It’s summer. There’s produce, plenty of it local. It’s coming to supermarkets, restaurants and Greenmarkets throughout New York City. But one place you won’t hardly ever find it at is a bodega, those convenient, often round-the-clock shops where you can get toothpaste and telephone cards or tonight’s dinner of ramen and chips. Unfortunately, this is the only type of grocery store that exists in increasingly more communities here.

That’s why the Healthy Bodegas Initiative was formed in 2005, aimed at increasing access to fresh food and improving the health of all New Yorkers through its bodegas. Targeting the most underserved areas, or healthy “food deserts,” the mission has partnered with many bodegas and local organizations, such as the Greenmarket of Grow NYC (previously called CENYC). Check out Kerry Trueman’s great interview with the initiative’s founder, Donya Williams, on Food Systems NYC. And read below for an interview with Justone Bossert, Director of NYC Operations for Red Jacket Orchards, an upstate, family-operated fruit farm that’s joined the cause.

But first, check out their Kickstarter campaign, and pledge what you can to help them innovate and implement solutions to bringing good food to bodega shelves in the places that need it most. If you’ve already been deluged with Kickstarter campaigns coming from everyone and your cousin’s uncle, I can relate. But one play of that video might make you want to pitch in. Read on for Justone’s explanation of what your donation will go toward. And hot tip: they’ve “just harvested some early season white cherries,” which should be available at the Greenmarket soon.

According to your website, Red Jacket grows apples, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, peaches and plums — and then of course, all different varieties of which. That’s a lot of orchards! Am I missing anything else?

JB: It is a lot of orchards, and that’s good. It means we are increasing the amount of locally grown fruit available and saving farmland from being developed. A big part of our success is always having the next new thing and being very focused on what the customer wants. It is our goal to make fresh, healthy fruit available  to all of New York.

We grow every type of fruit this climate can support. In addition to the one you mentioned we also grow blueberries, wild black raspberries, currants (black, red and champagne), red and green gooseberries, nectarines, apricots, prunes, rhubarb, and grapes.

How long has Red Jacket Orchard been selling at the NYC Greenmarket?

JB: We started attending Greenmarkets in 1992 and it didn’t take long for gourmet stores to start seeking us out and we have continued to broaden the types of places that carry our product ever since.

How did you get involved with the Healthy Bodegas Initiative?

JB: We were contacted by Michael Hurwitz of Greenmarket and Donya Williams of the NYC Dept. of Health about the city’s Healthy Bodegas Initiative. This program had made some great progress reaching out to Bodegas and getting people interested in selling healthy food, but did not have anyway to get it to them. That is where we come in. We are one of the few farms that not only grow food, but also distribute it. It is part of our mission to increase the availability of great tasting local fruit and having our own trucks allows us to take on the gaps in the existing food system.

How many bodegas have you partnered with so far, and how did the owners overall respond to your idea?

JB: We have only just started, but we are already working with a dozen or so bodegas and the owner’s have been enthusiastic about a distribution system designed to get them better product to sell to their customers. Bodega owners often want to sell fresh produce, the problem is that there isn’t a system to support them. That is the problem we are trying to solve.

samples of Red Jacket Orchards apples at Union Square Greenmarket

Many bodegas in my neighborhood carry some fresh fruit, but not enough people buy them. How do you hope to engage and entice the community to purchase them?

JB: The main problem with the fruit that you usually find in bodegas, if they have any, is that it doesn’t taste good. The reason it doesn’t taste good is because its probably old, not properly handled, and certainly not local. Our program aims to help the bodegas properly handle and display the product so that in can compete with the unhealthy stuff. When people try something fresh picked and tree-ripened their reaction is “Wow.” All you have to do is let people know that this fruit is different and let them try it. The pleasure they get from tasting it does the rest.

What do you think the biggest challenges are going to be with selling your product in these bodegas?

JB: The biggest challenge is that the entire food system is stacked in favor of the least healthy foods. Turning that around is going to take a long time, but the first steps are simple: get fresh local food to the places where people shop, handle it in such a way to ensure its quality, and let people know it is there and why it is different. The good food movement has succeeded because fresh picked local food tastes great. Once people get access to it and try it they don’t want to eat anything else.

