Dec 1, 2017 3 min read

Inside a gleaming green-and-white shipping container on the campus of Trinity High School, a new method of farming is taking root.

Students are growing lettuce hydroponically. No soil required.

The high-tech repurposed container, a hydroponic “farm in a box” made by Freight Farms of Boston, Mass., was installed on the high school campus in August.

Since then, students, led by vocational-agricultural teacher Jeannette Hartley, have gotten the farm up and running.

Next week, they will harvest their first heads of butterhead and New Red Fire lettuce.

“This is exciting,” said Hartley, noting the farm provides hands-on experiences for students and introduces them to a sustainable urban farming solution.

Regardless of the outdoor climate, conditions inside the 40-foot-long container (the equivalent of more than two acres) are ideal. LED lights simulate sunlight, and Hartley and her students can control the environment – light, heat, nutrients and water – with smartphones and laptops.

Students can grow as many as 1,200 heads of lettuce a week inside the shipping container.

Trinity is using the Freight Farm to help the community.

This year, the school district will donate all of its lettuce to the Greater Washington County Food Bank, said Donald Snoke, assistant superintendent.

Next year, Snoke said, the district also will use lettuce in the school cafeteria and will sell heads of lettuce to local restaurants.

Snoke said high-tech, compact farms will be necessary in the future.

“Statistics show that by 2050, if we keep doing the same things we’re doing, there won’t be enough food for people,” said Snoke. “We thought, ‘What can we do to really help solve the problem?'”

Because it doesn’t require soil, the Freight Farm uses 90 percent less water than a traditional farm. Trinity uses about 10 gallons of water a day.

Cailey Dahlquist, a junior at Trinity and a member of the Freight Farm team, helps with planting, harvesting and maintenance.

“I really do love this. This is an opportunity that a lot of kids don’t get to have. There are so many opportunities for science experiments here,” said Dahlquist.

At an open house Wednesday, Hartley and students demonstrated how the Freight Farm works: students plug seedlings into each of the 256 six-foot-tall crop columns – which resemble gutters – and hang them, vertically, from the ceiling.

The complete growing process, from germination to harvesting, takes about eight weeks.

Trinity, which was the sixth public school in the country to launch a Freight Farm project, has been contacted by school districts across the United States about its farm.

The school district received an $85,000 Local Share Account grant from slots revenue, distributed by the state Department of Community and Economic Development, to purchase the container.

The district used LSA funds to implement a fabrication laboratory (Fab Lab) in 2016, and is applying for the grant in order to install solar panels and wind turbines in 2018.

In 2015, Trinity constructed a greenhouse at the high school. Currently, vo-ag students are building a rooftop garden in the greenhouse for the 2018 Pennsylvania Farm Show’s Garden of the Future competition. The high school’s design was one of 10 selected statewide for the finals.

Hartley is pleased with the early success of the Freight Farm, and the students’ partnership with the Food Bank.

“Not only does it establish skill sets for career readiness,” said Hartley, “it promotes a sense of pride and community involvement on the Hiller campus.”