Members of family and graduate housing were invited to harvest their community garden before the coming frost gets there first.

"They're going to pull everything out," said Al Yanish, family housing manager at UAF.

The rows of the garden are planted with flowers and a variety of vegetables including carrots, potatoes, beets and kale.

The project, done in conjunction with the UAF Cooperative Extension Service, was started last year as a Residence Life program.

Cooperative Extension provides the seeds for the project and Dave Jacobson, student assistant manager, helps maintain it.

"I love it," said Ann Cown who is in Fairbanks visiting her daughter Julie Ruth, who lives in Hess Village with her family.

Cown is from Georgia and said that back home people can plant produce into December because of the warm weather.

Around 20 people came to harvest the garden including Hess Village resident Cary Curlee, 42, and his children Jenna, 6, and Colton, 9, who eagerly dug in the soil for potatoes.

When the garden was first harvested three weeks ago, Curlee said that a representative from the Cooperative Extension Service came and showed the residents how to make a peanut sauce stir-fry.

Celine Gonon, a journalism graduate student on exchange from France, said she was going to try to do some French cooking using American vegetables.

UAF Cooperative Extension Service is a partnership between the United States Department of Agriculture and the University of Alaska Fairbanks and College of Rural and Community Development.

To learn more about programs offered by the UAF Cooperative Extension Service please visit their website at http://www.uaf.edu/ces.