Swartz Family Farm
by Jen Shenk
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about supporting local farms, and how much better the food is, but I’ve also been bothered by Westminster’s “The Farmer And the Deli” closing up shop. Then I watched the movie Food, Inc. and reviewed the book The Omnivore's Dilemma. I’m wondering if it’s really possible to make a living selling produce and meats raised locally, even though the food is undeniably better tasting and better for you than food sold in supermarkets.
A big problem is that local farmers can’t guarantee a continual supply of produce here in New England—it’s tough to grow tomatoes when it’s 17 degrees outside--and restaurants and supermarkets, and even ‘alternative chains’ like Whole Foods need a consistent source that will consistently deliver produce, even in the depths of winter. That’s what the American consumer expects, and that’s what businesses that serve the public demand.
When our daughter told us there was an open house at Swartz Family Farm, a hydroponic farm in Amherst, located in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, we were enthusiastic to see it. We expected to find a high tech operation, spread across numerous fancy, state-of-the-art greenhouses, pumping out vegetables by the bushel for stores like Whole Foods, which was located nearby, or even to traditional supermarket chains that now sell ‘organic vegetables and poultry’.
That isn’t what we found, but what we did find was a tribute to the ingenuity of the American farmer, the strength of the ‘buy local’ movement, and hope that the traditional family farm can find a niche in today’s high volume, supermarket based, factory-like food production system. We found some very dedicated people, Joe and Sarah Swartz, working and thinking hard and smart to make a go of a farm that had been in Joe’s family for four generations. Joe joked that since his family had only been farming here for 90 years, they were newcomers to the local farming community, many of whom have been farming the same land for over a hundred years, some since colonial times.
Most importantly, we also found some remarkably delicious vegetables, mainly salad greens, which we were able to sample (scissors were supplied) as we walked down the narrow aisle between the rows of vegetables, being careful not to bump into the water tubes that fed into the rows of vegetables.
We could eat the leafy vegetables because the greens and lettuces are raised indoors, fed and watered through their root systems--no chemicals, fertilizers or pesticides ever touch the leaves, making the greens safe to eat right off the plant, as well as remarkably clean. In fact, since the plants are grown completely indoors, no pesticides whatsoever are required or used. The only pest control, to prevent outside bugs from intruding on the greenhouse environment, are ladybugs and a small variety of wasps.
Since the salad greens are as fresh as they could be, in this case still attached to the plant, the flavors were much better and more pronounced that what you would find in a grocery store, in either the organic or regular aisles. These plants were fresh, healthy, free of pesticides, and completely clean. I felt healthy foraging through the rows, sampling leaves of the 14 different types of salad greens, which included some obscure salad ingredients such as baby Boston lettuce, kale, Arugula, Boston lettuce, baby bok choi, Swiss chard, and much more. And, very surprisingly, their prices seemed to mirror or be just a tiny bit higher than prices I see in big supermarket chains.
The greenhouse itself was high tech, but it certainly wasn’t ‘off the shelf’ high tech. Joe, a 1986 graduate of the Stockbridge School at UMass Amherst, built his first greenhouse in mid-1986 (fresh out of college). He then designed and build a hydroponic lettuce/leaf crop system and hasn't looked back since. He built the outside structure of the greenhouse himself, plus designed and put together, from various eclectic sources, the circulatory system that supplied the water to the plants as well as the hydroponic beds growing the plants. He also controls the mixture of nutrients flowing to the plants, the ratios of which vary based on the time of year and the amount of sunlight.
The greenhouse is heated mainly by an old woodstove, from wood cut on the property. Besides supplying heat, the woodstove also helps to keep the moisture inside the greenhouse low, preventing mold growth.
If for no other reason than the name, you’d expect a hydroponic farm to use a lot of water. I expected to see plants growing in large deep tubs of circulating water. That’s not how it works—the Swartz Farm uses only 10% of the water used in traditional farming, and very remarkably, the water operates in a closed system. The water in the Pioneer Valley is of very high quality to start with, and this hydroponic farm produces no waste water—the water is just recycled, with nutrients added as necessary. There also isn’t a whole lot of water in evidence. The plants don’t sit in water. Rather, the plants rest in small, three dimensional, rectangular shaped, porous rock made from volcanic pumice. Those small porous rocks are pretty much the only waste generated, and are probably good for the environment. What happens in that the plants sit there, in these pumice rectangles, which rest in flat-bottomed plastic trays, and about once every three minutes a small amount of water is sent into these trays, which run slightly downhill. The water rolls downhill through these tubes, wetting the plants’ root systems, and then continues into another drainage tube at the far end, which tilts such that the water runs back into the system, to be re-circulated again to other plants.
