Shipping the farm

The face of modern farming looks a bit like an industrial shipyard. Clusters of shipping freights line a nondescript parking lot. Open one up and a set of LEDs are already running, illuminating the inside. Vertical grow towers housing hydroponic lettuce production line the interior. Each growing system contains anywhere from 15 to 20 plants and needs to be harvested every few weeks. And it’s not a hypothetical reality, awaiting technology and pioneering spirit. It’s a reality of farming for Shawn and Connie Cooney, the two Bostonians behind Corner Stalk Farms.

“We are a self-contained, environmentally controlled, urban agricultural farm,” Connie says. “We grow green, leafy produce, primarily lettuce and herbs and basil, that type of thing.”

Husband-and-wife team, the Cooneys, had no experience farming prior to their freight-based grow systems. Shawn worked with computers and Connie was a public school teacher. And despite their status as self-described “closeted farmers,” their previous ventures into growing produce were confined to a tiny tomato garden in their backyard.

“We both decided that we wanted to do something that we had never done before and we wanted to challenge ourselves with something brand new. It has its challenges,” she says. “It’s a little bit of farming by computer, it has a whole computer component to it, which Shawn is very knowledgeable about.”

Shawn also had a history with startup companies and entrepreneurs. He was part of a Massachusetts innovation group, where he heard a presentation from a company called Freight Farms, which offered portable, mini-farms constructed within shipping freights. The idea piqued Shawn’s interest, and he decided to keep tabs on them, eventually investing in some of their containers.

Each freight comes with LEDs, vertical hydroponic growing systems and environmental controls. Connie describes it as “farming by computer.” She says one of their biggest challenges was not managing feisty pests or battling resilient diseases.

“The biggest challenge, for us, has been the system. To get it operational, you plug it into an outlet,” Connie says. “As long as you have an electrical and water source, you can plop these freights down anywhere. We rent space on a tow truck company’s lot in East Boston.”

But once the freight is plugged in and the system whirrs to life, the real work begins.

“Adjusting the pumping system and the filter system, all of that was Shawn’s focus. He was tweaking everything like the air flow,” Connie says. “In the beginning it was a huge learning curve. Now the challenge is learning the system in terms of how often a plant needs transplanted, harvested, cared for.”

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After somewhat mastering the fine art of cultivating basil, the Cooneys moved to lettuces. They now grow about 16 different varieties and sell them to a distributor who has developed relationships with local restaurants. Eventually, Corner Stalk Farms will begin selling direct-to-consumer at a local Boston market.