Dwight Koehn was struggling to make a living on his ranch. It was 2017 and beef prices had dipped.
The future was bleak.
“We had five children under the roof and trying to feed everybody,” Koehn said. “It was just really hard.”
That was when Koehn said he took a leap of faith. He bought a hydroponic lettuce greenhouse in Greybull and started Greybull Valley Produce.
The lettuce is grown without soil in a controlled environment using nutrient-rich water solutions year-round.
The greenhouse had grown only lettuce for four months and had not developed any marketing or customer base when Koehn took over.
Their first harvest was September 2017 and their cattle ate well that fall.
“We were feeding a lot of lettuce to the cows because you just can't sell something you don't have,” Koehn said. “We had to produce it, but we didn't have the market yet.”
The first greenhouse was a traditional little hoop house. For the next four years, the family grew their green-leafed lettuce.
Slowly, the cattle became their secondary business until they outgrew the beef industry.
The Lettuce Was Greener
The future, they realized, was greener.
“It took a lot of sweat and tears and prayer,” Koehn said. “But it just seemed like the doors continued to open.”
Koehn spent time knocking on doors and talking to anyone who would listen. He went to retail stores and schools and, over time, expanded into the Cody market.
“After our product caught on in Thermopolis, I thought why wouldn't we go to Riverton or Billings or Red Lodge? That is just kind of how it kept going,” Koehn said.
With demand growing, Koehn sold the ranch, invested in more property in Greybull, and put up a new hydroponic facility. By October 2021, they were moved in, and it has been steadily growing.
Koehn is still knocking on doors, taking out samples, and stopping in at school districts and restaurants and grocery stores.
“I’m just trying to get our product out there,” Koehn said. “We just kept moving out, putting on more miles and so that's where we're at today.”
Growing A Family Business
Koehn said the business has become a dream come true because he is working it with his son Trent.
“Trent had taken a job with an irrigation company and became a service tech on center pivots,” Koehn said. “He was able to bring that knowledge here, built the greenhouse, does all our wiring, electrical, IT work, and whatever it takes.”
The greenhouse is fully automated, environmentally controlled and Koehn said his son has done all that.
“He built the greenhouse in ’21 and has been with us ever since as part of the business,” he said.
Two of Koehn’s daughters have married and started their own families, but two younger girls are still at home and work in the greenhouse.
“What else do you do with a house full of girls, but have them work in a greenhouse?” Koehn said. “That's just kind of how it evolved.”
Tons of Greens
Koehn said they produce tons of greens every year, including between 5,000-6,000 heads of green leaf, red leaf, romaine, and butter lettuce per week.
His greatest mover is greenleaf, then butter bib lettuce, followed by romaine and red leaf.
“We do a lot of spring mix, of what they call one cut varieties where you cut it just above the root ball in it,” Koehn said. “It's a loose leaf that falls apart into leaves instead of a head and it's more of a ready to eat salad.”
They also grow eleven major herbs from sage to oregano. Their biggest mover is basil followed by mint.
“I don't even know how to calculate how much basil we grow,” Koehn said. “We sell a lot of it in a half ounce little clamshell, two ounce packages, potted plants and as a little living plant.”
Because they don’t use soil, the lettuce is grown in a 2-by-4-foot Styrofoam float.
“It's a little plant about 2 inches tall when we transplant into that float,” Koehn said. “And then that floats on the water and the roots grow down into the nutrient-rich water.”
He explained that from seed to harvest will take up to five and a half weeks in June when they have the most sunlight and stretches to seven weeks in the dead of winter.
“We use a lot of artificial light but nothing's like the sunshine,” Koehn said.
Spreading the Greens
Koehn has four routes. The north edge of his service area is Bozeman and Livingston, Montana. He has two vehicles that deliver all over the Bighorn Basin and Wind River Range.
His schedule is picking on Monday and Tuesday. One truck will deliver produce to Bozeman and hit all the towns on the way. The other truck will head to Lander and do the same.
On Thursday, they will head over the mountains to Sheridan and Billings. The other truck heads to Cody and covers that region of the Bighorn Basin.
“We sell a lot of lettuce mix to school districts,” Koehn said. “It is a case of 16 mixed heads of all the major varities we grow.”
This system works well, he explained, because they first fill all their produce orders and then fill the lettuce mix with whatever is left over. It keeps the orders fresh and moving.
Originally, Koehn said he tried to sell direct to consumer, but he ended up losing too much produce and has stuck strictly to wholesaling to stores, restaurants and schools. He said to look for his label in a local store.
They also work with a couple other growers, one in Sheridan and the other in Billings. They typically will buy everything that Koehn can't sell.
In turn, he will buy their excess whenever he can.
“We now pretty much sell everything we grow,” Koehn said. “Our big selling point with our produce is that the shelf life stays so fresh for so long because it hasn't been on a truck bouncing across the country.
“It's typically delivered within 24 hours of being picked right here in Wyoming.”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
