Greauxing for Good

ARTICLE BY STARLA GATSON
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KELLY MOORE CLARK

H2Greaux has managed to grow into six greenhouses full of herbicide- and pesticide-free lettuce hydroponically, meaning no soil is involved and the resulting crop is cleaner than most grocery store offerings.

It’s easy to go without thinking too deeply about the food you put into your body. You may consider whether or not you like how it tastes, but you may not think about where it came from and the nutrients it contains. Amie Janes admits she didn’t give much thought to what she consumed until she saw firsthand how powerful good, healthy food could be. 

“My sister got sick,” Janes says. “As soon as her baby was born, she suddenly couldn’t brush her hair. Her arms wouldn’t work. She’d be walking, and she’d just fall. She was 29 years old. It made no sense.” 

Numerous tests resulted in a myasthenia gravis diagnosis for Janes’ sister. Treating the autoimmune disorder took a toll on her body, Janes remembers, “It was a lot of really hard years there. One year, after I’d spent Christmas with her, I thought I was going to bury her. She was so sick.”

A month later, though, determined to turn things around, her sister made a choice to change her diet, and that decision ultimately changed her life. 

“She called me and said, ‘I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. I’m about to go all-natural, all-organic, all-clean,’” Janes says. “She did that, and the turn-around was almost immediate. I would not have believed it, but I saw it with my own eyes. She’s now off all of her medicine.” 

Seeing how radically food impacted her sister sparked Janes’ interest in growing healthy, organic food. The timing was sort of perfect. At that point, she had worked as a nurse for years, and she was searching for a new, slower-paced path. Inspired by what she’d witnessed, Janes began setting the wheels in motion to grow produce.

“I found a gentleman in Richland parish that was doing it,” she says. “I went over there and saw his operation and was like, ‘This is exactly what I want to do.’” 

Janes’ husband, Tony, whose family has been farming row crops for over 100 years, was very supportive. The couple, along with Janes’ friend and nursing coworker, Marla Martin, moved forward with the farming endeavor. Martin offered up her front yard as a space to host a greenhouse, and from there, the journey began.

That was in 2019. Fast forward to now, and Janes’ brainchild, now known as H2Greaux Farms, has grown physically —  the farm has outgrown Martin’s yard and sits on its own property — and in terms of personnel. The Janeses and Martin now have another business partner, James McCready. McCready came aboard in 2021. The coronavirus pandemic had halted the travel his marketing and sales job afforded him, and he, like many others, was looking for a change. When he caught wind of what Janes was doing, he was eager to jump in. 

“I called Amie and said, ‘What do you need? I’ll give you money, I’ll give you time; I just want to be involved in this,’” McCready says. “I thought it was a really cool idea because this is the future of food.” 

His role, he explains, was to get them growing again, as Janes and Martin were in nursing administration during the pandemic and extra time was nonexistent. 

“April 17th of 2021, we planted our first crop,” he recalls. 

That one crop became many, and H2Greaux grew enough to warrant purchasing the plot of land the farm currently sits on. 

“We moved into this location a year ago in July,” McCready explains. “We’ve only been what I call a ‘real business’ since then. What we’ve been able to do from that point to now, in a year and a half, feels like a lifetime.” 

What they’ve managed to do is grow six greenhouses full of herbicide- and pesticide-free lettuce hydroponically, meaning no soil is involved and the resulting crop is cleaner than most grocery store offerings. The production process starts with Martin, who takes on the tasks of seeding every head of lettuce and keeping the farm fully stocked with baby lettuces. She tends them in the H2Greaux seed room for about two weeks, then hands them off to McCready and Janes in the greenhouses, where they and their team of workers care for them until they’re ready to be harvested. 

Once harvested, H2Greaux lettuce travels from the greenhouses to plates all over the state. The farm distributes products through many partnerships with retailers and restaurants. You’ll see H2Greaux Farms lettuce at For His Temple Family Foods, Back Alley Market, Chauvin Bayou Market, JAC’s Craft Smokehouse, Fiesta on Eighteenth, Mac’s Fresh Market, and Chef Pat Nolan Pop-Up Bistro. 

H2Greaux products are available through vendors outside of Ouachita parish, too. Find the farm’s lettuce in Morehouse parish on Mer Rouge Specialty Market’s salad bar, in Oak Grove at The Corner Market or Cindy Kay’s, in Lake Providence at Green Acres, and in Bossier parish at Mahaffey Farms.

