LP_081618

4 | August 16, 2018 | The Lockport Legend news
lockportlegend.com
Lockport native looks to corner microgreen market
Kara Keating, Editorial Intern
As the days go on, more
and more grocery stores and
restaurants are offering locally
grown foods.
Lockport native Kevin
Whitehead followed that
trend by creating his home
business which grows plants
known as microgreens. He
started Ashley Urban Farms
more than three months ago
and is slowly expanding to
small, local shops in the
area.
Customers can order locally
grown greens from
Ashley Urban Farms online
at www.ashleyurbanfarms.
com, and Whitehead even
ships them out himself. The
website includes his weekly
“fresh sheet,” where he lists
what he has available for
the entire week that can be
delivered.
“I’m pretty much local,”
Whitehead said. “I’ll go
about 15 miles in any direction,
and I’ll deliver myself
and we also sell retail, too. I
can’t go too far because you
can’t really ship them. They
are too delicate.”
Microgreens are mostly
used for garnishing the top
of plates for all different
types of food to help enhance
the overall look of the food,
but can still be eaten and can
even be used for salads.
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They are the first true
leaf in the stages of a plant
and have strong nutritional
value. They gain all their
nutrients from the soil itself
rather from the actual
seed, making them highly
enriched.
“Most of them are 40
times more nutrient packed
than like a full grown vegetable,”
Whitehead said. “So
broccoli, let’s say you eat
a full head of broccoli, it’s
actually 40 times more nutrients
packed into the little
thing.”
The new business owner
is considered a vertical
farmer since he grows all of
his plants in his own backyard
from the ground up
rather than owning a whole
plot of land to spread it all
out. He keeps them indoors
and keeps them fresh daily.
Whitehead chooses to
deliver the microgreens
himself to keep them as
fresh as possible. Shipping
the product any other way
would cause harm and require
the use of other inorganic
ingredients that he refuses
to use during his local
movement.
“They only last 7-10
days,” Whitehead said of
the microgreens. “If I ship
them, I would have to use
preservatives and stuff, and
I don’t do that. Everything I
grow is organic.”
Before starting his business,
Whitehead attended
culinary school and is now
currently working to build
up his business in the hope
of making it a full-time endeavor
one day.
By the end of next year,
Whitehead hopes to expand
his business to surrounding
areas, but he wants to keep
Lockport native Kevin Whitehead started his microgreens
business, Ashley Urban Farms, more than three months
ago. Photo submitted
his business local rather
than venturing into the city
of Chicago.
He said he would like
to expand to Naperville,
Plainfield and New Lenox,
among others.
“Prices may vary depending
on the size, but the average
cost for Whitehead’s
products is about $4-5 for
two ounces. Out of that,
restaurants can get approximately
20-25 plates worth
of microgreens.
Whitehead didn’t know
he would one day own a
business that sells these
little plants, and if it wasn’t
for YouTube, he probably
wouldn’t. A video about microgreens
popped up in his
recommended video list one
day, and that is where Ashley
Urban Farms began.
“I never saw myself doing
this,” Whitehead said.
“It just fell on me. I like to
grow herbs and I went to
YouTube one day and I saw
something about microgreens
and it kind of went
from there. I thought, ‘well
I’ll try that and see if I could
do one’ and now I have a
whole business out of it.”
For more details on how
to order from Ashley Urban
Farms, visit the Facebook
or Instagram pages or email
ashleyurbanfarms@gmail.
com.