There’s a kind of poetry to getting commodities in hard to reach places. Before you move to a location off of the United States road system, people will tell you to bring some of the stuff you like to eat, fancy chocolate for example. It’ll come in handy on tough days, when you can’t find what you want at the local grocery store.
For Susan Hoeldt in Aniak, that special craving couldn’t exactly fit in a suitcase.
“So I have always really liked soft serve ice cream, and living in Aniak now for 30 plus years, there is no soft serve anywhere,” Hoeldt explained.
Thirty years seemed to be her tipping point. Earlier this summer, Hoeldt said that she started looking to buy a soft serve ice cream machine. She found one from a site that offered any rural Alaskan’s golden ticket: free shipping.
“And I was like, ‘Oh, they don't know what they're getting into,’” Hoeldt said.
Aniak is a community, like many, that gets excited about ice cream. Hoeldt said that she got a call from the airport when the machine came in.
“They were all excited because it was plastered all over it, said ‘ice cream machine.' So they've been wanting to know when we were going to start,” Hoeldt remembers. “Word spread quickly in a small town.”
If you’re wondering what counts as news in Aniak, ice cream definitely makes the list. Hoeldt said that the operation started with vanilla, then got a lot of suggestions about chocolate. Recently they debuted the combo-flavor twist of vanilla swirled in with chocolate. It was the talk of the town.
The machine lives in the Aniak Community Market. It’s a converted home shop with a little counter in the back. When the door is hoisted open, people know they can saunter in for a treat. It’s a space born out of that same desire — to have something you can’t normally get.
Leslie Boelens is the owner of the former shop space that would become the Aniak Community Market, built with milled Aniak lumber to be an open-air farmers market.
“I love having produce and I missed that in the village, I missed not having access to that,” Boelens said. “And so I had this idea to do a farmer-style market, where I would order in bulk produce and then split it up, and then I sell it at cost.”
When the market started in 2017, it was a challenge to figure out how to get fresh things into the remote Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta community of about 500. Sometimes snowstorms or flight delays would spoil whole deliveries. But eventually Boelens, along with market co-organizer Amanda Hoeldt, got the hang of things. Each week they’d ship in 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of fruits and veggies via bypass mail from Anchorage.
Sometimes produce would come from the Y-K Delta itself, including Meyers Farm in Bethel or a potato farmer in Chuathbaluk. After trying her hand with more experimental veggies, Boelens said that she learned to stick to the staples.
“I love bok choy. Everybody in Aniak looks at bok choy and they're like, ‘yeah, no thanks,’” Boelens joked.
What began in an open-air space grew to accommodate winter weather. In 2017, the market received a Best in the West business grant and Boelens was able to purchase a garage door. Boelens said that the market also became a community gathering space.
“I just noticed anytime I had a little event, whether it be, like, a rummage sale, or the kids were having a little lemonade stand or whatever — people would really come and hang out and visit,” Boelens said.
It’s a sentiment that's still part of the space today. Inside, work from local artists is available for purchase. The space hosts paint nights and fundraising dinners for sports teams or people in town. Boelens said that they’re looking forward to their annual free moose vegetable soup event, complete with a bonfire next door.
This past year, Boelens stopped ordering produce. She said that a second market opened in town and started supplying really good veggies. The Aniak Community Market no longer fills that gap.
“They're just doing a great job, so there's really not the demand for produce,” Boelens said.
Boelens also said that the model has become outdated. With the recent changes in bypass mail, co-organizer Amanda Hoeldt said that there’s no way she could get produce in at an affordable cost today. But it’s still a space used to gather around food.
The soft serve machine is operated by two teens in town, under a business they created called Two Broke Boys. Ice cream is the latest installment of their menu, which has included coffee drinks and breakfast foods over the years.
Fifteen-year-old Jack Boelens is Boelens’ son.
“I've been selling there since it started when I was, like, 8. And I mean that's where it all started,” Jack remembered. “I think the first thing I sold there was pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes.”
Jack said that there are not a lot of food options in a small town, which has given the business a kind of gravity in the community. Jack and his counterpart, Marshall Dhalman, have been operating out of the community market to help fund things like basketball trips. The two said that they've had some trial and error with the business, but the soft serve machine? After bringing so many people to the market already, it’s a staple. They said that the delicacy will now be semi-officially on the list of what you can find in Aniak.
