Customers—mostly repeat business or those who’ve learned of the farm through word of mouth—purchase a side of beef or a whole animal at the Hungate Farm website and, when it’s time for processing, the customer picks the cuts they prefer and picks up the order from the processor, Bear Mountain Meats in Palmer.

There are two things a modern farming operation, especially one set up as a side venture, needs to have: reliable power and reliable internet. While the farm is connected to local power, Saunders says they’ve learned they need backup. A January 2022 windstorm took out power for several days, which meant the stock water tanks weren’t running, among other issues. It’s an event Saunders says they don’t want to repeat.

“Our water is on demand; when we’re out of water, there is no backup,” Saunders says. “We decided we wanted to go with a Tesla Power Wall, a large lithium-ion battery. It’s Phase 1 of our backup plan. We have four Tesla Power Walls, and then our goal is to have solar, so the solar will charge the batteries.”

Saunders says she hopes that, once the solar panels are in place, the farm can primarily run off solar power in the summer, which will help cut down electrical costs. The solar portion is still up in the air; Saunders has applied for an agriculture-focused rural energy 50/50 matching grant and hopes to hear if they’ve received it later this year.

Renewables are a focus for Hungate Farms, Saunders says. She and her husband have electric vehicles and brought one of the first electric tractors to Alaska. Solectrac, a California-based company, has been making tractors for several years but really gained a foothold in 2021 when Soletrac was purchased by Ideanomics, a company whose mission is to accelerate the commercial adoption of electric vehicles. Hungate Farms uses an e25G tractor, the smaller of the two versions Solectrac makes. In the year and a half they’ve had it, Saunders says it has suited their needs well.

“We can use it indoors; there are no exhaust emissions, and it’s indoor-user friendly,” she says. They keep it in the heated barn and, although battery use depends on temperatures outside, the tractor can often go up to a month without recharging. They use it for moving around grain, fencing supplies, manure, bales of hay, stock trailers, mineral tubs, et cetera. It charges with a simple 110-volt outlet, which makes it easy to incorporate into the farm.

Working a full-time job with the farm as a side venture requires some clever multi-tasking, especially at key points during the year. In the spring, when cows and pigs are birthing, Hungate Farms relies on remote cameras to let Saunders know if she needs to rush home to help a heifer struggling to deliver its first calf or keep an eye on a pig and her piglets. Nestled in the foothills, the farm is outside the coverage area of local internet service, so Starlink satellite internet keeps a strong connection.

“Starlink was another big move forward for us, to be able to have the cameras. I can see if a pig is birthing and go home,” Saunders says.

“This spring, we had cameras up in our calving barn and, during the day in our office, I noticed one of our heifers was not acting like she usually does. On the camera, I saw that she had prolapsed,” she says. “If I hadn’t had the cameras and Starlink, I wouldn’t have known that, and she may have died.”

The system takes training for both humans and animals. Saunders says her cows are used to wearing big bells around their necks—the best method for keeping track of them in wooded terrain, she says. The virtual fence is a little different; each cow needs to learn for herself where the fence is, what the warning tones mean, and what happens if she strays. The app shows how many times a cow gets into the “warning zone” area as well as whether the cow has crossed the fence. If a cow is being chased and crosses the fence, for example, the collar goes quiet again, not delivering further warning or shock—but it does deliver a text alert to Saunders that a cow is out of bounds.

“And naturally, the cattle will want to go back to the herd,” she notes. “Once they re-enter the virtual fence, it resets the collar.”

Saunders says she and her husband have gone to considerable effort and expense to erect perimeter fencing, both barbed wire and electric. The virtual fencing is mainly for the inner perimeter, allowing cattle to graze on a 40-acre block and then gradually move to another.

The virtual system is costly, but perhaps less costly than erecting physical barriers only for wild ungulates to destroy them.

“It was super disheartening to spend the money and invest the time into our fencing, and then the moose would tear it down every day,” she says. “It’s a bigger upfront cost, but it’s worth it in the long run. It’s really nice to be able to pull up the app and see if my cows are out.”

Saunders enjoys working in the construction industry, but she sees the farm as her passion. In construction, keeping abreast of technology and moving with the times is essential. It’s no different for farming, she says, but the focus is a little different.

“I’m passionate about food; I’m passionate about farming. Construction is a good industry for us here, but I love having the farm, having to get out of bed at 5 a.m. and check on the animals,” she says.

Dairy farmers are known for their 5 a.m. milking routines, but Scott Plagerman says early morning milkings are not part of his family’s routine. Plagerman and his family have run Alaska Range Dairy since 2021. Milk from the Delta Junction dairy is in stores all over the Interior and Southcentral, including most Walmart and Three Bears Alaska stores.

Plagerman says his family of four couldn’t have gotten into the dairy business if they had to rely on traditional milking practices—even with automatic milkers. It’s too labor intensive, he says, and there aren’t enough agricultural laborers in Delta Junction. Instead, from the start, his dairy has used a robotic milking machine.

Replacing a milking parlor, the Astronaut A4 is a chute that cows walk into and out of on their own. When they walk in, a collar recognizes the cow and distributes a little feed into a trough. A robotic arm goes under the cow, locates and attaches to its teats, and the milking process begins. Because each cow’s visit to the milking robot is tracked, the food can be modified to correspond with milk output, and things like the temperature and fat content of each cow’s milk can be intricately tracked and monitored.

Plagerman says the cows seem to prefer the freedom; they come and go at will, without having to be herded, which can be stressful. Some cows visit the milking machine twice a day while others might go more frequently, but Plagerman says his herd of about sixty cows averages about three milkings a day. The only limit is that the machine will not respond if a cow has been through just a couple minutes before.

The larger benefit to the robotic milking machine, he says, is that the collars track movement and behavior, such as how often a cow swallows. If there’s a variance of about ten percent, the program will note the change.

“The system will alert us if the cow isn’t feeling well. We have zero health issues because we catch stuff early,” he says. He’s generally able to treat the issue with minor medications (think an aspirin or antacid instead of prescription antibiotics, for example), and the illness is quelled before it becomes something significant.

The Astronaut A4 is made by Dutch company Lely, an industry leader in dairy robots. Plagerman says, “Efficiency is the main thing of this. We’re a family farm and trying to do all of that with a family, it would be impossible—and with the lack of veterinary service in the state, especially where we are.”

Plagerman also uses a barn floor cleaner made by Lely. Instead of mucking stalls, this Roomba-like device pushes piles of manure into a hole in the barn floor that leads to a holding tank under the barn. The underground storage tank can be cleaned out, and the manure becomes fertilizer, so nothing is wasted—including time spent mucking the barn.

Plagerman added a second robot milker last fall, in anticipation of growing the herd from sixty to eighty cows. With more and more stores carrying Alaska Range Dairy milk and yogurt, the herd must expand to keep up. And high-tech tools make that possible, even in the hardscrabble farmlands of Alaska.