Hello there!👋
This is the Spira Farms newsletter. This is where we talk about the journey of the microgreens farmer.
Today we are going to talk about:
- Spira Farm Milestones 🤔
milestones🥦😅
Story Time! 🤓📖
We had the opportunity to reflect and laugh at what Spira Farms was like years ago. We grew microgreens for a long time before the business began. Before the business, we didn’t keep track of the problems that would occur. If we get a problem its an “oppsie” and we move on. It changed a lot when Spira Farms started.
Most of 2020, growing microgreens was a piece of cake. We had our techniques, just do the same thing every week. It was simple. 🎂
At some point in 2020, a secret problem snuck up on us. We didn’t see it coming, but it smacked us right in the face one day. As the business grew, we naturally would be growing more greens. More greens = more water, more water = more humidity. Our environment slowly changed over the course of months but it was so slow to occur we didn’t see it coming. 🌦️
Now things obviously changed inside, but what probably was the start of doom for us was changes in the season. We didn’t expect the change of season to fall or spring would impact our indoor environment. It did, and it made us cry. 😭
We had of course equipment to deal with humidity, but at some point you outgrow it. When we did, we had some VERY long days. 😴
We started my Friday harvest days at 6am. A few hours in, I made the discovery hidden inside of a salad mix. On the outside and above the salad mix looked AMAZING. Hidden inside however, I found that many of the Arugula, the most finnicky plant in the mix decided to give up. Arugula is naturally much shorter making it hidden under its taller family members. It was impossible to cut the product when there was so much poor arugula.
So at 9AM to make sure I was able to get product, we cut the product strand…by strand. This was the only way, to get clean product. There are hundreds to thousands of plants in each container we provide. Imagine cutting a tray that has tens of thousands of plants. 🌱
We worked from 6am to after midnight to make it work. Woke up at 4:30AM to work the farmers market until noon and had Cait do deliveries early in the morning. Best part? Fixing these types of problems takes weeks because it takes a while to either identify the problem (weeks of testing!) or to change the environment. So it happened a few more times before we solved it. 🔬🧪
Last week, we were able to harvest all the product in just a few hours. It was a major milestone for us in operational efficiency. Gave us some time to really reflect on this story, and laugh at it. It certainly was NOT funny at the time but it cracks us up today. 😁
I love reading about your successes and your problem solving!