The vegetables grown on the Swartz Farm are not “organic”, for the same reason many of our local farmers’ products are not organic—the word ‘organic’ is now controlled by the government, and applies to a particular set of strict and somewhat arbitrary rules that must be met for the term to be applied. In the case of this hydroponic farm, the crop is ‘pesticide free’ but not organic, since chemical fertilizers are used to add nutrients to the water—you couldn’t very well add cow manure, for instance, to the water.
One thing I’ve learned in my latest foray into the organic food market is that the rules for being organic are often more ‘pro forma’ than effective. For instance, for chickens to be raised organically, they need to be able to go outside (sort of the ‘free range chicken’ ideal). In today’s mass produced ‘organic’ chicken factories (see accompanying story), there is typically just a small door that leads out from a modern day henhouse, which has about 20,000 chickens jammed into it. The door is required for the chickens to be called ‘organic’, according to the government rules, but in reality that little door is only open after the chickens reach 5 weeks old and since the chickens are extremely "hybridized" to grow incredibly fast, they are mature enough for slaughter after 7 weeks giving the chickens just two weeks to enjoy the outdoors, had they the inclination to do so, which they don’t. The door and nice lawn outside the mass production henhouse typically just sits there unused, but it is required if you want to call your chicken ‘organic’. To add insult to injury, you cannot slaughter poultry, organic or otherwise, anywhere but at a USDA approved facility, and there don’t happen to be any of these in Massachusetts, making it nearly impossible to buy locally produced chicken.
Another thing that struck me was that small scale hydroponic farming by itself is a tough way to make a living—despite all the land on the farm, at this point the Swartz Family Farm has only two operating greenhouses, each perhaps 100 ft. long. Since they are only raising salad greens, and it takes about 3 weeks for a crop to grow enough to be harvested, there is no way that this generates a huge amount of money. The farm is very popular with locals, but you have to sell a lot of salad greens to make enough money to support a farm. Joe and Sarah Swartz recognize this, and are taking a number of steps to become more efficient without losing the essential sense of the farm.
First, they are building a third greenhouse, this one to raise tomatoes and European cucumbers. Joe, as in the past, is building it himself, and as can be seen in the slideshow, it has a way to go, but they expect it to be operational by March.
Secondly, Joe consults on hydroponic farming—from seeing his operation, and knowing he built and designed it, it’s obvious he knows his craft. There is both a science and an art to raising food hydroponically, and Joe Swartz has been doing it for 23 years.
The farm is also moving towards selling CSA (community supported agriculture) shares. This method of distributing local produce is less convenient for the consumer than just ordering on demand, but it allows for local farmers to better plan what they grow, with less chance of product going to waste. They also continue to offer the option to buy on demand on their website, an online store that also includes products from other local farms.
This move towards a CSA model highlights a main problem with buying from smaller, local farms, and the incredible opportunity represented by local hydroponic farming. It’s the same problem all of us have with our gardens, but on a larger scale. From our garden we either have a ton of tomatoes for about a month, but then, after the season has passed, no fresh tomatoes the rest of the year, so we have to buy them somewhere. Even if you want to ‘buy local’, it’s quite hard for the local farms to have everything their customers want, when what they want is not in season, and for a business like a restaurant or a grocery store, it’s much more complicated to have multiple suppliers—to buy from local farmers during the summer but ‘factory’ produced food the rest of the year requires a lot of effort.
Even when you buy organic vegetables in the supermarket, they aren’t coming from local producers. They’re coming from one or two giant farms in California, or perhaps even from Argentina or Mexico, labeled organic. That’s why tomatoes in the winter always taste like cardboard—they might look nice and ripe, and the organic vegetables might say ‘packaged locally’, but no matter what, they are coming from far away, which involves picking them long before they are ripe, in the case of tomatoes, or in the case of salad greens, keeping them refrigerated for a cross country trip. The vegetables just won’t taste as good.
