Modular Farms Newsletter #7

February was a very historic month for Modular Farms. We harvested our first batch of fruiting crops, trained our first class of Modular Farmers, put FarmWalls up in schools and food banks, and began wrapping up production of our first set of Modular Farms! 

We are extremely proud and thankful for all the tireless work and dedication that has been put forth by our team, our neophyte farmers, and our community partners. Together, our continued efforts are bringing Canada that much closer to having a truly sustainable and secure means of local food production from coast to coast. 

Our foray into cultivating fruiting crops on our office ZipGrow towers has been a great success so far. As you can see from the above photos, our daily Tomato harvests are in full swing and the yields have been more bountiful than we initially imagined. Our first big batch of Strawberries are also beginning to ripen and soon Cucumber and Hot Pepper sprouts will find a home alongside them.

We also decided to give our ZipRack a big upgrade this month by swapping out its standard T5 white lights for Intravision Spectra Blades. The Blades are the same lights we chose to utilize inside our Modular Farms, and for good reason - they make a world of a difference. The spectrum variable LEDs add a new depth of flavor and vibrancy to anything being grown beneath them, while simultaneously increasing their photogenicity by 1000%. 

We are proud to announce that February 2017 marked the first official month of Modular Farmer training. Over the past few weeks, our first crop of farmers-to-be have made their pilgrimage to Cornwall, where they received some rigorous, hands-on, tutelage from the Smart Greens gurus. All that's left now is for them to receive their farms and begin the rewarding process of reshaping Canada's access to locally grown, sustainable produce one area at a time.

The first few areas to reap the benefits will be Calgary, via the Vertically Fresh Farms team, and Sudbury, via our first Western Ontario-based Smart Greens brand farm, courtesy of Stephane Lanteigne. 

The west coast extension of our team - Ethan and Cole - have been doing some incredible philanthropic work within their community. Their company, Living Garden Foods, has recently partnered with the US-based Modern Steader in order to bring their industry leading hydroponic-based classroom curriculum north of the border. They have also help to set up some student-run FarmWalls at the Zion Lutheran Church in Cloverdale, BC, which operates a food bank that is now proud to offer those in need regular servings of fresh salad vegetables.

If you're Canadian, and have found yourself on the fence when it comes to purchasing a FarmWall, now might be the time to pull the trigger. For a limited time, all of our FarmWalls are currently being shipped free of charge to all customers residing in Canada. However, we must warn you that owning and operating a FarmWall will turn you into a snob. You will start questioning the taste and freshness of any other produce you eat that was not directly seeded, grown, and picked by you.

Once again we managed to scrape together some time-lapse footage to get you all quickly brought up to speed on this months transpirings at our office. As you can see, emails were answered, seeds were sown, fruits were ripened, wood was cut, and farms were built; another month in paradise. 

Stay tuned for the next installment of our newsletter!

Hungry for more?

Here's some recent updates and tips from our friends at Bright Agrotech -

Learn by Doing: How to Use a Pilot System to Learn Vertical Farming
by: Amy Storey

Modern Hydroponic Production: Why All the Right People Are Wrong
by: Nate Storey

The 6 Main Challenges of Classroom Gardens (And How to Overcome Them)