Mee Yang and Alisa Yang hold a banner for Fresh Cooking in front of their family’s food vendor stall on Aug. 27, 2023 at Anchorage’s Pena Park Market.
“I felt like it was because people wanted to band up and create this small market to exchange their foods and buy fresh vegetables and greens,” Yang said. “They also wanted to implement food into it because they saw it as an opportunity to make a hustle out of it.” Fresh Alaska grown produce that can be sometimes hard to find locally are readily available at the Pena Park Market.
“I love the market,” she said. “Whatever I need, anything, I’m like, ‘OK, let’s go. Let’s go to the Hmong park.’”Yer Vang, who has lived in Alaska for 24 years, sells herbs, cabbages, cucumbers, lemongrass and other produce at the Pena Park Market. For more than 15 years, she’s been growing her vegetables and herbs in and outside of greenhouses that she maintains in the valley. She said business on the produce side of the market has been “a little bit slower” lately.
“We’ve seen more people come from other farmers markets,” she said. “With the addition of the Fairview market, some of those vendors have joined us so now that customer base has come over as well. And since we’re off the highway, and since it is fair season, a lot of the people that drive by they see us and they are curious so they do find their way in. With the campground being right there we do get campers that walk over here as well.