gifts Archives | Alaska Magazine

April 2024 April is birch syrup season in the boreal forest of Alaska’s interior. It’s a busy time for the Alaska-owned Kahiltna Birchworks, one of the world’s largest birch syrup makers. Company founders Michael and Dulce East started the business over 30 years ago from their remote homestead near Talkeetna, and in 2023 they sold it to Hammers Family Birch in Wasilla. “We have a great relationship with the Easts,” says Ted Hammers, the CEO and co-founder of Hammers Family Birch. “They helped with our 2024 harvest and trained us about the business.” While pure birch syrup is their signature product sold around the world, they also produce birch-based condiments and candies and supply to both local and national breweries, including Denali Brewing Company for its seasonal OneTree Birch Beer. Hammers also now owns Alaska Wild Harvest. Another creation of the Easts, the company buys wild Alaskan berries from independent…

Since 1969, the Oomingmak cooperative has been keeping Alaskans warm with qiviut hats, scarves, and other accessories that are handknit in remote Arctic villages. Qiviut is the famously soft underwool that muskox shed in spring. “It has a great insulating quality,” says Marie Texter, executive director of the cooperative. Speaking from co-op headquarters in Anchorage, she says qiviut is eight times warmer than sheep’s wool and doesn’t itch or shrink. Texter says the co-op was established to provide economic opportunity in remote villages with few cash-paying jobs. But with no quotas or deadlines required of knitters, the arrangement also affords the flexibility villagers need to keep up with subsistence and other needs. “So when the fish come in, people can still be at fish camp,” she says. “Or they can devote time to picking berries in summer.” In between, Texter tells Alaska magazine, they can knit at their own…

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Shop Alaska: Hammers Family Birch

Oomingmak: Home-spun gifts from Alaska

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