We move our lives indoors as frost and snow shuts down another outdoor growing season in Cheyenne. Yesterday, I plucked all of my tomatoes and brought them inside to finish ripening. I found some purple pod beans lurking in the foliage. I snipped off my basil, oregano, and rosemary and stored them in the freezer. I'll use them in sauces throughout the winter.
This is usually a somber day for me. Winter is coming! October through March is when I spend more time thinking about gardening than actually gardening. What grew well this year and what am I going to tackle in 2022? Thing is, much growing has moved inside. Locals have built small backyard greenhouses. Some of us take advantage of big south-facing windows to continue the process during the dreary months, just as our rooftop solar panels reach out to the sun dipping into the southern latitudes.
Just read an Inc. Magazine article about vertical farming operations around the U.S. Former industrial sites in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have been transformed into hydroponic farms. Vertical Harvest in Jackson grows greens and tomatoes year-round in its three-story farm built on a strip of land adjacent to the city parking garage. Teton County visionaries found this unused bit of land, a rarity in Jackson, and then planned, funded, and built VH. Now, according to the Inc. article, it's going nationwide with facilities planned for Westbrook, Maine, and North Philadelphia, Penn. VH's mission from its early days was to employ people with developmental disabilities, which they are doing, a mission VH promotes on its packaged produce: "Sustainably produced by community members with different abilities."
This fascinates me. I am a gardener and cook. My daughter has "different abilities." I volunteer at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. Botany is not my trade -- writing is -- but I've always been interested in growing things. I'm moderately tech-savvy but am intrigued with ways that tech can change ways we grow our food. Computers, efficient L.E.D. lights, and robotics are feeding what Inc. calls "the future of the $5 trillion agriculture industry." Outdoor gardening has its thrills but also drawbacks in hail, pests, and diseases. So-called urban farming impacts all of this. It also addresses climate change variables: hurricanes, deluges, drought, massive wildfires. In southeast Wyoming, we look forward to this week's snow because the summer and early fall have been so dry. Meanwhile, Northern Italy last week was swamped with almost 30 inches of rain in a 12-hour storm.
The Inc. article wraps with mention of a book by botanist Stefano Mancuso, "The Revolutionary Genius of Plants." Mancuso posits that not only have humans been nurturing plants for some 10,000 years, but "plants have brought us along on their evolutionary journey, employing us as a means of transportation." Now we bring them inside, away from most of their pests and plagues, and refine them along the way. A photo in the article shows Irving Fain, Bowery Farms founder, behind a crop of wasabi arugula. Some diners already consider arugula pungent, but a wasabi mix? Holy moly. Some crops are brand new and some are being resurrected from the dustbin of history.
Tech and business brainiacs are in the mix with Micro Kale and Beet Greens. Lots of start-up dough is going into these projects. "Geeks and quants" are involved, says Inc., and I think I know a geek when I see one but a quant? That's what the Internet is for. According to Investopedia, it comes from "quantitative (quant) trading" which "involves the use of algorithms and programs to identify and capitalize on available trading opportunities." Quants do this. They read pubs such as Poets and Quants which, as far as I can tell, has more to do with the latter than the former. Bowery's Fain might be a quant as he says this: "The question for me is, can tech generate scalable opportunities and an exponential increase in outcomes."
It's a good question. There's another way to put it:
Salad on table/Where to find arugula/That inflames the tongue
Just asking for a poet friend.
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