Burlington Future Show with the Peace & Justice Center: Village Hydroponics

Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Burlington Future Show. Today I'm so excited to say that we are going to interview Noir from the people's farm stand and village hydroponics. Uh if you remember when the time travelers were here, they said that in the future there's so many more innovative and like uh sustainable ways to grow food even in the colder months. And Noir is going to talk about some of the work that he's been doing with Village Hydroponics. And I'm just really excited to learn about how they've been able to grow food in the winter out of a shipping container. So here's my interview with >> No. He thought the present was bad until some time travelers [music] came and told him to be glad because the future is bright. He wasn't looking right. [music and singing] They gave a list of people doing good to get in sight. And so now he's [singing] interviewing all the people you should know [music] that are building a better world [singing] right now on [music] the Burlington Future Show. >> Hi Nor, thank you so much for coming to the Burlington Future Show. >> Of course. Thank you for having me. >> Yeah. So, I know you primarily through the organization, the People's Farm Stand that you help run. Do you want to just tell me a little bit more about you and what the People's Farm Stand is? Yeah. So, I am a veggie farmer by trade and the people's farm stand um is kind of just a way for me and fellow farmers and friends in the community to kind of continue to show up and do our part and make sure local organic freshly grown produce is getting to everyone. And you know, we have a very broken food system where by no fault of the farmers. Um, produce can be very inaccessible, especially this kind of local organic produce movement. Um, there's a lot of people left behind and we just we know how to grow vegetables. We know how to share vegetables and that's kind of just our way to show our community love and do our part to show up, I guess. Um, so yeah, I have a a great team that works alongside me to make that happen. >> That's awesome. Yeah. And and you you share fresh produce in the park. Is that >> Yeah. So every from pretty much June through October, every Friday, Pomeroy Park from 5:00 to 6:30 and then South Meadows in the South End from 7 to 8. Everyone is welcome. We have uh yeah, free fresh produce. And in South Meadows, we work alongside our amazing comrade Fared and his team, the People's Kitchen, that you can go get a a nice hot meal on a Friday as well and kind of kids running around. It's kind of like a weekly block party, which which is a lot of fun. >> That's so fun. I love that. Um, so when you're not doing the People's Farm Stand stuff, when the people's farm stand is off season, my understanding is that you have this other project that is extremely interesting and very cool to me where you're growing fresh produce in a shipping container in the Intervil. Is that right? >> Called Village Hydroponics. Can you explain more about that? >> Yeah, totally. And it is kind of a weird concept, but I think you hit the nail on the head that we basically built out an old shipping container and kind of repurposed it into a hydroponics grow operation. So totally no soil, just kind of liquid nutrient solution running along the roots of a variety of different leafy greens produce. And you know, the idea just kind of clicked in that the people's farm stand is amazing. We feel like we do a really cool thing, but we're in Vermont and we have a relatively short growing season. So, just around the time that, you know, winter comes, utility prices uh go up, um kind of that connection and access to fresh produce. We're not the only ones. Intervail Center, Vermont Food Bank, a lot of amazing partners also doing similar work. That access just, you know, gets cut off seasonally. So, we kind of had this light bulb idea. I'd been interested in hydroponics personally for a while. What if we could, you know, grow fresh veggies in the coldest and darkest winter months and only a quirky, cool, amazing place like Burlington would like take my weird idea and just be like, "Sure, where do you want to put it? You want some money for like I just have always felt such support by the city and by people here that again they just kind of took this wacky idea and let me run with it." And yeah >> that I love that. So can you explain hydroponics a little bit more in depth? Like what what is it and how does it work in comparison to like traditional farming? >> Yeah. So basically hydroponics at a base level is growing produce without soil. So in our version we do what's called nutrient film technique where basically these there are these there's a nutrient reservoir and like an aquarium pump and basically the nutrient solution gets pumped up a series of PVC pipes and then it's just at an angle basically and that nutrient solution through some uh PVC channels basically runs along the roots of the plants allowing for some oxygen zone um and the plants are able to stay saturated and take up the nutrients and have enough room for oxygen and they can basically grow totally without soil. There are different versions that some use uh just sunlight in green houses. There are some that are aquaponics and they utilize fish. Um ours we totally use LED grow lights that we try to be transparent about. They use a lot of electricity, big energy demand. Um, you know, there's differing opinions on the McNeel power plant site uh down at the Intervil, but we're really lucky to have uh a local energy and electricity source. We are on Burlington Electric Department property, so about as local source of electricity as you can get. Um, but again, that's part of the reason why we only operate in the winter to kind of, you know, be cognizant of the energy and electricity demand. And it's like when the sun and the soil can do its job, that's great. and we do that. But just