The state recently awarded the Watertown Schools a grant to run its farm-to-school program, including its Freight Farm. Watertown Public Schools has received more than $80,000 in state grant funding to continue its farm-to-school efforts, expanding learning opportunities for Watertown’s students while also increasing local food production.

The freight container is not just a teaching tool but also provides fresh produce for students around the district.

Known as a Freight Farm, the container is filled with walls outfitted with equipment to water and nourish hundreds of plants, and lights to help them grow.

The school’s child nutrition team recently started experimenting with two vertical hydroponic growing systems.

"It started as like kind of a pipe dream idea over the summer," said the school's child nutrition coordinator, Megan Grippa. "We had someone from Fork Farms, where we purchased our hydroponic farms from, speak at my conference and I heard a little bit of her speech and was kind of inspired."

Amanda Estes, 17, harvests green star lettuce on Friday, Oct. 17, 2025, grown at Germantown High School's Flex Farm, an indoor mobile hydroponic farm from Fork Farms in Germantown, Wisconsin. Estes, a vegetarian, said she has learned a lot about plants' life cycles while participating in this class.

"We can feed the entire cafeteria with the lettuce we produce here. I feel like I'm making a difference in our community.