Sunday, August 19, 2007

Red Hook City Farm, Brooklyn

The Red Hook Community Farm is situated on an asphalt basketball court in Red Hook, Brooklyn. They supply food to local restaurants, along with a fruit and vegetable store nearby. Like a lot of community farms, they have youth interns over summer. One advantage of the US academic year is the three months of summer. Enough time to really throw yourself into a project and learn stuff.There are huge piles of compost at Red Hook Farm and as I was walking around I wandered if they'd dug any of the asphalt up, or if they were growing food on top of it. As they explained to me, digging up the asphalt was too big a job. They get manure from the Bronx zoo and green waste from the city for free. The only costs to the farm is transporting this material to the site. So they even have fruit trees growing on top of the asphalt. Eventually they may break through, but until then they seem to be doing quite well.As I visited during summer holidays, there were lots of school buses waiting around.
Red Hook is like a big yellow school bus hangout.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How might I find out about volunteer opportunities to volunteer here?

Samantha Downing said...

I'd contact Added Value, or just go down to the farm and ask somebody. They're on the web at http://www.added-value.org/ and list their contact details as below.

Added Value & Herban Solutions, Inc.
305 Van Brunt Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231
718-855-5531

Looks like they have a farmer's market starting up soon too. Good luck!