What do you hope the best takeaway from this project will be?

JB: The goal of this project is to create a self sustaining model for distributing healthy local produce to food desserts.  The best takeaway would be for this model to be adopted and adapted in other places it is needed.

There has been much talk about the dearth of fresh food in underserved communities throughout NYC. Have you been inspired by or took lessons from any other initiatives for the same cause?

JB: We are lucky enough to be living in a time and place where many people are attempting to correct these sorts of inequities. There are so many groups and individuals that we learn from, but I think the most inspiring thing is the feeling in the air that comes from a lot of little steps happening at the same time. There is a lot of energy around solving these problems and I hope we all see a lasting solution come to fruition.

Aside from donating through the Kickstarter campaign, what else can we do to lend a hand?

JB: The Kickstarter campaign is important, it will allow us to expand the program to the point where it will become self sustaining.  Other than contributions to the campaign, going to these bodegas and buying the produce is a great way to support the initiative. We will be listing the bodegas we are working with on our Kickstarter page.

On Friday, as I sat in the converted shipping container outside of Roberta’s Pizza that’s home to Heritage Radio Network preparing for the first Cheap Date episode with my guests Keith and Rachel, we were interrupted by a series of loud, clanking noises coming from the roof above. “Can they stop farming now?” I think I muttered. But really, it was music to my ears. There is more than a tree growing in Brooklyn, or for that matter, cities all over: a bonafide agricultural movement. And it was happening above our heads on the rooftop garden of Roberta’s Pizza that day, as well as at farms, community gardens and backyards throughout the city. Tonight, Roberta’s Pizza is holding a celebration of all that, as well as what more can come. You’re welcome to come join the party, the dialogue, the movement — and with your contribution to a new rooftop farm next spring, one of the most delicious feasts I have ever heard of.

“The point of what we’re doing is to celebrate what we’re growing now, what people can grow, and what we can do here,” said Gabe McMackin, a chef at Roberta’s. Tuesday’s fundraiser feast is sourced heavily from farms in NYC proper, a habit that’s commonly part of the everyday menu at Roberta’s, too. The kitchen team is currently toying with hot peppers from Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, squashes from Queens County Farm Museum, root vegetables and all sorts of greens from East New York Farms and Added Value Farm — as well as produce from that garden atop the radio station itself. The rest of the food is from sustainable purveyors and small farms, like Heritage Foods USA and Basis Farm to Chef. The beer is all from Brooklyn’s own Sixpoint Craft Ales, and there will be some wine from Regal Imports, too.

Eagle Street Rooftop Farm (pictured at top: Roberta’s Pizza roof garden)

But the food at this table is just the start of story, the event’s founders hope to stress. The event is a fundraiser for a new 1-acre rooftop farm in Brooklyn to be planted this spring, one that will engage as well as feed the community. But it can only be done with their help.

“Going off grant money is fine and doable, but it doesn’t prove that an urban farm can be commercially viable,” said McMackin. “We’re doing something more difficult, but in the long term, more beneficial to urban farming by making a profit-seeking model.” The food from this farm will be sold to the community at reasonable and competitive prices, they intend, making eating locally and sustainably more accessible and practical for city folk. “We think it’s very ambitious,” said McMackin.

a simple reminder at Added Value Farm in Brooklyn

chickens at Garden of Happiness in the Bronx

And so is the food they plan to make for tonight. Stepping away from the preparations, Gabe shared a teaser of the menu with me yesterday. Here’s what your $150 donation to the cause will get you (menu subject to change, expand, etc.):

Canapes:
Rice and Beet Arancini
Bread Arancini with Housemade Salumi
Smoked Ricotta Crostini with Eggplant
Housemade Proscuitto (with some other good stuff)

Pizzas (an assortment of their finest)

Bouchot Mussels

Wood-Fired Oven Bread

Main Courses:
Roast Pork
(“cooked really slow, all parts from the head to the hoofs including the nasty bits”)

