For nearly a year, Sally Boisvert worked on a business plan for her 12-year-old Mosquito Lake-based Four Winds Farm. 

“You know, I chipped away at it here and there,” she said. 

Now, Boisvert and two others – including another Chilkat Valley business – have the funds to help make that plan a reality. Spruce Root, a Southeast Alaska business incubator and economic development nonprofit, gave the business owners $20,000 a piece to support their plans. 

Rashah McChesney is a multimedia journalist and editor who has reported and edited newsrooms from the Deep South to the Midwest to Alaska. For the past decade, she has worked in collaborative news as the...