Greenpoint Rooftop Farm Visit, Oct. 3rd

Sarah Stewart from SAS is organizing a rooftop farm tour in Greenpoint. If you want to attend please be sure to send her an RSVP. Her contact info is in the announcement:

Urban agriculture is an exploding in many unique ways in New York City; every corner seems to offer the imagination a new place for a community garden or backyard farming. In the case of Rooftop Farms, 100 tons of soil were lofted to the top of a factory in Greenpoint in an attempt to prove just how creative one can be to get fresh food to a community. Join me in touring this amazing farm.

Saturday, October 3
5:00 pm (through sunset)
Greenpoint, Brooklyn (more directions for those who RSVP!)

We will be led by Annie Novak, one of the founding members of the Rooftop Farm, who will show how a defunct bagel factory was turned into a proper veggie producing farm through hard work and ingenuity.

You can read lots more about the farm here <http://rooftopfarms.org/>. (Or through a good article More Than a Tree Grows in Brooklyn)

If you're interested in coming along, please RSVP to sastewar@gmail.com. A suggested donation of $5/pp is asked to help the farm.

bk farmyards

take a look at this video on bk farmyards


NYC's Cool New Backyard Farms: Growing More Than Just Produce from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

The bk farmyards mission statement:

bk farmyards is a Brooklyn based decentralized farming network providing local food to reduce the city’s reliance on fossil fuels and offering local jobs to boost the economy. We are seeking partnerships with developers willing to temporarily transform their idle land to farmyard; homeowners who want to eat from their own yard; and city agencies holding under-utilized land. Our strategy is to stay nimble, growing food between the cracks of urban development.

Weekly Meeting Report 9.23.09

At today's meeting Olga and Alicia talked about the garden design and presented some of their plans. We all agreed that we need to do more research into the construction of the circular berm. We also distributed more copies of the Garden Survey--please let us know know if you'd like some copies! The plan is to publish the results of the survey next week.


Note: The garden club is planning a kick-off meeting for new members on Wednesday, October 7th. Let me know if you'd like to be involved!

College Garden Guide

The College Garden Guide is a fantastic resource. Take look at the links to sample garden proposals in Appendix E .

Weekly Meeting Report 9.17.09

At today's meeting we reviewed:

• The garden society's participation at Student Club Day (9.15.09)
• The campus garden survey (I'll post on that separately)
• Plans to apply for official club status w/ SGA

We decided:

• To distribute more copies of the survey to faculty, staff, and students
• To move the weekly garden meetings to Wednesdays (instead of Thursdays) from 12:30-1:30pm

Next week's meeting will be held on Wednesday, September 23rd in the Rose Garden. We'll relocate indoors if it gets too cold. Alicia & Olga plan to share their recent work on the garden design. In the second half of the meeting we'll split up and distribute copies of the survey around campus.

Prattfolio Food Issue

In case you haven't seen it already, here's a link to the Prattfolio Food Issue.

From Tom Schutte's introduction:

"Many Pratt-trained designers and thinkers have gone on to create products and environments that involve food. Pratt alumni have designed such helpful kitchen tools as the OXO Good Grips line of products and the Cuisinart food processor, as well such high-end restaurants like The Modern at the Museum of Modern Art. Pratt-trained fine artists have used their skills to examine that place where food intersects with our emotions, to comment on the relative value of food in our societies, and to make statements about the political realities wrought by food and lack of access to it. Graduates from Pratt’s Food Science and Management program are keeping the legacy of that program alive with their work in food safety and technology, nutrition, and culinary arts."