has been significantly reduced. Now, Kensinger ships exclusively with Alaska Marine Lines. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Kensinger does all he can to keep prices low, but the supply side of his business is changing. Chelan had to stop selling in Wrangell, Kake, and Angoon when ferry service diminished. They now rely exclusively on Alaska Marine Lines, transporting the produce from Seattle to Sitka.

“[Sitka gets] two barges a week owned by the same company. That brings everything up here that we use. That’s the biggest change that’s happened. There’s not a lot of options. For years, there was five different barge companies in Southeast, Alaska. You could get in and out of any community with the ferries in two days,” Kensinger said.

There’s other changes too. Growers are fewer and smaller scale in America and the national immigration crackdown has made labor difficult to find. All these costs, driven by global and national forces, hit the Sitka customer squarely in the pocketbook.

“Costs are going up. Ultimately, anybody that’s in business, they have to pass the costs onto the consumers. So whether that’s me, Chelan Produce, or your local grocery stores, they have no option but to pass these costs on because they won’t be able to stay in business,” Kensinger said.

Rising transportation costs have hit Southeast customers especially. Take, for example, an ear of corn. “Just to get an ear of corn from Seattle up to here costs 45 cents now. So that’s why you don’t rarely see corn [at ten cobs] for $1 anymore.”

Kensinger stands beneath the Chelan tent, cutting up fruit samples for customers. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Kensinger is candid in saying that volunteers have made all the difference these past four decades. “I’ve probably had over 1000 different people work for me over the years. You know somebody or somebody knows somebody that’s worked with Chelan at some point in time,” he said with a chuckle.

Kensinger and Christian are approaching retirement age.They’re not sure how much longer they can keep doing what they’re doing, but plan to stay in Southeast. But for now, the popular Sitka question, “Is it a Chelan weekend?” can be answered with a yes.

Kensinger will in Sitka on Saturday, September 8th and Sunday, September 9th selling produce. This story is part of our series, “The Cost of Living in Sitka.” Have a tip or idea for a story? E-mail Emily Kwong at emily@kcaw.org.