Roasted Root Vegetable Salad

Roasted Kale Salad (with guanciale or maybe some cheese)

Roasted Cauliflower and Romanesco Salad

Squashes
(including a red rouge vif de’tampes heirloom variety that “almost looks too pretty to cook”)

Heirloom Corn Polenta
(from Cayuga Organics, stone-ground, made the traditional way, “the mother of all polenta”)

Big Apple Crisp

Sixpoint beers:
Righteous Rye
Mason’s Black Wheat
Apollo Wheat
Bengali Tiger IPA
Sweet Action

Assortment of wines from Regal Imports

I’m not exaggerating, but I’ve eaten a chef’s tasting menu for a private birthday party at Roberta’s once, and it was kind of insane. It was served family style, and lasted a nice, languid few hours. And if the food and farming plans aren’t enough, there will be some featured speakers at the dinner, including wine expert Joe Bastianich (heir of you-know-who), Del Posto chef Mark Ladner, and urban farmers like Ben Flanner of Eagle Street Rooftop Farm. There will also be a raffle for prizes which include the likes of a dinner in your home for 4-6, which the fine cooks from Roberta’s will serve. (That’s what I call fine dining in.)

Tickets are available through this link, more details are at Edible Manhattan’s blog, and you’ll notice that this event is co-hosted by the Liberty Science Center and held as part of this nonprofit’s New Tastes Dinner series. The Liberty Science Center is planning an exhibit on “Cooking: the everyday science experiment that shapes our bodies, our culture and our planet” in 2011, and funds raised from this dinner will be split between the two projects (the Liberty Science Center plans to be involved in the new rooftop farm, too). You can bet I’ll be keeping my eye on what’s cooking with this exhibit as it’s coming up, too.

I recently heard a local farmer recommend to anyone wanting to volunteer at a farm, “Don’t go in July and August,” – when it’s all nice out and everything’s coming out of the soil like crazy. Go from April to June or so – essentially, now. I can’t say this is exactly why I went to Stone Barns to roll up my sleeves and help plant this week, though. The reason I went was fairly simple: it’s Stone Barns, and I’d never been there before.

A working farm and educational center, Stone Barns is perhaps the most lauded archetype for sustainable agriculture in the Northeast, and popular destination for eco-conscious foodies. Its tightly woven ecosystem includes cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, geese, turkeys and fields and greenhouses of produce across its 80 beautiful acres. It is the heart of Blue Hill, the Michelin-starred restaurant led by executive chef Dan Barber, which has a sister location in Manhattan. And it’s only 30 minutes from Midtown by train, located in Pocantico Hills, New York.

My cab driver looked confused when he drove up to the locked gate in front of a long driveway surrounded by sprawling pasture. “Closed Mondays and Tuesdays,” a sign read. It was Tuesday. “You work here?” he asked. “Uh, yeah,” I said, paying him $10 for the quick ride from the Tarrytown Metro-North station to the agriculture center. At least, for the day. And what a day I’d picked: the thunder and lightning that had woken me up through the night had lightened up to a steady downpour all morning. It was a good thing I was working in the greenhouse.

When I arrived at the greenhouse I found my friend Katarina crouched over a row of baby spinach. It was her first time volunteering at Stone Barns, too. I also met Olivia, the Four-Season Farm Apprentice who’d OK’d our volunteer visit. Since she’d taken up the post in January, Olivia seemed to have an intimate knowledge of every seedling inside the place. After a cheerful introduction, I was put to work on harvesting the spinach and lettuces, too.

a hillside view of some of the greenhouses

apprentice Olivia washes just-harvested spinach

Stone Barns’ main greenhouse is an enclosed half-acre of in-ground crops that grow with very little if any extra heating, even in the winter. There are several smaller, tent-like greenhouses to its side. As with all the crops on the farm, they are grown without chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. A large white tank just outside the greenhouse labeled “Compost Tea” helps to fertilize the soil. The “tea” is made up of only the debris and manure from the farm itself (and sometimes compost scraps from the staffs’ homes, according to Olivia), which are combined with water and aerated inside the tank for a period of time by a device somewhat like a fishtank bubbler before it’s ready to use. (Unlike regular tea, it does not need hot water to “brew.”) All the crops produced here, like the meat and eggs from the farm’s livestock, are sold at Stone Barns’ farm stand or used in the kitchens of Blue Hill.

