If you’ve noticed more leafy greens than you’d normally expect to find for sale at farmers markets in the dead of winter, it’s not your imagination. A handful of local farmers are trying new methods this season to keep Chicago-area consumers happy by growing baby lettuces, spinach and more in the frigid winter months. It’s a refreshing addition to the local winter staples of root vegetables and other holdovers from the late fall harvest.
That’s great news for Chicagoans and suburbanites who are keen on buying local, fresh food whenever possible and trying to shrink their carbon footprint. There’s a rising tide of consumers who want to minimize their participation in a food chain that begins with crops grown far away and shipped in by trucks or airplanes that emit wasteful tons of carbon dioxide.
Besides, the time is ripe for area farmers to explore opportunities for growing in the winter months since a few markets showcasing local growers only recently began experimenting with staying open year-round. One of them, Green City Market’s Indoor Markets, located at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Lincoln Park, has at least four or five vendors this season that will offer various kinds of greens to a public hungry for them, says Lyle Allen, the market’s executive director.
“Last winter the crowds were astonishing and we got the message loud and clear: Chicagoans want and need a market that provides local, fresh produce 12 months a year,” observes Allen. “Diverse products will only increase now that we have provided a successful retail connection to people seeking to purchase local greens all year round. Those farmers who have hoop houses are leading the way.”
These so-called hoop houses have been adopted by a number of local farmers in the hopes of providing a more hospitable environment for vegetables to grow in the soil, even during the winter months where there often isn’t enough daylight in the Midwest that most greens need to grow well. Heritage Prairie Market & Farm, a one-and-a-half acre farm in Elburn, Il., began experimenting with this method a few years ago when it sent its farm managers to Maine to learn from Eliot Coleman, an organic farmer who is famous for developing a technique that combines building a cold frame structure and putting it inside an unheated high hoop house for better protection from the elements. Coleman developed these structures to improve sustainable four-season farming.
Heritage Prairie, located 40 miles west of downtown Chicago, has four large hoop houses and is having early successes with them in its second year of trying them out, explains Portia Belloc Lowndes, the farm’s executive director.
“We’re growing some of the sweetest spinach you’ll ever taste,” gushes Belloc Lowndes.
Ted Richter, the current farm manager, expects to harvest about 40 pounds of the hardy green each week this winter. In addition, there will be plenty of carrots, which are fully grown but parked in the ground under the hoop houses till they’re ready to be picked for market. “Our business plan is to add more hoop house structures every year to the seven acres we just bought,” he notes.
Another Green City Market vendor, Kinnikinnick Farm, had nothing leafy to sell last winter. This season is a different story. They will bring a bounty of greens to local consumers thanks to five new hoop houses they constructed that can be rolled around the fields on wheels added to the bottom brackets, says David Cleverdon, owner of the farm in Caledonia, Il., about 86 miles northwest of Chicago. By February and March, Cleverdon hopes to have mini lettuce heads and other signature Italian greens the grower is known for among Chicago-area chefs and regular market shoppers.
In addition, Cleverdon intends to use the hoop houses and a doubling of his green houses to get a jump on the spring growing season. Kinnikinick Farm usually shows up at the outdoor markets in early May with potted herb plants and not much more. This spring, he hopes to hit the ground running with full mini lettuce heads, cooking greens, arugula, baby lettuces and some other surprises.
“It’s all an experiment right now, we’ll see what happens this year,” says a hopeful Cleverdon.
Suburban lovers of local produce will get their share of greens at some markets too in the next few months. The Community Winter Market, sponsored by the Geneva Green Market, expects to have two or three local farmers selling greens because of hoop houses they are trying out as well, says Karen Stark, founder and market manager. She’s been told they will offer spinach, endive and other winter greens, and root vegetables still in the ground, including carrots, radishes and turnips.
“Green houses and hoop houses will be our answer to local food in this tougher local climate,” asserts Stark. “But consumers have to show up to these winter markets so the farmers see there’s a demand and they can sell their goods to have money to plant in the next season.”
