Producer

Wellspring Harvest is a quarter acre greenhouse located in Indian Orchard, a neighborhood of Springfield, MA. Ours is the largest commercial urban greenhouse in Massachusetts. We chose to locate in one of Springfield’s under-served communities in order to develop good jobs and asset building opportunities where they are desperately needed.

Workers in the greenhouse are either co-owners, or on their way to becoming owners of the business. Most of us have learned how to seed, grow, harvest and pack our five varieties of lettuce on the job. We are also learning the skills necessary to run a democratic cooperative business. We are part of the larger, mutually supportive Wellspring Cooperative Network which currently includes the non-profit co-op developer, Wellspring Cooperative and five for-profit cooperatives.

We grow five beautiful, nutrition dense varieties of lettuce: green and red butter, green and red sweet crisp, and romaine. We grow hydroponically (in nutrient rich water, not soil), use integrated pest management and are GAP certified through the Commonwealth Quality Program. So our product is extraordinarily safe and clean—important given the recent scares of salmonella tainted Romaine. Furthermore, hydroponics is environmentally friendly, using a tenth of the water and fertilizers that field grown produce requires.