Snapping leaf after leaf off its delicate stem with a serrated knife and plopping them into a basket, I was reminded of the chapter in The Omnivore’s Dilemma where Michael Pollan goes to Earthbound Farm and observes the migrant workers doing this backbreaking task all day under the hot California sun. We were spared the sun’s rays being inside the greenhouse (not that there was any outside, either), but crouching constantly is definitely not for the old or un-fit, I learned after just a few minutes of it. Olivia conceded this point, too — even with a bucket to sit on, this work was strenuous. (Katarina says she’s still sore from all that crouching, whereas I’d opted to sort of kneel out in the dirt and got really muddy, but ache-free.) But despite this discomfort, we had a good time chatting through the work amongst ourselves, and with an intern who joined in, who had just graduated college and was starting a summer at Stone Barns.

Leaving only the tiniest baby greens to grow, we moved onto transplanting a few rows of lettuces. Olivia showed us which seedlings to plant where — different varieties of mesclun greens that would benefit from intercropping. They each had interesting names like Regina and Oscart, names that for the most part never make their way to the market. These seeds were sown in small beds covered with netting to keep bugs out until the sprouts were strong enough to go in the ground. Not all of them make it, and placing the clumps of soil with their delicate roots into the holes we’d dug, I feared that some of these might not thrive, either. Olivia and Katarina assured me that most would. But after planting two rows of them (hopefully not too clumsily), I felt a certain attachment to these plants. How are they doing now? Will they survive? I guess I’ll have to come back sometime soon and see.

purple brussels sprouts leaves

a contented pig takes a nap

snow peas looking ready to harvest

Taking a break, we walked around the farm for a while, peeking into the chicken coops and livestock pens. We were treated to a walk-through of some of the field gardening operations by Zach, the apprentice field manager. The pastures at Stone Barns are hilly, which makes it a little more difficult to plow and to evenly irrigate. But with a little innovation, trial and error, it produces vast amounts of diverse crops. We also took in the rustic quaintness of the courtyard and surrounding buildings. Really stone barns, the circa-1890 complex had originally been a dairy farm owned by the Rockefeller family. After decades of disuse, Peggy Rockefeller began a cattle breeding operation on the land in the 1970s. Her husband, David Rockefeller, eventually restored the estate and established it as an agriculture center in 2004, in her memory.

Stone Barns’ buildings now house its offices, shops and restaurant

instructions inside the farm’s earth-friendly outhouse

Stepping into a barn, we saw a ceiling strewn with what looked like dried cornhusks and smelled like hay. There we met Jack Algiere, the Four-Season Grower in charge of the greenhouse and garden operations, who was generous enough to step away from his paperwork to chat. He explained the dried things were a particular variety of black soybeans he was drying out to collect the seeds. Plucking one of the round, matte black pebbles, he told us that he’d gotten the seeds from a friend who had cultivated them for more than thirty years; since then, he’s taken them from state to state in which he’s lived, and says he’s still learning about breeding for soy. The agrarian art of seed saving has been in great decline in recent years (as discussed in detail in a later chapter of Food, Inc., which opens today). Essentially, seeds have been patented, and most commercial farmers forced to use only certain patented (and often genetically-modified) seeds instead of saving their own. What Jack’s friend had been doing with these soybeans, and what Jack was taking up the ropes on, was what farmers had been doing for ages in order to breed the best product for their particular plot of land: selecting and planting seeds over several harvests, so that they gradually change. These black soybeans were very rare, according to Jack; he hasn’t seen or heard of them being grown by more than a few farms including his friend’s. He also found them to be a very practical plant, higher in rhizobia than most legumes, which fixes nitrogen in the soil beneficial to growing other plants.

