HEARTS OF GLASS: Community Growing From Everyday Moments

Lettuce grown next to a parking garage in Jackson, Wyoming might not sound like the freshest farm-to-table innovation, but then again Vertical Harvest is finding new ways to think about growing.

Jennifer Tennican’s documentary Hearts of Glass debuts at the ReelAbilities Film Festival: New York City, a festival organized to showcase films that showcase stories of people with different abilities. Hearts of Glass details Vertical Harvest’s first year from inception to table.

Vertical Harvest’s mission is twofold: to provide a community with fresh, locally grown food year round and to provide employment opportunities inclusive of people with disabilities, extending beyond filth, food, and flowers–the fields that one of the program directors points out have been the only options available to people with disabilities in the past.

Since their founding, they’ve included people with disabilities. Looking to the future, as they become more established, solutions they make for growing and retail partnerships must harmonize with their employment structure and continue to be inclusive.

A Farm Buzzing with Innovation

The documentary begins in summer and follows the challenges and celebrations the Vertical Harvest community encounters during every stage of their development in their first year. Recognizing space limitations in downtown Jackson and climate restrictions for much of the year, the founders of Vertical Harvest decided to build up and indoors. Using hydroponic technology and a rotating carousel system, they grow four stories worth of food in a three-story building on a sliver of land next to a parking garage.

The feat of city planning and integration shines throughout the documentary. Interspersed between vignettes are shots of Jackson in the valley, of the mountains rising majestically in the winter over beds of snow, of community events and locals eating at restaurants. These give scale to the community relationships showcased throughout the film and foreground Jackson’s role in welcoming and including others. Vertical Harvest is very much a product of this specific community and the people who came together within it.

The farm’s place in the community crops up throughout the film. If at times the film seems to jump from one moment, story, or focus to the next and the next, it does give great depth to how Vertical Harvest seeks integration in the community on many levels.

These vignettes serve to give as much depth to the struggles that people with disabilities face in discussions of ableism and discrimination in the workplace as to what they’re empowered to do–own apartments, cook for themselves, or start an independent art business. In looking out from the confines of the farm, the film effectively integrates not just the work of the organization in the community but its workers as well in a message that’s resoundingly positive and exciting. Its introductions of employees at times rely on text while the footage and moments shared more effectively introduce Vertical Harvest’s workers more economically.

The documentary stitches together a series of moments, profiles of workers, and features on challenges the organization faces: from broken LED lights to employees navigating state benefits for people with disabilities. The result is an in-depth collage of what an inclusive work environment can look like, how hydroponic growing presents challenges of its own, and how a community can come together around a project like this one. At the end of the film, text notes that Vertical Harvest is working with another organization in Pennsylvania with a similar mission. In many ways, the film serves as a blueprint for other organizations to follow.

Optimistic Community Vision

The documentary is a work of love. The care with which everyone commits to the farm’s work hums throughout the film in its talking heads, profile sequences of different workers, and the narrative depth that foregrounds how Vertical Harvest is a community endeavor. Beyond the glass walls of the building, the employees, founders, and developers work with local restaurateurs in a mountain city that explodes in the on-season.

Hearts of Glass twinkles with its dreamy panoramas of Jackson and sleek shots of immaculate hydroponic growing technology. Together, the two present a harmony that resonates parallel to the mission of the organization. If communities can find new growing solutions in differing climates and urban spaces, they can similarly think about how to do so in a way that includes people with very different abilities in the community.

Hearts of Glass debuts on April 6 at ReelAbilities Film Festival: New York City. Find more information and tickets here.