[MUSIC] We moved to the States in 1989 from the Soviet
Union and then went through the public school system here in the suburbs my entire life
and went off to college at the University of Illinois to get an undergrad in computer
engineering and then moved to Minneapolis where I worked and then got my MBA from the
University of Minnesota, the Carlson School of Business.
After the MBA ended, I started a fellowship with an organization called Education Pioneers
which brought me back to Chicago, and I started working at the CPS Central Office, and amongst
other things, we had discussed, you know, how to make the school system better, how
to make education better, and as the first time that I had learned that there's a large
amount of kids in Chicago that get their only meal of the day at school.
It's the only time that they know they're going to consistently eat.
So the debate at the time between whether it's the teacher's fault or the administration
or the system or this or that, I really thought it was important that nutrition and food was
a big aspect to them.
If they're not eating well, not eating enough, not being healthy in general, it's tough to
teach a starving kid or a kid that's jacked up on sugar which is the majority of what
kids in Chicago have in their communities—fast food, junk food, just stuff that's nutritionally
lacking.
After the fellowship ended, I wanted to try to fix that or fight that problem, and I thought
that one of the best ways to do that is just to grow more healthy food within those communities
that we're trying to improve—make it available, teach them what things are, include them in
the process of growing their own food and providing for themselves.
So once we started the farming idea, it was sort of multi-pronged.
I would say that here we have our indoor farm where we grow microgreens and wheatgrass,
more of the speciality products that help make the for-profit side work, and then we
had a rooftop farm here as well.
That was more of a showcase that you can grow food all over urban environments, and since
then it's continued to evolve where now we're helping two communities on the Southside and
Englewood and in North Brownsville grow their own food and create their own farms.
So the Englewood site is about two acres of what used to be a vacant parking lot for the
last 30 years, and the North Brownsville site is in a similar thing, and it's also a one-acre
farm.
It is good that growing up in an entrepreneurial family to have the business and entrepreneurial
skills.
In high school and college, engineering definitely relies a lot on math and science skills, and
in business it's much more about the soft skills of working with people, selling, talking
to people, understanding how businesses work in the grander scheme of things, and I think
that that laid the foundation for me to afterwards realize well, here's what I want to do and
here are the different pieces from my life that enable me to think about farming from
a different aspect.
During the summer it's kind of all hands on deck and people are shooting to markets, doing
deliveries, bringing stuff back, and it's like a big anthill of just people moving around
all of the time.
We're trying to scale that back to where it's a little more sustainable from a personal
perspective, so I definitely shoot for no more than six, and everyone kind of does four
to six days, but they alternate which days stuff happens, so Saturdays and Sundays are
big farmer's market days, and I'm trying to get out of Sundays, although I'm still involved
with that, but for the most part, everyone does about four to six days a week.
When I take a step back, I really love it.
On a day-to-day, it's still very hard, and it is in this phase of growth that's also
difficult to manage.
This is probably the least area of expertise that I have—it's that when you're in a stable
environment, a stable business, there's a lot of infrastructure from a business perspective
that's already there for you, and for me it's definitely very stressful and challenging
to figure out how do we build in our HR practices, how do we build up the accounting and tax
practices, how do we build up the stuff that in former businesses was already there for
me, that you fit into structure, you sign forms, and you're on your way.
Small businesses have to figure all that out.
When I look back on what collectively our crew has accomplished over the last few years,
it's astonishing, and there's still a long, long way to go.
So it's exciting to see.