trying to fill that that gap in the in the winter again. >> Well, I think that's so innovative to think of like, you know, in Vermont the growing season's so short, so what are we going to do in the winter? And I I and it looks like you guys get a lot of stuff like like I I've I've I've looked at your Instagram and it's like, oh, that the yield is pretty is pretty good for a little shipping container. How much do you usually get? >> Yeah, so we're a little bit unique in that again the broken food system. Most hydroponics out there are just in it for return on investment and money. And the way to do that, just like in soil agriculture, is monoculture. And you just grow a lot of one kind of thing and you don't kind of have a you know um an opinion for I guess the crop diversity or for where it's going. You're just about that return on profit. We try to grow a variety of different leafy greens and more and more trying to grow kind of the culturally important produce and push the bounds of what we can actually grow hydroponically. So in any given rotation we're growing six to eight different leafy greens hydroponically. Lots of Asian greens, bok choy, tats soy, arugula, Swiss chard, um cilantro, different things. So, it's kind of hard to give a number of like, you know, how much of everything each week, but what I will say is that, you know, in in peak production during the winter, we uh, for example, last winter, we had a uh a 25 household CSA where each CSA member would kind of get three to four, you know, big family-sized portions of three to four different kinds of vegetables. And we were still able to keep up with um around 20 uh free household distributions for the South Meadow. So, you know, around 45 to 50 household portions of veggies. And again, like, you know, it's small, but it's a small piece of the puzzle. And hopefully just trying to show is this a viable method of growing in the winter. Is this, you know, yet another piece of the the community food puzzle? Um, and we're still learning. This is going into our third season, so we certainly don't have all the answers, but we're trying to be open source about it. We're trying to be an educational tool because um a lot of the commercial hydroponics out there are very tight lipped about their secrets and their growing processes. So, we're just trying to show a different model, I guess. >> Yeah. Oh, I love it. Um and so and so you some of the produce is is in a CSA that you can sign up for with Village Hydroponics and then some of it is is sort of folded into the same kind of distribution model of the people's farm stand. Is that >> that's that's exactly right. Um, fortunately we actually um got a big research grant from the USDA, US Department of Agriculture this season to basically turn the shipping container into a like free food research lab. So everything is going to be free coming out of the shipping container this year because we have research backing to um kind of keep up with all the operational costs and we don't really have to worry about um selling any produce which is cool and the research trials will largely be around um lighting crop variety and cost of production. So again that lighting and electricity piece we're really interest it's our electric our electricity bills are through the roof. Um and not only for that it just we consume a lot of electricity and energy. So some of the lighting trials are around okay which varieties grow the best with the least amount of electricity basically. So trial triing some different grow lights either with lower wattage or different levels of PPFD which is how you me measure the photosynthetic uptake of the vegetables. So basically which which varieties do best under the lowest lighting conditions? Can that help us cut down the electric bill um and help us use a little bit less energy? Um, we're also getting in some kind of smart ventilation because we have a mini split um, heat pump. Basically an AC and heating unit that even in the debt of winter, we're using it for cooling. >> Yeah. >> Because the grow lights give us some heat. So, we're coming up with some venting to let in some nice fresh cool outdoor air. Um, and kind of the other part of the research is around again cost of production. So really trying to track how much labor, electricity, nutrients does it take to grow a unit of these different kinds of vegetables? Because again, I'm a farmer myself and I'm really interested in can this this method of hydroponics be a viable other revenue stream for a farmer, whether it's a dairy farmer, a veggie farmer in the offseason to potentially have another, you know, uh, diversified revenue stream coming in. And currently, as it stands, the way we do it, it can't be done. It's still a cool community tool, but the numbers don't crunch when we look at our again like mainly the electric bill versus how much we're able to put out. So, we're trying to see, you know, is there a way to, you know, cover a fair hourly wage to cover the electric bill, you know, those kinds of things. Is there a way? So, we're really interested in kind of tracking that side as well, working with uh um the Intervil Center, uh their kind of farm business planning program, and Sarah Donigan's been really great for helping think through those things as well. >> Nice. Um and and how did you get the the shipping container? Like, how did that how did how did that it initially start? I guess is like like how did you find the site, get the shipping container there? >> Yeah, so I mean that's a that's a great question. Um, the shipping container itself was actually kind of the an easier part. Yeah, there's like companies out there that just sell shipping containers. We have a reefer container, which is a refrigerated shipping container, which basically means that it comes with the insulation and outsulation. It's basically like an insulation sandwich around what you think of as the shipping container that you would just see out on the street. Um, it