partner spotlight & events
A Taste of the Far North Currant Festival
By Sundance Visser, AFPC Operations & Finance Director
It’s berry season in Alaska, and the third annual Far North Currant Festival is happening this Saturday in Fairbanks. The festival runs from 1:00-4:00 pm on Saturday, August 23rd, at the Georgeson Botanical Garden. The agenda is packed with free activities and a selection of paid workshops. We chatted with festival organizers (bios here) to learn more about Ribes (the genus containing dozens of varieties of currants) and to answer the question, “Why currants?”.
What’s the history of the Far North Currant Festival?
Katie DiCristina (UAF’s Agriculture and Forest Experiment Station): The Georgeson Botanical Garden (GBG) has a diversity of currants and gooseberries (in the Ribes genus) in its collection. Most came from Palmer after the closure of the USDA Agriculture Research Service in 2012. GBG’s director at the time, Dr. Pat Holloway, dug up the plants and brought them to Fairbanks via U-Haul! We don’t have a cultural palette for currants in the U.S., but they are delicious and nutritious. Maybe we can encourage more people to grow them in a backyard or farm setting, and …
… what better way to share information than to have a party!
Glenna Gannon (UAF Assistant Professor of Sustainable Food Systems): We want to enrich the lives of Alaskans! Currants have a high potential for successful cultivation in Alaska. We are providing an experience for people who might not be familiar with currants.
Andrea Bersamin (UAF IAB Center for Alaska Native Health Research): We are interested in doing outreach and education to ensure more Alaskans get the recommended number of fruits and vegetables. Currants are rich in vitamins and antioxidants! We’ll have the much-anticipated Veggie Meter at our station. Visitors can use this noninvasive tool to measure the carotenoids in their skin, a proxy for fruit and vegetable intake. Returning attendees can compare their score to last year’s!
Who is this festival for?
Glenna: Everybody! It’s family-friendly for all age groups as well as for folks new to currants and those who already love them.
What types of sessions can folks expect?
Andrea: The festival has four core stations, including currant history, health benefits, propagating and identifying, and examples of use (taste tests!). We have about 10 informational vendors from organizations in the community that connect to our food systems.
“It’s great to have the festival be a gathering place for organizations in our community related to health, well-being, and food.”
Glenna: The currants in the collection at GBG are all cultivated varieties, so we make sure to highlight the wild currant species that also grow in Alaska. We are expanding our taste tests, and this year we are including a savory currant dish in one of the cooking workshops in addition to free samples of two different currant-based sorbets, back by popular demand! We have workshops available for a fee in addition to the core stations which include chef demos, propagation (bring home a cutting!), and lip balm. See the schedule, and sign up for workshops here.
Cultivating currants used to be illegal. Can you talk about that?
Katie: Currants and gooseberries can carry white pine blister rust, a serious disease of the economically important white pine, impacting the lumber industry. This led to a federal ban on currant cultivation and eradication efforts across the country throughout much of the 1900s. The federal ban was lifted in 1966, but the cultivation of black currants is still restricted in some states. This led to a loss of familiarity for the berry and its distinct flavor profile in the U.S.
Other than attending, how can folks get involved?
Lacey Higham (Georgeson Botanical Garden Directing Manager): I’m actually joining this call from my phone while making currant sorbet! If you’re interested in volunteering for future years, we have sign up forms online. We are also trying to cultivate a public, ongoing list of currant sellers in Alaska (a current currant list!). If you’re a currant grower or selling currant-based products, we want to hear from you here.
Final question: What are you most excited about for this year’s Festival?
Glenna: Seeing how many people attend! The event grew from 300+ the first year to over 500 last year.
Andrea: The unintended connections that come out of this event, what we learn, and how it can influence future years.
Katie: Talking to other people who also love currants. It’s so energizing to make new connections with people through our love and excitement of currants.
Lacey: To see how the festival has grown since last year.
We hope this interview inspires our readers to dig into this fascinating and delicious berry. The Far North Currant Festival is happening Saturday afternoon, August 23rd, at the Georgeson Botanical Garden in Fairbanks.
All photos shared with permission from the organizers.
