Organic Farming

The way we grow flowers, herbs, and food for our family and business in our high tunnel and garden; it's all the same. It's an example of our livelyhood and the blending between 'work' and 'play' is a fine line and not one I care to discern. The more time we spend not thinking about 'am I clocked in to the job', the better, as far as I'm concerned.

Susan in the High TunnelWe don't use pesticides or herbicides on anything we grow. Instead, we companion plant. We think of our farm as a community and understand what plants work best with what neighbors. There is a lot of local knowledge in our local community and most long-time gardeners are happy to share what they know. When a community values gardening, and putting up food for year round consumption, and shares this knowledge to encourage others to do the same, it builds food resilence. This is especially needed in the far north where we depend on ships and trucks to fill our pantries and freezers.

Alpenglow gardens

Summer or winter, our days meander between manufacturing, weeding, packing orders, phone calls with customers, shoveling snow, making sauerkraut, wrapping soap, harvesting plants, smoking salmon, staining the deck, canning vegetables, cleaning the chicken coop etc. So it's just this variety of things we do to live off the land as much as we can, and to make a living. They go hand in hand and we love it. 

Alana and Susan harvesting

Our high tunnel (aka hoop house) extends our brief growing season by increasing temperatures and reducing wind. It's 30' x 60' so there is a lot of room for vegetables, as well as herbs and flowers that we make infusions and extracts from for Alpenglow products.

alpenglow peonies

Our homegrown peonies create such an explosion of color. Short (blooming) and sweet, they represent summer in Alaska. We use our flowers and Alaska Beauty Peony Co-ops for our Peony Soap.

alpenglow calendula

We think of our property as land we need to take care of, because it takes care of us. As followers of permaculture, we design systems that mimic natural ecosystems to work with nature, not against it. So to fertilize our gardens and high tunnel, we use the manure from our happy hens, seaweed from the shores of Kachemak Bay, local fish bone meal and compost tea. We buy only organic seed and preferably locally grown, as it's proven hardiness in our far north climate. 

alpenglow calendula dehydrator

The carotenoids and flavonoids (phytocompounds) in calendula flowers are powerful antioxidents that contribute anti-inflamatory properties and promote wound healing. 


alpenglow organic mint

We grow several varieties of mint for our Polar Mint Shea Butter Soap. After a light drizzle you can smell the mint from meters away. We also make tea and tabouli with our mint.

alpenglow organic mint and polar mint soap


alpenglow calendula beds with cottonwood balm and massage oil

Once the flowers bloom, we harvest calendula every 7-10 days. It's amazing how this plant just loves our carefully curated soil and the long daylight hours. We use calendula for our Cottonwood Balm and Massage Oil due to it's remarkable healing properties.

alpenglow greenhouse and solar panels

Our greenhouse is a halfway house for starts that we plant in winter under grow lights. Here they adjust to the long daylight hours of summer, and to a large range of day time and night time temperatures as is often the case at 59 degrees latitude. We also use our greenhouse to dry our herbs as it's a perfect location to dessicate vegetation.

Once our wetter/cooler autumn arrives, we need to resort to electricity and our dehydrator to ensure thorough drying is acheived. You can see we have 24 solar panels on our workshop roof that offset that cost and electrical consumption. 

our baby chicks

Susan loves her chickens. We all enjoy eating organically fed and free-range eggs from our happy “Houli-Hens” (our last name is Houlihan). But they are our pets too, and they bring peace and joy to our family. 

susan with our hens for farming

susan and alana harvesting calendula

Our kids used to believe they had an endless list of homestead chores - from chopping wood to planting herbs to digging potatoes (a really big project in this household as Patrick grows 400-500 lbs annually!). Now they are grateful for all the 'life skills' they learned growing up this Alaskan way. 

susan with basket of veggies from high tunnel

We love growing healthy, organic food that we eat year-round, as much as we enjoy growing herbs and flowers for Alpenglow products.

susan watering calendula
Early in the summer season we lay a white fabric, called floating row cover or Remay over our garden beds to protect the plants from cold night temperatures. By summer solstice, we remove the fabric as the plants have adjusted to varying temps, long daylight hours and established their roots.


alpenglow skin care homegrown lavender organic

Lavender is a favorite scent and flower of mine. We start our seeds inside in March and by the end of July we can begin harvesting. We typically get 2 or 3 harvests per summer.


organic mint for shea butter soap, polar mint

Organic mint ready to be dried for our Polar Mint Shea Butter Soap.


organic lavender from our high tunnel for lavender goat milk soap, alpenglow

Lavender flower harvest drying in the greenhouse for our Lavender Fields Goat Milk Soap. We don't have goats, but our neighbors do. We trade soap for organic, local goats milk. 


alpenglow lavender organic with susan

Can you tell I like lavender! The leaves smell as delightful as the flowers. I have loved gardening since I was a young child. Fresh corn and tomatoes were my favorite.

susan in high tunnel with lavender

This is the end of the season in the high tunnel. Our root cellar, pantry, freezer and dehydrators are packed! It's a lot of work, but we love this livelyhood. We don't just grow organic botanicals and make organic products, we live and love in an organic way. Supporting this way of life is a win-win for us all. So thank you for loving Alpenglow and our family.