Wicked Good Greens Provides Fresh Greens throughout the Winter

POTOMAC – Chef Jennifer "Niffer" Stackpole of Balsamroot Catering in Potomac has expanded her ability to share her love of food and provide good food to her customers. With her new farm called Wicked Good Greens housed in an upcycled, refrigerated, shipping container at the old Bonner Mill site, Stackpole will be able to supply tender crisp greens year-round to local chefs and individuals in the area.

Stackpole has cooked her whole life. After graduating from New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, Vt. in 2013, she worked as a chef for the Paws Up Ranch river camps and Montana Island Lodge and was the executive chef for Western Montana Mental Health Recovery Center. She started Balsamroot Catering in Potomac in the winter of 2015.

"I've been doing big events on my land but it was just me doing it. I finally thought, now that I'm a professional chef, I should probably have a real name and everything. That's why I created Balsamroot Catering," said Stackpole.

Because her winters are slow for the catering business, Stackpole was exploring options of how to expand. After seeing an ad for Freight Farms in Boston, Mass., she researched the possibility of growing greens locally in their shipping containers. A trip to visit the company solidified her interest and she decided to purchase a container.

"With Balsamroot Catering it is a natural fit. It is again feeding people and it is providing food and I get to walk into people's kitchens and say, 'Here's your order and here's what I'm growing for next week,'" said Stackpole.

While Stackpole has experience growing her own garden in Potomac, she has never done any hydroponic growing. She attended Freight Farms' farm school for two days where she worked in their container.

"A lot of it is learning how to run the farm with this agrotech control box," said Stackpole. "I can run the farm from my smart phone 20 miles away in Potomac. It is really high tech."

She decided to name her new business Wicked Good Greens.

"The name came from my Northern New England Heritage as everything is described as 'wicked good,'" said Stackpole. "The name originally was going to be Good Greens but I felt that was a little bland."

Stackpole has originally hoped to fnd property for Wicked Good Greens in Missoula. However she could not find an affordable lot and she said Missoula County was very difficult to deal with as a portable, start up business. She talked with the owners of the old Bonner Mill site and they welcomed her. The container was delivered at the end of October. The engineer from Boston launched the container two weeks ago.

"[Launching] means we calibrated the system, we leveled the container, we did all the things that needs to happen for it to start growing food," said Stackpole.

The container is a very controlled environment. Stackpole requires shoe covers and gloves for any visitors and puts on a clean jacket when she enters it.

The system requires 10 gallons of water and 84 kilowatts of energy per day. A dehumidifier pulls six gallons of water out of the air and recycles it through filters back into the system. Red and blue LED lights deliver exactly the needed frequencies while producing all the heat needed to keep the farm warm in the winter.

This farm can produce the equivalent of two acres of farmland. Inside, 256 "towers" hang vertically in four rows, with nutrients dripping down through a growing medium made from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. Each tower can grow up to 20 heads of lettuce for a total of 5,000 heads at one time.

This technology grows 98 percent edible plants, with big heads, rich dark color and unblemished outside leaves that are as tender as the inside leaves. The pristine growing environment doesn't allow pests that leave brown spots and ridges.

"You can use the whole head of lettuce. The only thing you cut off is the root ball. The yield for chefs is a lot higher than what you get in the store. That is ideal for chefs because the more yield the better," said Stackpole.

On Tuesday, Stackpole planted 1,200 seeds. By Friday morning she had seedlings.

"It's because the environment is perfect. There are no bugs. There is no weather. Everything is constant. The plants get all the water they need. They get 18 hours of the perfect light that they need to make chlorophyll. The environment is stress free so things grow very fast and very efficiently," said Stackpole. "As the farmer, I monitor everything that is happening on the farm: the temperature, the humidity, the air flow, the electrical conductivity in the water tanks, all the nutrients and make sure it is perfect for the plants."

Stackpole will start with four types of lettuce, wasabi arugula and short French radishes. Because different plants grow best at different temperatures, Wicked Good Greens will be able to offer a much larger variety of products expanding to herbs and specialty crops such as tatsoi, basil and edible flowers when it adds a second container this spring. Stackpole needs about five weeks lead time to fill special requests.

"When the chef receives these greens, they will still be alive," explained Stackpole, "They have a very long shelf life, over two weeks."

The fast-growing method will produce a new crop each week. Certified organic seeds are planted in the seedling bay, using beading tweezers and a chef's funnel. After a week on the germination shelf, they are moved to the seedling trough for two weeks before being transferred to the towers until harvest.

"Timing can be everything to a chef because freshness delivers flavor, texture and aesthetics," Stackpole said. "That makes happy customers and improves the business case in multiple ways."

Wicked Good Greens plans to add a second "farm" in the spring. These will be the fifth and sixth such farms in the region, with others in Bozeman, Red Lodge, and Coeur d'Alene. Eighty more are located around the world, designed and built by a company in Boston which developed and refined this self-contained system. All of these farms have more demand than supply.

Stackpole has already made several contacts with Missoula businesses and is willing to sell to individuals and other businesses in Potomac and Seeley Lake.

"I want to sell to the end user," said Stackpole. "What you get with me is you get my personality, you get me and you get my enthusiasm and I get to sell you the product that I love."

Down the line, Stackpole would like to supply hospitals and schools, install a wind generator, add a farm in the Bitterroot, and even deliver her greens with a specially-designed Pedicab, built next door by another sustainability-minded startup at the Bonner industrial site. For now, she's carefully tending her first set of seedlings and hoping to have a first harvest available in less than three weeks.

"All the chefs in Missoula have to go to Mexico or California for greens in the winter [because of the short growing season]. It's not fresh by the time it comes here," said Stackpole. "I thought I could provide locally grown greens for them in the winter in Missoula. Me, being a chef, I speak their language and I get as excited about food as they do. It's really fun for me to connect with them on that level."

For more information or to purchase greens, contact Stackpole at 406-285-1944 or jenniferstackpole@wickedgoodgreens.net. Balsamroot Catering can also be found on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/BalsamrootCatering