Food safety matters.

Forevergreen Farm cares deeply about food safety practices on our vertical farm…

…not just for your wellbeing, but for our own. We eat loads of our living microgreens each week, and incorporate them in our meals daily! (And have spectacular blood work results to show for it! 😉 )

We have completed the Produce Grower Safety Training Course organized by the Colorado Department of Agriculture, Colorado State University, Cornell University, and the USDA. This in-person course provided us with guidelines to implement the following food safety practices, which ensures a healthy product year-round!

In December 2021, we welcomed food safety and horticulture experts form Colorado State University and the Colorado Department of Agriculture to tour our unique vertical microfarm! We discussed our seeding, watering, cleaning, packaging, and delivery procedures and modified our food safety plan with based on best practices from these areas of research. Check out this video about our visit from the Colorado Department of Ag and CSU food safety and horticulture experts!

We have strict worker health and hygiene expectations and practices for ourselves and our employee (who is a CSU Horticulture student- go Rams!). They are posted on our walls and purposefully reviewed with the team regularly. The expectations include discussion of proper handwashing, abstaining from work when experiencing ANY eye/ear/sinus/throat/ chest/digestive symptom of illness, wearing a hat at all times, leaving all food/beverages/cell phones OUTSIDE of grow space, and daily sanitation protocols.
We maintain zero risk of cross-contamination with livestock, manure, wildlife, mice, insects, and soil-based pathogens by growing in a dedicated indoor grow space. This space is fully finished with special HVAC and plumbing considerations. (Some folks wonder if we grow in greenhouses or industrial warehouses. We are proud to keep our operation small and efficient, as those large grow spaces are filled with mice, their feces, and insects! YUCK!)
We use fresh, pure, and 100% filtered Rocky Mountain water and NEVER any sort of tapwater, greywater, or rainwater for our microgreens. Our filtration system removes chlorine, chloramine, heavy metals, insect/weed killers, synthetic contaminents, and volatile compounds found in tap water. Remember, we eat loads of our microgreens without family and we are health enthusiastics, just like you. We want the freshest, organically grown veggies for us AND for you. And that’s what we deliver!
We NEVER touch the microgreens with our bare hands. Product intended for customer use is always handed with clean gloves! (Fun fact: Evan is a major germaphobe and does all of our packaging for distribution! Your product is in good, gloved hands, literally.)
We combine our dedication to green growing practices and food safety by rigorously cleaning and sanitizing our growing and delivery trays for reuse, to avoid single use containers. Read more about what makes us so green here!
By selling our microgreens in a living state on the very coconut media they grow on, in the very containers they are grown in, we are limiting the handling and transferring of the product all together!
We maintain an immaculately clean delivery vehicle. Please know that we treat the product with intense care and respect during all phases of development- from seed to delivery. (We think it was Woody Guthrie who said, this food is your food, and this food is our food. 🙂 )

We have so much more to share, and welcome any questions about our processes! Please email forevergreenfarm@outlook.com with any questions not answered here!