Glenview Man's Hydroponic Farm

Uses Technology To Grow Garden Variety Produce

5/12/2021

By Dave Oberhelman
doberhelman@dailyherald.com

This is not your grandfather's farm.

It's not Aviad Sheinfeld's grandfather's farm, either -- but Wiseacre Farm is a bridge between childhood days spent on grandparents Yechezkel and Hadassah Gluzman's farm in an Israeli moshav and Sheinfeld's modern training.

That combination has resulted in some of the best greens his customers have ever tasted, grown indoors by futuristic, sustainable methods.

"I don't know if it was a goal. I never thought about becoming a farmer. I was always good with computers, so working with computers was kind of the assumed path," said Sheinfeld, 49, of Glenview.

"I think my childhood experiences on the farm really gave me more of an ingrained appreciation for what it takes to grow food. The thing I remember most is the apple orchards and the peaches my grandparents grew, but they also grew roses and sheep, so also animals."

There are no animals, roses, or peaches at Wiseacre Farm, a rectangular, 320-square-foot container farm inside a warehouse Sheinfeld rents in an industrial area at 1975 N. Lake Terrace, Glenview.

Wiseacre's specialty, available by 10-week subscriptions through www.wiseacre.farm, is leafy greens. A recent delivery included six heads of lettuce of differing varieties. Another package will offer the lettuce plus herbs and other greens -- things like parsley, chives, Thai basil, red-veined sorrel, curly kale with chard.

Sheinfeld sometimes delivers his produce the day it's harvested. Reviews are strong.

"Most of our customers have remarked that they had no idea that lettuce, basil -- fill in the blank, whatever produce -- tastes that way," said Sheinfeld's daughter, Yael, who is finishing her last semester at Northeastern University in Boston, but also handling Wiseacre marketing and communications.

"I think it's hard to understand just how much the taste disappears with travel, with chemicals, herbicides, and pesticides, with just time, honestly, and sitting on a grocery store shelf," she said.

Growing crops indoors in Wiseacre Farm's controlled hydroponic environment eliminates the need for herbicides and pesticides. Serving customers within about a 10-mile radius also lends a neighborly appeal.

"It's not just buying your food from anonymous company X," Aviad said.

His father, Sam, also works on the farm. Yael -- and occasionally Aviad and Kari Sheinfeld's two teenage boys, Rahm and Lev -- are fourth-generation farmhands.

Finalizing financing and incorporation in 2018, in November 2019 Sheinfeld received his container farm from Freight Farms of Boston. He said there's a couple hundred of these repurposed shipping container farms worldwide. When he needs advice he reaches farmers in Alaska, Minnesota, Tennessee, even Tasmania.

The interior includes vertical panels about 10 feet tall in which the plants soak up rays of LED lights embedded into opposing panels. The plant panels can be removed and placed horizontally when the plants are ready for harvesting.

The media is not soil but water, to which nutrients are added automatically, manually controlled by computer. Hydroponic methods are 98% more water-efficient than traditional farming, Yael said. Through recycling irrigation water and capturing the water transpired by the plants, on average the farm uses less than 5 gallons of water a day. On very humid days, the farm will capture more water than it uses.

Nutrients, drip irrigation, temperature, humidity, lighting -- all are computer-controlled.

"As farming goes, it's kind of posh," Aviad Sheinfeld said.

"The thing about this farm is it's very technically advanced, so it kind of marries my initial interest in agriculture and my insatiable appetite for technological gadgets all into one big toy," he said.

He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania and added DePaul University master's degrees in network communications and information security and in computational finance.

First working as a software engineer with Motorola, he veered into stay-at-home dad mode after he and Kari, an attorney, started having children. The couple sent their kids to the Science & Arts Academy in Des Plaines, where Aviad served three years as board chairman. During that time, the academy explored hydroponics as part of the curriculum.

"That's kind of where I caught the bug, so to speak," he said.

No bugs at Wiseacre Farm. There is lots of energy consumption.

"We have lights that are powered by electricity and we use a lot of technology, so that is one resource that we use a lot of," Yael Sheinfeld said.

And still ...

"What's wonderful is, due to our partnership with Arcadia (Power, a renewable energy company out of Washington, D.C.) all of the electricity that we consume now is 100 percent offset with wind-generated, renewable energy. So it sort of allows us to keep that focus, knowing that's the main resource we still need to use, but doing that in a more sustainable way," she said.

For lettuce, from seed to harvest it takes only 8 weeks for the container farm to grow the equivalent of 2 acres of traditional farmland, Aviad said. He plans on about six annual growing cycles.

His first crop came through last March, right at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially targeting restaurants for his produce, he shifted to a farm-to-table model. Customers also can now pick up goods at the farm itself on Saturdays, though preordering is a must. All packages and purchasing options are available at www.wiseacre.farm.

In its short time, Wiseacre Farm has gained acclaim beyond consumer taste buds. It won Silver for innovation in the Glenview Natural Resources Department's 2020 Environmental Sustainability Awards, and on March 28 the farm was featured in a segment of the History channel's "Modern Marvels" series highlighting "The Future of Food."

After a year, Aviad Sheinfeld said the process has become "a little less magical," but he still gets a kick out of it. Imagine what Hadassah and Yechezkel Gluzman might think.

"You put seed in a plug, and even a few days later when it pops out, I'm amazed," Aviad said.

"I do understand it, but I still don't believe how amazing it is that a plant grows out of this little, tiny seed and a few weeks later you have a head of lettuce or arugula."

Lead Photo: Wiseacre Farm owner Aviad Sheinfeld looks over some of the plants grown at his hydroponic farm in Glenview. Brian Hill | Staff Photographer