H2Greaux’s other partnerships include the Food Bank of Northeast Louisiana, the Tunica Indian Tribe, multiple private schools, several parishes’ school districts, and the Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo — even the animals get to enjoy natural, healthy food.

What’s more impressive than how many hands the young farm’s lettuce gets into is the fact that they’re able to grow lettuce at all. You need very specific conditions to grow the leafy green, and the Bayou State does not have them. Thanks to Louisiana’s extreme summer heat and winter cold, plus its intense humidity, lettuce crops don’t thrive unless they’re in one of H2Greaux’s greenhouses.

“We can produce all year long because we’re in a controlled environment,” McCready says. They control nearly every aspect of production by using only tested water from the farm’s private well and controlling greenhouse temperatures with fans and heaters. Their operation is so meticulous they can even track exactly who and what touched the lettuce before it ends up in the consumers’ possession. That’s a luxury you don’t get with your traditional grocery store lettuce, McCready says.

“The product you’re buying…has been touched by God knows how many people,” he says. “It’s been in a giant facility that is cranking out products that touch the same surfaces over and over and over again. That’s why, when recalls happen, they have to recall all of it: because every single thing has touched every single surface.” 

Not only is H2Greaux lettuce far less likely to be contaminated but it also lasts longer than bagged greens from a traditional farm in California or Arizona — that’s where the majority of the world’s lettuce comes from. When someone at the Monroe-based operation packages a head of lettuce, they leave the root intact. It’s technically still alive, and according to McCready, that increases its lifespan in a customer’s home.

“Once we pick it, it can be in your fridge for weeks,” he states proudly. “It might not be as pretty as the day you got it, but it’ll be just as good to eat.”

Whether consumed the same day it was harvested or a few weeks later, H2Greaux lettuce is certainly good to eat. Janes and McCready mention how often people gush over their products several times.

“I’m thinking of the positive things I hear, like, ‘My husband hated salads, but he will eat this every day,’” Janes says. McCready adds, “My kid will roll up a lettuce leaf and dip it into ranch [dressing], where he would never touch a salad before.”

H2Greaux has come a long way since the beginning, but the farm’s not finished growing yet. Janes and McCready both say there are still more goals to check off the list. One of these is building six more greenhouses, a move that will allow them to produce nearly 70,000 heads of lettuce per month.

Still, even with more to accomplish, both parties call the farm a success. Getting to this point wasn’t easy, they share. It required a lot of sacrifice, time, and, in McCready’s words, grit.

“It’s been very hard, and it’s been a slow process,” he says. “The timing economically and the world, in general, has really inhibited us from moving faster. It has been more expensive, and it’s taken a lot more time.”

McCready goes on to say that, fortunately, they have a great team to help things run smoothly — “There is no way we could do this without them,” he declares — but that hasn’t always been the case. Previously, Janes, McCready, and Martin shouldered all of the responsibilities themselves. 

“We would have done a lot of things differently looking back,” McCready says, “But me and Amie went door-to-door and sold lettuce. One head at a time. We would deliver lettuce to somebody out in the middle of nowhere West Monroe, and I’d be like, ‘God, I’m driving 35 minutes for a single head of lettuce?’ But we have that grit. Failure [was] not an option. We [were] going to make it happen.”

Their grit and hustle mentality has paid off, especially considering how short a time H2Greaux has operated at its current scale. Janes, Martin, and McCready are proud of what they’ve all built and how quickly they did so. What they’re most proud of, though, is how H2Greaux has impacted consumers.

“[We’re] giving [people] another option,” Janes says. “You don’t look at that bag of iceberg [lettuce] on the shelf and think, ‘I really want that.’ But you look at this beautiful, green head of lettuce and think, ‘That looks intriguing.’ People who would never eat lettuce before can’t get enough of this. They say, ‘You ruined it for me. I can’t even buy that stuff in the grocery store anymore.’ We have people that won’t buy anything else. That’s cool.”

McCready adds, “We’re really blessed because our community has supported us. They took a chance on us, and they’ve really embraced us.” 

Customer lives aren’t the only ones being affected by the hydroponic farm’s lettuce. Janes and McCready say H2Greaux Farms has changed them, too. It not only provides an additional income source but makes them more mindful of what they consume.

“I’ve learned so much about nutrients and food, in general, for my and my family’s health,” McCready says. “[This business has] made me question where my food was coming from. Not just my lettuce, but everything I, my wife, and my kid are putting in our bodies. It’s changed my life for the better exponentially.”