This is the beauty of hydroponic farming—in New England, the big seasons for vegetables can be spring, fall, and winter, when you cannot get fresh vegetables anywhere else. Why bother with hydroponic vegetables in the summer? Well, one reason is to avoid the pesticides that are used on non-organic produce in the supermarket, but generally you can just buy from a reputable local producer. In the winter, it’s a different story, and why hydroponic farming might be the wave of the future in New England.
Hydroponic farming can fill in the gaps around the local growing season, and thanks to our weather, almost any crop is mostly out of season in New England. Joe and Sarah Swartz are dedicated to farming, and perhaps are idealists when it comes to hydroponics, but they also are realists who continually improvise to keep the farm running. They rent out a large portion of their farm to other farmers in the area, who raise, among other things, tobacco. I didn’t even know tobacco grew in Massachusetts.
There are a number of scenic outbuildings on the farm, and it turns out they are slatted sheds for drying tobacco. For Amherst’s 250th anniversary, the ‘far shed’ was lit up from the inside, providing a spectacularly beautiful display as the light shown through the slats onto the snow outside.
Hydroponic farming might be the missing link to make the buy local movement successful. We’re lucky to live in an area where small family farms still exist, and where the population is small enough that those of us who want to eat local produce and meats still can. Hydroponic farming combined with ‘as good as organic’ local farming can provide year round top quality food for all the people, restaurants and businesses who care about what they eat, and that is important work.
Our Farming Practices
Most of the crops we grow are grown hydroponically. The term "hydroponics," (literally translated as "water-working") refers to the method of growing plants without using soil. Hydroponic growing has been around for thousands of years, with the earliest examples being the hanging gardens of Babylon. Hydroponics has been used in commercial production for about 50 years.
Like human beings, plants require specific nutrient elements to function and grow. Among those nutrients are Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Magnesium, Calcium, and other trace elements. These nutrients are dissolved in water and fed directly to the plants, which are growing in a greenhouse in a hydroponic system. This process allows us to feed the plants exactly what they need, to ensure the highest quality and most nutritious produce available. Do you feed your body only the highest quality nutritious food? We make sure that our plants only receive the very best! Just as an athlete monitors their diet to achieve greater athletic performance, we supply our crops with only the best nutrients for optimum growth at all times.
How We Grow
We grow our crops in a greenhouse, which allows us to operate all year round. While most agricultural production here in New England takes place approximately 120 days per year, we are growing 365 days every year! Do you need fresh, local basil when there is 3 feet of snow on the ground? No problem! How about locally grown lettuce for you New Year's Eve party? You've got it! The greenhouse environment also helps us to control the plant's physical environment, which helps us to produce crops of a much higher quality. Exposure to wind, rain, dirt, drought, and insects can all lower taste, texture, and nutritional value.
We use NO PESTICIDES in our growing facility... EVER. We limit any potential insect or disease pests with good sanitation practices and biological insect control. We regularly introduce different insects that feed on insect pests that would feed on our plants.
As in nature (under ideal conditions), we maintain a healthy balance of "good" bugs to eat any "bad" bugs that would like to feast on our crops. We also keep our greenhouses clean to keep any "bad" bugs from taking up residence. By carefully providing optimum nutrition and growing conditions, and by keeping our crops free of soil or pesticides, we can offer you the cleanest, freshest, most delicious vegetables and herbs available!
Is It Organic???
Because we use no pesticides, many people ask if it is organic. In organic crop production, organic material is added to the soil to provide nutrients for the plants. A good example would be adding manure to supply Nitrogen for growing crops. Once that manure is incorporated into the soil, it decomposes and breaks down into it's inorganic, ionic form of Nitrogen. It is only then that a plant can absorb and utilize it. We supply that Nitrogen (in the proper form), via the nutrient solution, directly to the the plants in our system. Because we don't use soil, there is no decomposition process going on in our system. So, it is for this reason that we do not refer to our production as organic, but rather PESTICIDE FREE.
Why Grow This Way?
Our goal is to provide the cleanest, most nutritious, and best tasting produce available anywhere. Growing in a controlled environment, without the use of soil or pesticides, is how we accomplish that goal. Please give us a try. We think that you will agree. We also use these methods to conserve nutrients, and perhaps our most precious resource, water. Our system constantly recirculates the nutrient solution, conserving all unused water and nutrients. Our system uses approximately one tenth of the amount of water used in conventional growing, and approximately one sixth of the amount of nutrients. With absolutely no runoff, we are conserving our precious resources and protecting the environment as well.