About Offbeet Farm
Summer Growth - Winter Rewards
At Offbeet Farm, we grow vegetables during the summer and sell during the long Fairbanks winter. Nearly everything we grow is meant for storage in our specially-designed, modern root cellar. After harvesting, washing, and storing away veggies in the fall, we provide the Fairbanks area with access to locally grown produce throughout the winter.
Earth-friendly Practices
We grow vegetables using organic methods, but we're not a certified-organic farm. We feel that in interior Alaska, the high cost of certification is not worth the label. That said, we do not use any synthetic fertilizers nor any pesticides not approved for organic certification. We also work with the USDA's Natural Resource Conservation Service to prevent erosion of sediments and excess nutrients into local watersheds. Irrigation is key in our semi-arid climate, and we use drip irrigation to save thousands of gallons per day during the growing season.
Human-Scale Farming
We produce a lot of food off one acre of land, and we do it mostly by hand. We use a small walk-behind tractor for soil preparation, but we control weeds, harvest, and wash vegetables primarily by-hand. We have many specialized tools and try do work as efficiently and ergonomically as possible!
Winter Storage at Offbeet Farm
How we store vegetables through Winter
People ask us all the time how we store fresh-looking, beautiful vegetables for months and months into winter. While there's a lot that goes into growing and prepping veggies for long-term storage, maintaining the right temperatures and humidity are the most important. Our storage building was built for this purpose!
Climate control
We maintain two basic sets of conditions: cold/damp and warm/dry. The root veggies like carrots, beets, and parsnips, as well as the cabbages and kales all appreciate cold/damp storage conditions. We climate control this half of the building at 32 degrees F and 95-98% relative humidity throughout the winter. Winter squash, pumpkins, onions, and garlic prefer drier conditions around 65% relative humidity. We maintain this space at 50 degrees F while the squash and pumpkins last and lower the temp to around 40 F after that. We mostly control conditions with fans, coolers, and heaters on thermostats and humidifiers or dehumidifiers on humidistats.
The building
Our storage building is designed to be both functional and energy-efficient. We built it in 2021 with help from a Farm Service Agency loan and built into the hillside to use the earth as a temperature buffer. The building is well-insulated and sealed to protect our precious cargo from the harsh winter conditions outside, and it gives us space to process and package veggies during the winter. Think of it as a modern root cellar!
Containers
We use containers to both consolidate and organize all the different vegetables and varieties we grow and store. For things we have a lot of, such as orange carrots, we use bulk super-sacks made of woven polypropylene. Each one can hold 800-1,000 lb. of veggies when full! For our specialty varieties, we use smaller plastic totes. Inside both the sacks and the totes, we line the bottoms of containers with burlap and peat moss to soak up excess moisture.
the farmers
Sam Knapp
Sam is a co-owner and the primary farmer at Offbeet Farm. Sam worked for other vegetable farmers in Sweden, Alaska, and Wisconsin before starting his own farm in the UP of Michigan in 2017, Root Cellar Farm, which focused on storage crops and offered a winter-only CSA. He ran Root Cellar Farm for three years before returning to Alaska to start Offbeet Farm in 2020. Sam didn't grow up on a farm but gardened with his family in northern Wisconsin. Sam got his B.S. degrees in physics and chemistry in 2014 before catching the farm bug in a serious way. Along the way, Sam worked as a Fulbright scholar on a sheep research farm, worked in AmeriCorps with indigenous communities to organize farmers markets, and picked up a master's degree in plant ecology. Sam is passionate about both farming and winter storage, and he writes for various farm-focused publications on both topics.
Danielle Knapp
Danielle Knapp is a co-owner of Offbeet Farm. Danielle has been working part-time on the vegetable-growing part of the farm since 2024 and started the seafood (ad)venture in the same year. Danielle has been keeping and breeding chickens since childhood and currently manages three separate flocks on the farm: two heritage breeds and a mixed flock she's been breeding for cold-hardiness and winter egg laying. Danielle sells eggs to friends and neighbors, and she sells hatching eggs and chicks each spring. She is the main reason the couple learned to love Alaska and eventually Fairbanks, as the field work for her graduate work occurred at the nearby Bonanza Creek LTER.
Marlo (a.k.a. Sexy Baby)
Marlo (a.k.a. Sexy Baby) is one of two cats on the farm but the only one that takes an active part. He began his position as the Head of Pest Management at Offbeet Farm in 2023.