US: Alabama - Container Will Grow Food For Montgomery Restaurants
Brad Harper, Nov. 20, 2019
Vintage Year owner Jud Blount, left, and Executive Chef Eric Rivera show their new hydroponic container garden that is being set up to grow fresh vegetables for the Vintage Year restaurants in Montgomery, Ala., on Tuesday, November 19, 2019. (Photo: Mickey Welsh)
The future of Montgomery fine dining scene is growing inside a freight container in a parking lot off Decatur Street.
Dropped into place by a crane earlier this week, the Freight Farm container is full of vertical hydroponics farming equipment and environmental controls — everything you need to grow produce inside. Another crate is on the way and will be stacked on top of the current one.
“We’ll have two different climates, one primarily to (grow) our lettuce and some of our greens, and another climate that’ll be more conducive to growing all of our fresh herbs,” Vintage Year Executive Chef Eric Rivera said. “We should be able to come out and harvest that day for the produce we need that night.”
Everything can be controlled via a phone app.
Workers lower a Freight Farm container into place on South Decatur Street in Montgomery. (Photo: Contributed)
They’ll be up and running in a few weeks, with the first harvest around the end of the year. The team behind Cloverdale’s Vintage Year plans to use the crates as the source for food at its Cloverdale restaurant, the neighboring Vintage Café, and, eventually, at the Ravello Italian restaurant that’s now under construction downtown.
The production capacity in each crate is “huge,” Rivera said. A single crate can produce 700 heads of lettuce a week, for example. They plan to send some of the food to local farmers’ markets and sell more to other restaurants here.
Jud Blount, one of the people behind Vintage Hospitality, said he was sold on the idea after talking about the problems of outdoor gardening with Auburn University Horticulture Dean Desmond Layne. It was a way to work around issues like extreme weather and pests. “This is something where 365 days a year we’ll be growing,” Blount said.
Vintage Year owner Jud Blount, left, and Executive Chef Eric Rivera show their new hydroponic container garden that is being set up to grow fresh vegetables for the Vintage Year restaurants in Montgomery, Ala., on Tuesday, November 19, 2019. (Photo: Mickey Welsh)
Launching the container farming business, called MGM Greens, will give them the chance to work with interns and graduate students from the Auburn horticulture department. Those students, in turn, will have “an opportunity to use a full, functioning facility, which they don’t currently have,” Rivera said.
It also opens new menu options for Rivera. He said they’ll be able to grow herbs that are entirely new to Montgomery, and they can start growing something in the container just a few weeks before it pops up on the menu at one of the restaurants.
Vintage Hospitality announced this fall that they’re opening an upscale Italian eatery in the former City Federal Savings & Loan Building at 36 Commerce Street downtown. The 1925 structure is still being redesigned and restored. Plans call for marble floors, an event space, a ballroom, a courtyard, and a wine cellar.
That opening is still more than a year away.
Vintage Year's new hydroponic container garden that is being set up to grow fresh vegetables for the Vintage Year restaurants in Montgomery, Ala., on Tuesday, November 19, 2019. (Photo: Mickey Welsh)
Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Brad Harper at bharper1@gannett.com.