There’s a methodology to growing microgreens in a hydroponic farm setting, and it always manages to trick Baby Greens Family Farm owner Glenda George-Green in some weird way.
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Her process is meticulous as she showed a group of 15 eager learners who stopped at their Merrillville hub during the NWI Food Council’s Farm Hop event on Sept. 12. George-Green took a plastic tray slightly bigger than a baking pan and filled it with a special soil mix, then took precisely 12 grams of arugula seeds in a shaker and applied them on top of the soil as if she was sprinkling powdered sugar perfectly on a pan of brownies — completely covered, but not overly saturated.
Once she was satisfied with the seed-soil ratio, she spritzed the flat with water with a little hydrogen peroxide mixed in “to fight off mold” and covered it with a wooden plank. Then, as she lay the tray down under the grow light, George-Green did something curious: She placed a brick on top of the board.
“We’ve been doing it for these trays (on the south side of the building) because if we don’t, the seeds move around, and you get empty spots that are susceptible to mold,” George-Green said. “We don’t know what it is about this side that makes that happen, but we’re working on figuring it out.”
The tour — an all-day event which “celebrated the innovation and resilience of our local food system,” according to the Food Council’s Board Treasurer Cheryl Dornberg — split into two different tracks for the 30 or so attendees. One group got to experience the “Farm to School” track, which showed how local farms connect with local schools to provide healthy, nutritious food despite eye-water funding cuts at the state and local levels, which the others went on the “Food is Medicine” tour, which demonstrated how farms work with health entities to get people to think about how what they eat fuels and heals them.
Over in Hobart, the “Food is Medicine” cohort stopped at Nurse-Family Partnership, an arm of Goodwill Industries that provides home-visiting nurses to those who are pregnant for the first time from less than 29 weeks up to two years. Their goal, nursing supervisor Tasha Goodman said, is to combat infant mortality by helping first-time moms.
“There’s a heightened sense of vulnerability (when you’re pregnant), and you can look at all the Tik-Toks and Snappy Chats you want, but we’re here to provide evidence-based practices because, in Lake County, our infant mortality rates rival those of third-world countries.”
In the United States, the infant mortality rate hovers around 5.4 deaths in 1,000, Goodman said, but Indiana’s is six-in-1,000.
One of the programs within the program, “Farmer to Momma,” gives the 150 families across Lake County that N-FP serves two bags of farm-fresh food per month, Goodman said. And they love it, even if they don’t understand its contents at first.
“When we talk about affordability, for a lot of these parents, walking down to the gas station is what they do because they don’t have a ride to get to the store,” she said. “And sure, there’s the (NWI) Food Bank and others, but when you have farm-fresh food, it’s a whole other level. They’re so excited, like ‘What are these little eggs in my bag?’”
The funding that takes care of the N-FP program will remain stable for the next two years, said Program Administrator Erin Stojic, barring any surprises. Its state funding comes from the Cigarette Tax, so “it’s a priority.”
“They love this program (downstate),” Stojic said.
Back over at Baby Greens, members of Merrillville High School teacher Mrs. Tubbs’s Culinary class — Seniors Kyleigh Mellon, Alyssa Watson, Alexis Abel, Victoria Pujoe, Caia Sanders, Ebony Homan and Daniel Tanzymore — were thrilled to see how another farmer works. Often, they end up selling their wares to raise money for the program.
“We learned a lot about handling produce,” Alyssa said.
“And cross-contamination,” Ebony added. “And there are also spicy, edible flowers.”
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.