was really easy to order it. The zoning was tricky because again I come to the city of Burlington which is not the easiest place to get zoning approvals and stuff and >> it was just this weird gray zone. They're like okay you want a shipping container but it's going to be a farm is it industrial? Is it agricultural? where can we put? So, it's kind of difficult to find a location, but like again, fortunately, like Burlington Electric Department um and community economic development office were really great in like helping us find a suitable spot. Burlington Electric Department gives us a free lease down at the Intervail. Interval is already zoned agricultural, so it kind uh so it was just I couldn't imagine it being anywhere else. And because it's so much work, even if it was 5 minutes further in the south end or something, it would just be a pain in the butt. The actual delivery of the shipping container would be a 30 minute conversation in and of itself. I was severely underprepared for getting a 40ft shipping container delivered. um the delivery d because they basically used a middleman delivery driver who pulled up onto Decar Street, my home street, with a 40ft shipping container thinking it was going to go there and basically not having a method to actually unload this massive shipping container that's 6 feet off the ground. So basically got an emergency crane googling cranes in Vermont and had Garina Crane shout out Dominic who came [laughter] down to the intervvil with a massive crane and a liter truck and like boop picked it off the truck, plopped it down perfectly, but it was it was a whole thing. Um but yeah, it's been I've I've learned a lot through Yeah. all the processes. >> That's so cool. Um, so in theory, I know that like it seems like the research you're doing with the Department of Agriculture is sort of related to this directly, but like if if like other people wanted to do something like this or like if if uh you know someone who who has like sort of a backyard garden or something was saying, oh, would there be a way for me to like hydroponically grow food in the winter or like do some more community agriculture in the winter during the cold months? like what advice would you give or like how how would you because I know the electric cost is is one big part of it. Um yeah what what would you say? >> Yeah, that's a great that's also a great question. Um well part of the Department of Agriculture research grant is actually we're going to be developing a series of uh videos um kind of just going through everything in the day in the life of running a shipping container farm. So, we're going to have a video on how we do our seeding, how we harvest, how we add and make our nutrient formula, and I think that will have that is basically how I learned. I just like found a few random farms on YouTube because there's not a lot of resources out there. So, we've kind of just been building out this puzzle ourselves and it'll be really cool to have this video component to share with people and that'll be on more of a commercial size scale, but still you get to learn the concepts and stuff by seeing it. I think another really cool thing will be that um separately we have a grant through uh the city of Burlington and that will be partnering with the family room, amazing organization in the old north end as well. just a really sweet community and family space. And we're partnering with them to basically have a hydroponic tower built inside of the family room that will then allow my good friend Claire, who runs the kitchen, who's the head chef there, to have some fresh produce in the winter that she is growing along with the families to kind of supplement their the hot meals that they cook there. And as part of that, we're going to do some kind of small-cale DIY workshops with the families. Basically, there's a version called [clears throat] called the crack key method in which you can basically grow a pretty good head of let's say lettuce or herbs or something in a in a mason jar. >> Um, and you do it in a way where you have your little nutrient solution in the mason jar and there's an oxygen layer for the roots to get oxygen and that's like a very simple cost-effective way to just try it out and to just have something in your house. So, we'll see how that goes as well. >> That's so cool. Yeah. Working with the family room and h >> Yeah, they're great. >> Yeah. >> Well, I think that that is all the questions I had for you, Nora. I mean, I'm like really really excited to see this video series and see I I need to come down and tour the shipping container. >> That's the other thing. It's like [clears throat] we really are trying to just be a community tool and community asset. So excited to have you down or anybody, you know, we're on Instagram at villagehydroponics or villagehydroponixgmail.com. Um, feel free to reach out. We love having visitors. It gets lonely down there working inside a box in the winter, so we love seeing people. I also want to give a shout out to my one staff person, Camille Jacobe. They are just a force of nature and have just basically could run the farm, you know, without me at this point. and I'm just so grateful to have them. But we're down there, you know, most days in the winter, so always happy to have people stop by and and uh and check it out. >> Yeah, I hope people do. I mean, I'm going to I'm I'm going to be down there definitely this winter, so great. Yeah, thanks so much, Norah. Thanks for coming on. >> Yeah, thank you. This was fun. >> Yeah, that was such an amazing interview. I feel like I learned so much and I have so much to go back to. Like, I'm going to just go search so many other things and like look at all these hydroponics videos. I'm really excited for the the work that's going to come out of the the research grant that they've got. Um so yeah, uh stay tuned for the next interview. Thanks so much for watching the Burlington Future Show. We'll see you next time.