Sakari Farms

Nestled in a soft turn of Highway 20 resides Sakari Farms, a six acre farm owned and operated by Spring Alaska Schreiner, enrolled tribal member of the Chugach Alaska Corporation. She began the farm when she saw a need for tribal foods and tribal food education. The farm began by selling sweetgrass, healing products and tribal food and has since expanded to programs for youth and direct sales to visitors.

Sakari Farms sits on the outskirts of Bend, Oregon. The land is surrounded by junipers and Ponderosa pines, big cones and frosty blue berries litter the ground and feed the local bird population. Perched over the pond, lives a pair of hawks that survey the land and fly on the gales that come off the highway.

Towards the back of the farms property is where Spring hosts long table dinners and cooking classes that feature the ancestral tribal foods that are grown on site. Starting this early summer Sakari Farms will be breaking ground on a commercial kitchen to continue to produce the Value Added Products that Sakari Farms makes under the name Sakari Botanicals and sells to local vendors as well as online. On top of all this work Spring also runs the Central Oregon Seed Exchange which provides the local population a way to get and grow affordable and nutritious food.

Under a Native American Agriculture Foundation grant, Spring teaches planting and harvesting of ancestral tribal foods to youth groups on site. They are currently working with the youth from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Indian Reservation. In addition to AIANTA, she has worked with the Intertribal Agriculture Council as well as First Nations Development.