Bruce Hougan was born in Edmondton, Alberta, Canada, and grew up within a family that spent much of their holiday time together hiking and camping in the Rocky Mountains.
He has fond memories playing outdoors in the long Alberta winters, whether it was outdoor ice hockey, or walking the tops of snowbanks alongside the wintery roads. His grandparents were of Norwegian ancestry.
In the winters, his grandfather, who emigrated from Norway when he was a teenager, held an abiding love of the winter landscape and skiing. In the summers, his grandmother kept a kitchen garden in their backyard, where Bruce would wander as a child during family visits.
Bruce has been “digging in the dirt” supplying our own table with nutrient-rich food, and professionally as a gardener in the lush gardens of Victoria, British Columbia, for over 30 years. Not long after we came to Alaska in 2005, he continued landscaping work, honing his horticultural skills at this latitude, up to that day when he finally was able to acquire farmland in the Matanuska Valley.
Now, after establishing and developing a farming business ‘from scratch’, farming his own land, with all the wear and tear, ups and downs such a life entails in Alaska for 11 years, Bruce reflects pragmatically upon farming as a business:
“I began my horticulture career as landscape gardener in Victoria, British
Columbia. My interest in small scale vegetable growing was influenced by the pioneer in that area, John Jeavons. At the time organic growing was envisioned on the backyard or community garden scale. The increased demand for sustainably grown local produce and the emergence of farmers markets has allowed operations like Earthworks Farm that are, in scale, essentially market gardens, to achieve some level of commercial viability. Our flower and honey production and manufacture of beeswax and honey cosmetics products contribute to our sustainability on this small scale.”
Bruce frequently expresses gratefulness for the bees, the beauty of the seasons, and this life that such work on the farm generates for him and Dee.