Looking back on their first full year of production, entrepreneurs Max and Nikki Poritzky have counted one ton of produce grown and distributed to restaurants and schools from their hydroponic farming facility, Foothills Farm, in Greenfield Center.
The farm is a 40-by-eight-foot container housing an efficient, vertical growing system that produces high-quality lettuces and herbs using a fraction of the space of traditional farming. The couple have backgrounds and careers in the field of nutrition and come from health-conscious families, they said.
She studied nutritional biochemistry at UC Davis and was a commercial executive marketing dietary supplements, an industry in which Max also had an executive career spanning 25 years. He said his mother founded Wild Oats, the first health food store in Saratoga Springs.
One company building these kinds of units was located in Boston and Max began to research the technology, he said. Then two years ago the couple purchased property in Greenfield and returned to the area where he grew up to start a farm business and raise two children.
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