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Busby-area lettuce farm thriving post-pandemic

Swiss Leaf Farms has been in operation since 2018
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Swiss Leaf Farms co-owner David Pfaeffli weighs and prepares lettuce for shipment at their local lettuce farm, just west of the Hamlet of Busby. David and his wife Alyssa have been growing lettuce, herbs and microgreens in growing modules since the farm was established in 2018.

WESTLOCK – Just over four years ago, Alyssa Pfaeffli and her husband David realized a dream of providing locally-grown produce to families, retailers and restaurants across the region.

Swiss Leaf Farms was established in December 2018 as a production facility for lettuce and microgreen sales. The local hydroponics farm just west of the Hamlet of Busby has been growing fresh produce in 14 stainless-steel growing modules, that are each 40-feet long, eight-feet wide and about nine-feet high, after partnering with Cubic Farms, who manufacture the equipment and modules in Langley, B.C.

Today, the local business is not only thriving, but is sharing their knowledge and expertise with the community and future generations, which has included working with area schools to provide seedlings for a tower garden, tours of the farm, as well as volunteering with the Westlock Community Garden to grow and harvest lettuce and donate it to the Westlock and District Food Bank and various community events.    

“We offered (tours) to local schools when we started in 2019. We think it’s so important that they understand how food can be grown,” said Alyssa Pfaeffli, noting students from Busby, Dunstable, and Westlock have been out to the facility. “If they can see that maybe there’s a different way to farm for their future to continue their families generational farming legacy, providing food for their community. They can see the technology side of it and become interested in that for the future because it’s going to be so needed.”

Swiss Leaf Farms was the “first commercial cubic farm” that Cubic Farms ever sold and over the past several years have become experts in the growing module industry.

“We gained a lot of knowledge and experience in using the growing modules and were able to give them some feedback on improving them and what kind of results we were seeing in growing the produce,” said Pfaeffli, noting in 2021 Cubic Farms asked them to work for them as a research and development and training facility, which they did for one year as the Cubic Farms Alberta Grow Centre, focusing on new crops and module improvements, while training new farmers who now run similar operations in other locations.  

“When they sold those farms their equipment, they also gave them a training package where they sent the farm owners and their head grower to our facility for two weeks of training,” she said, noting today there are similar operations near Calgary, Abbotsford, B.C, Armstrong, B.C. and one that will soon be installed in Indiana. “We trained them how to run the facility so that when they go back to their newly installed farm, they’re trained and know how to do it.”

In late 2022, they returned back to their original business model as Swiss Leaf Farms, where they now grow six different varieties of lettuce — two romaine varieties, a red and a green, a butterhead lettuce and three different varieties of spring lettuce. They also grow two different formats of lettuce today, that includes a “single serve format”, used by food services such as restaurants and a “multi-serve format” that is a head of lettuce used for multiple servings and is often found at grocery stores.  

The lettuce itself is grown from seed in individual coconut plugs called coco peat which germinate in a proporgator that typically stays around 23 or 24 C, noted Pfaeffli, adding the propagator has spine trays with “seedlings of every stage” that are fed concentrated liquid nutrients, diluted through four irrigation tanks and is also piped to the growing modules. There are a total of 252 trays in each machine, as well as each growing module.

“This one propagator is enough to grow the seedlings for all of the cultivators (growing modules),” she said, noting the seedlings stay in the proporgator for about two weeks before being moved to a growing module, where an app helps regulate everything from light to temperature and water needs for the plants. “The machines have a system called growlink — it’s a program that talks to an app that does all of the controls in each module,” explained Pfaeffli, adding they can grow a “full sized head of lettuce in five to six weeks from seed.”  

Growing food and providing local communities and families with fresh produce, in the manner that Swiss Leaf Farms does, is possibly how growing food will look like in the future, in order to supply enough food while meeting challenges many growers now face including rising populations and climate change.  

“We don’t have to factor the weather into our operation at all and we’re able to do that in a climate that goes from +40 in the summer to -40 in the winter and we have no change in the reliability of our product at all,” she said, noting the impact from the pandemic that helped establish “farmgate sales” as well, where on the first Friday of every month, members of the public can pre-order and come to the farm to pick up extra boxes of lettuce when available.

“We set a pick up day and a time window for them to come to the farm and pick up their order,” said Pfaeffli, noting they also grow some herbs such as basil, dill, cilantro, and thyme and microgreens, but are not currently growing any at the moment.  

Pfaeffli said the growing modules are designed to grow leafy greens in particular, however, they recently partnered with Sea to Sky Farms in Squamish B.C. to look at expanding their growing equipment and adding some new crops.  

“There are so many other kinds of vertical farming or controlled agriculture technology” she said. “The future is definitely bright for new kinds of technology and growing systems to grow different kinds of crops in the future.”

Kristine Jean, TownandCountryToday.com


Kristine Jean

About the Author: Kristine Jean

Kristine Jean joined the Westlock News as a reporter in February 2022. She has worked as a multimedia journalist for several publications in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and enjoys covering community news, breaking news, sports and arts.
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