High Horizon Gardens expanding after community support during COVID-19

After just a few years of operation, produce from Havre's High Horizon Gardens is now in most of Havre's restaurants, its website says - and now the owners are planning to expand the business.

The High Horizon Gardens website says owners Aricka Turner and Cody Miles want to continue expanding their product line as the seasons change.

However, that's not all they have planned. They said in an interview that they are planning on opening a new location in the fall.

"The inflation has been absolutely insane. That's been kind of one of our setbacks because one day you get a quote and the next day it's gone and we have a lot to develop. So we're hoping this fall that we'll push the start button and then, in the wintertime, we'll start getting stuff available for people and start the new transition," Miles said.

Miles said the planned location is 628 Second St., across the street from Smoker Friendly.

He said in 2019 that they grow a variety of produce.

"Here we can get diverse," Miles said. "We can do herbs, beet tops, rugala, spinach, Swiss chard, kale, any type of leafy green."

He said in a recent interview that he and Turner were told that growing produce is a lot of work for little reward. 

But, he said, growing produce using the hydroponic process has been a different experience.

"Hydroponic plants are grown year-round through the use of soilless seed germination. Nutrients feed the plant's roots directly and evenly while using 90 percent less water than traditional farming," the High Horizon website says.

"​The nutrients and water, combined with proper light, temperature and humidity, creates the perfect environment for our produce to grow faster than traditional methods," the website continues.

Still, Miles and Turner said the local reaction to all that effort has been positive.

"I think it's just nice that we know that people that are going out, it's the freshest lettuce, you're gonna find in Havre It's not sitting anywhere on a truck for days and days and days. And just providing some, you know, the people of Havre  with a fresh, nutritious, clean lettuce that has actual flavor has just been great," Turner said.

"I mean, just the feedback we've gotten from people, you know, they didn't realize lettuce had a taste before they had our lettuce. Hearing that it's, like, you just get a little speechless on that," Turner continued.

"It's all been positive. I don't think we've ever had a complaint," Miles added.

"Hydroponics is cleaner, your product looks better, your product tastes better. It's more presentable. We still do some soil stuff like the broccoli, cauliflower and cabbag. The little amount that we do there, we still have to grow those in the soil, like the lettuce that we grew tomatoes, that's all been transitioned over to hydroponics," he added.

Miles said what makes this type of growing challenging is that it's touchy. He and Turner said a greenhouse is a piece of equipment like a combine or anything else and a greenhouse requires "hour-by-hour" monitoring.

"This (greenhouse), in particular, can be touchy, we have a lot of power outages. We can lose our whole crop just in the blink of an eye. So there's a lot of challenges with hydroponics. It's cold outside, you know, things can freeze really easy," Miles said.

The couple said on the High Horizon website their vision was to move back to Montana, after previously living in Wyoming, and provide the area with fresh produce year-round. Miles said they have accomplished that goal and have been doing so since 2018.

Miles said it was thanks to the community that High Horizon has been able to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the biggest challenge was when High Horizon lost their restaurants because the restaurants couldn't operate.

"It was a domino effect, it was, you know. The virus came around and then the restaurants closed and when the restaurants closed then we closed and then their products aren't getting out there. So you gotta, you got to be willing to be a little bit more diverse and ... sacrifice," Miles said. 

Miles said he and Turner did what they had to do, operating a roadside stand for a time during the pandemic.

"The support from the community was huge, huge, huge for that, when we did that. Wouldn't have been able to do without and that's for dang sure. We still took our hits, don't get me wrong, but we wouldn't have been able to do it without the community," Miles said.