NEW YORK STATE: Max and Nikki Poritzky, Foothills Farm, Greenfield Center – Outlook 2025

By Joanne E. McFadden

Feb 19, 2025

When the mercury drops and the snow falls, operations at Foothills Farm in Greenfield Center remain unaffected.

Inside a 320-square-foot shipping container converted to a vertical hydroponic farm, thousands of plants thrive in an ideal environment with precisely controlled temperatures and humidity levels. At designated intervals the crops receive programmed amounts of water and nutrients. When they’ve matured, they’ll make their way to area restaurants and Skidmore College’s dining hall, providing some of the freshest local produce available.

Max and Nikki Poritzky co-founded the farm in 2023 shortly after relocating to the area from Newton, Massachusetts, in September 2022. The undertaking was five years in the planning, sparked by Max’s visit to a San Jose technology museum with the couple’s second daughter several years ago.

There, he stumbled upon a kiosk with an exhibit about vertical farming technology.

“I thought it was so cool that there was now such a thing that you could bring local agriculture to any environment on Earth,” he said.

Coincidentally, Freight Farms, a company that sells vertical farming units and trains people on how to use them, was just eight miles from the couple’s home at the time.

Both Max and Nikki have long careers in the health and wellness products industry, and in addition they live what they call a “wellness-oriented lifestyle.” Founding a sustainable farm that produces healthy, pesticide-free greens and herbs year-round fit right in with their way of life and corporate backgrounds.

“The technology, for me in particular, was a nice merge of science and nature,” Nikki Poritzky said, noting her background in nutrition and nutritional biochemistry.

Max, who grew up in Saratoga Springs, had been wanting to return to the area for some time, and they already owned property here.

“In order to take that leap we felt like we needed to be in a community like Saratoga Springs,” Nikki said, citing the connectedness of the area.

The couple felt the area’s agricultural history provided residents with enough farm-to-table awareness to appreciate the products they planned to produce at the farm. They purchased a unit from Freight Farms and attended training classes there.

By December 2023, the couple made their first deliveries to Scallions in Saratoga Springs and Farmacy Restobar in Glens Falls. They also began delivering to Skidmore College.

The restaurant community welcomed the newly minted farmers enthusiastically.

“I remember being personally surprised at how open they were,” Nikki said. Erik Swoyer, co-owner of Scallions, told the couple to bring their products in and he would make something out of them. “He put a creative spin on what we would produce and what he would imagine with it.”

Local chefs crave flavorful and unique ingredients, and they’re eager to experiment with new and exotic produce.

“They say, ‘Tell us what you can do, and we’ll figure out what to do with it,’ ” Max said. “It really feels like a partnership.”

Alex Lempka, executive chef at Hamlet & Ghost in Saratoga Springs, likes that aspect of working with the Poritzkys, noting the farm’s flexibility in growing “interesting and cool things” that chefs might not see very often.

“They’re always asking for our input, too,” Lempka said. “It’s the ability of being able to work with them and say, ‘Hey, I saw this on a menu from out of state — is that something that you guys are able to grow?’ And they’re usually gung-ho about testing out new varieties that they’re able to grow at their farm. That’s one of the things that makes me want to keep working with them.”

Foothills Farm, now with a full-time employee who oversees the facility during the week, grows five varieties of specialty lettuce, including red sweet crisp and red and green oak leaf lettuce. Other greens include watercress and escarole, as well as some Asian greens such as pink mizuna and purple choi. The purple choi has a sweeter flavor than other varieties.

The farm also grows herbs such as basil, lemon balm, dill, cilantro and red shiso — an herb with a sweet, minty aroma that’s a staple in Asian cooking.

“They have a mustard green that is just out of this world,” said Michael Hinrichs, executive chef at Skidmore College.

He’s referring to the scarlet-mustard greens that, according to Max Poritzky, have a wasabi-like punch. “It’s like this big ‘wow’ factor,” he said.

That item was included in the “mystery basket” as one of the 16 items that chefs competing in the American Culinary Federation-sanctioned competition at the college in January were required to use in a forward-facing dish.

Hinrichs stumbled across Foothills Farm in an Instagram post.

“I was just scrolling social media one night and a picture popped up,” he said. “I thought it was in Napa Valley but it said Saratoga Springs. I thought, ‘No way. How did I not know about that.’ ”

He reached out to the Poritzkys immediately. “They’re hyper local — five minutes from campus,” said Hinrichs, who views the farm as a perfect fit for Skidmore’s objective of “sustainability without sacrificing quality.”

“It’s almost carbon neutral with how close it is to us,” he said.

Skidmore’s 2025 goal is to have a quarter of its food sourced from places that meet the college’s sustainable food metrics, which include using local, community-based businesses and ecologically sound farms.

Hinrichs brings in Foothills Farm’s selection of leafy greens for a vegan bar and other dining facility offerings. For catered events he uses the farm’s exotic, higher-end greens.

In addition to supplying food to the campus, the Poritzkys host sustainability students at the farm for field trips and they have had an intern from the college who went on to work for Freight Farms.

“We’ve got a really dynamic relationship with Skidmore,” Max said. “We absolutely love that.”

Like Hinrichs, Lempka also seeks to buy whatever ingredients he can locally.

“We source really high-quality vegetables from Foothills Farm,” he said. “It’s hard to beat the quality and that freshness that we get from them. We can really highlight that this is coming from a farm just 10 miles away.”

Lempka uses Foothills’ produce often in “center of the plate” specials as well as other dishes. He’s looking forward to what he can do with the escarole he’s expecting soon.

Foothills Farm cultivates its distinctive offerings in the 40-foot-by-8-foot shipping container that provides 3,000 linear feet of growing channels, demonstrating one of the benefits of vertical farming — that is, being able to grow more crops in less space. Max Poritzky points out that the weather outside doesn’t matter.

“It could be 100 degrees or zero degrees,” he said.

Inside, the temperature and humidity levels remain optimal for the crops’ growth. The farm controls the CO2 levels, the movement of air inside the container and the lighting, which is a mix of red and blue light.

“Part of the beauty of this is the consistency so we don’t have seasonality,” Max said.

One reason vertical farming is touted for its sustainability is because it uses 90% less water than traditional farming and no soil. Foothills Farm cultivates its plants in grow plugs made from peat moss and coconut fiber.

The couple founded Foothills Farm as a business-to-business operation intentionally, and for now people who want to sample the farm’s fresh, exotic offerings can find them on the menus at the above-mentioned restaurants as well as Familiar Creatures, Brook Tavern, Mouzon House and Osteria Danny in Saratoga Springs and Nextdoor Kitchen in Ballston Spa.

But as the farm grows there could be other offerings. “We’re building out every month,” Max said. “In the first 10 months we sold a ton of greens and lettuce, and we’ll probably double that this year.”

They are currently in discussions about expanding the operation, with a plan to nearly triple the farm’s growing capacity. In addition, they are evaluating the possibility of having a community-supported agriculture program in the future.

“I love the reception we’ve had,” Max said. “All over town people know what we’re doing and people reach out all the time. We’re getting more and more requests.”

The couple’s four children, ranging in age from 11 to 26, help in various ways on the farm with social media, seeding and delivery, making it a family affair that carries on Max’s family’s legacy of bringing healthy food into Saratoga. When he was young his mother and a business partner opened “Wild Oats,” a health-food store on Broadway.

“I love walking into the farm — the smell and to see all the plants growing, and to walk through the aisles and see this flavorful, rich, healthy, beautiful produce,” Max said.