They say you learn something new every day, but I couldn’t count all the things I soaked in during my day at Stone Barns with two hands. With summer near, the center’s farm stand will not only be overflowing with produce, but its workshops and activities much more numerous. I look forward to coming back another (non-rainy) day to help out in the fields — or to try the restaurant for the first time (read: I would not turn down a date to Blue Hill). The day Katarina and I volunteered happened to fall on Stone Barns’ five-year anniversary. The staff was looking forward to celebrating it that evening with beer and Mexican food. But a siesta the next day? Probably not. They are so committed, these kind and knowledgable staff.

See events, volunteer opportunities and more info at Stone Barns’ website

A rustic scarecrow looms before the skyline of Manhattan’s midtown skyscrapers. Under its watch lie more than 30 varieties of vegetables, fruits, flowers and herbs on a rooftop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. But its real scarecrows, the overseers of this rooftop farming project, are Ben Flanner and Annie Novak. I asked if they’d had any problems with pest.

“Lately, we’ve just begun getting some bugs. Both good and bad bugs. But even if they’re the bad ones, bugs are a good thing, because it means that they’re beginning to recognize that there’s an ecosystem here,” Novak replied.

The bugs are taking notice, and hopefully the general public soon will, too. Similar in mission to the NY Sunworks Science Barge project, in which the nonprofit forged a viable ecosystem on a raft on the Hudson, Eagle Street Rooftop Farm is further proof that agriculture can thrive in the unlikeliest of places.

On top of an industrial building overlooking the East River, just a stone’s throw from the Pulaski Bridge, sits the 6,000 square foot urban farm. The farmers hired a crane to pour 150,000 pounds of soil onto the roof and created an irrigation system to distribute the wealth of water. A cache of seedlings ready to be transferred to the soil on the roof sits just adjacent to the rooftop, grown from seeds purchased from organic seed savers like Seed Savers Exchange. A beehive has been set on another neighboring rooftop, and on the day I visited the farm, so did a local beekeeper who was excited about lending her expertise to the project. There was talk of building a coop to hold ten or so chickens on the roof. All told, however, the directors cite a modest budget for starting their project.

a young pepper plant

Last November, Ben Flanner read an article about Chris Goode in New York Magazine, and how he’d built several green rooftops in NYC, including his own in Soho. Then working in an office for eTrade, Flanner had been devouring books about farming all winter, and knew he’d wanted to do “something with it” that summer. The two mens’ dreams came together after Flanner contacted Goode about starting a rooftop gardening project. They eventually found an industrial warehouse on Eagle Street willing to host the rooftop farm. Owned by Broadway Stages, its cavernous interior is frequently rented by the film industry for movie sets. For a partner, Flanner was constantly referred to Annie Novak, a farmer with Kira Kenney of Evolutionary Organics.

Both originally from the Midwest — Annie, from Chicago, and Ben from Milwaukee — the two were inspired by the urban farming activity there. “Chicago is a great place for apiaries,” said Novak, who estimates there are over 3,000 are present in the windy city. While Novak has had rigorous experience in farming and farm education (she is also a Children’s Gardening Program Coordinator at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, school gardening programmer with Slow Food USA, and runs the workshop Growing Chefs), Ben cites no farming experience, “just passion.” He’d debated splitting his time between his office job and running the rooftop farm before quickly realizing the demands of the farm.

It was a sunny Memorial Day when I first stepped atop the rooftop farm. On it were two women who were volunteering that day, and throughout the next hour or so, several more volunteers would pop up. The rooftop’s crops were divided into two neat sets of rows about 100 feet long and 60 feet wide, with a wood chip-strewn walking path along the midsection and in between each row. The volunteers had just direct-sown radishes that morning. The directors estimate that close to 100 people have come through the farm to help out, going through one whole crop in a day, like radishes or scallions — many of which, according to popsicle stick-sized markers planted before each row, were only transplanted to the soil about one week ago. They looked almost ready to eat.

newly transferred scallions and beet greens

Taking a languid break, the farmers discussed inter-cropping the lettuces with tomatoes, so that the tall tomato plants would provide shade for its neighboring crops. Or at least, that’s what I thought I heard. Novak answered my hapless question to clarify this point with a breathless explanation on the plants just at my feet: because lettuces are one of those plants that go to flower when it gets too hot, and going to flower early will spoil the harvest, the tomatoes are inter-cropped for shade, but that’s not the case with the pepper plants that are inter-cropped with the radishes over in the next row, they’ve been put in the same bed because radishes take 35 days to harvest while the peppers take much longer, so once they’re done new crops can be put in its place.

