On the third floor of a microbrewery in Skagway, Alaska, leafy greens sprout from mist — not soil — thousands of miles from the nearest farm. Skagway Brewing Company's indoor aeroponics farm, dubbed the Raven's Nest, produces 250 pounds of artisanal lettuce every week for the restaurant downstairs, in a town of roughly 1,000 year-round residents that welcomes more than 1.3 million cruise ship passengers each summer.
For a place nicknamed the Garden City of Alaska, fresh produce has always been a struggle. Skagway is isolated in winter and relies on a barge system to ferry food up from the Lower 48 to its single market. Lettuce, being delicate, often arrives damaged. "It shows up bad or partially bad and we spend hours picking through it," said farm manager John Michael Mead.
Owner Mike Healy built the closed-loop system to guarantee a steady supply of greens while aiming to be "the most sustainable brewpub on the planet." The farm works by spraying nutrient-rich mist directly onto plant roots, with carbon dioxide captured from the brewing process accelerating growth — all without soil or pesticides. In summer, the greens barely keep up with demand; in winter, the surplus is donated or sold at cost to the school, senior center, and local market. Even the brewing yeast is recycled as compost for the town's gardens.
The farm grows red oak, butter crisp, sweet crisp, a romaine-sweet crisp hybrid, and basil — varietals chosen for their short crop cycles and ability to thrive in a vertical garden.
But building this system was no easy feat. Healy first considered outdoor growing, but quickly ruled it out. "If we wanted those leafy greens and herbs early on when the cruise ship season started, we would have to put so much energy between heat and lights," he said. "It just became very cost prohibitive."
So in 2018, after attending an indoor agriculture conference in Las Vegas, Healy paid $150,000 for an aeroponics farm. Then the company that sold it to him went silent. "When I was writing the check — which was a large check — [I didn't know] the company was going out of business," Healy recalled. The company cashed his check and vanished. He finally tracked down the salesman from the conference, who personally hauled the system up in a container and helped install it.
The vertical farming industry at large has faced failed investments and broken business models. But Healy's farm works precisely because it solves a very local problem: getting fresh, healthy lettuce to a remote town in the middle of winter. He believes the model can be replicated throughout Alaska and in other regions facing food insecurity.
In Skagway, where bad weather, trade wars, and supply-chain snags can cut off food supplies, that steady harvest is more than a convenience — it's a lifeline, both physically and mentally, in the darkest months of the year.