“We want to teach as many people as possible,” said Novak, taking a seat along a bench of volunteers. Hence, my eyeballs needn’t have bulged with starry “teach-me” signs — this team is in it to educate. And without all the enormous response they’d received from various friends and volunteers, none of it could have been possible. In their call for volunteers last week, twenty people responded, out of the forty people on the email list. Both of the volunteers I chatted with had heard about the project at the Brooklyn Food Conference, too — Bruni Torras, who’d worked at Added Value farm in Red Hook last year, and Betsey McCall, who manages Murray Hill Greenmarket and teaches yoga. Learning how to grow plants can be intimidating for a lot of people, Annie observed, “because it’s a living thing and you can kill it. But just with experience you’ll get to watch how things grow,” she explained.

Ben Flanner, one of the rooftop farm’s founders

Once they’re ready to harvest, the group plans to provide local restaurants and other community organizations with their crops. But only very local ones — they plan to transport everything they grow by bike. Nearby Greenpoint restaurants might be in luck, like Anella, where the group often picks up compost scraps from. The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm might also set up a stand for passer-by customers later in the summer. Ben plans on growing some hops for Sixpoint Brewery soon.

At first, Novak admitted, she’d hoped the rooftop had been smaller. Now, she wishes it were 100 times bigger: “We could be growing so much more.” It’s all a learning experience, though. If it turns out to be that cabbage, for instance, is not a good crop for rooftop farms, then they’ll try other plants out for size. A diverse ecosystem is the first goal. And whatever crops flourish, they will find that they will; and those that don’t, that they don’t. Hopefully the lessons learned will become useful for later rooftop farmers.

That is the ultimate goal of its founders, setting the mold for future rooftop farms to come. While we can all use more freshly grown produce in the city, the projects stands a testament that it can simply be done.

“I just want it to be possible, and something that’s done all over,” said Novak. “It’s amazing how nature can be squeezed into NYC.”

For more info or to lend a hand, contact rooftopfarmer[at]gmail.com.

Though our boxes of produce have yet to start arriving in June, myself and eleven other members of the Crown Heights CSA piled into a van on Saturday headed east to our sponsor farm. (There are now more than 200 members of this CSA — ya missed out!) We arrived just in time to join some members of Long Island-based CSAs also paired with Sang Lee for a two-hour tour led by its owner, Fred Lee. He began by thanking Just Food for matching his farm with our groups.

Fred Lee of Sang Lee farms

Spread across three farms in the North Fork, Sang Lee is a family-owned farm spanning three generations. Like its neighbor, Garden of Eve (which I visited recently), it grows only certified organic produce: over 100 vegetables including Asian and specialty varieties. Fred and his wife, Karen, now operate the farm along with their three children and a handful of full-time staff, some of whom have been helping the family for twenty years or more. Though much may have remained the same in this tight-knit farm through the years, it underwent a significant change a few years ago, when Fred applied for organic certification. Standing at the base of a vast field of just-peeking lettuce leaves, Fred explained that the farm had been a conventional operation until it dawned on him that “there has got to be a better way.” Using practical horticultural and folk solutions rather than pesticides, such as splashing soapy water in the greenhouse to curb insects, was more sensible and safe for the environment, Fred found. He also feels that there is a botanical cure for every human ailment, as practiced for thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine and by many other cultures.

labeled seedlings in the greenhouse

citrusy-smelling lemon thyme

Going organic meant also that every plant on his farm starts from certified organic seed. Fred doesn’t agree with genetically modified (or GMO) seeds so widely used elsewhere. He brought up as an example the government’s use of harmful chemicals like DDT on immigrants arriving in the country, or the “wonder drug” thalidomide: “We didn’t know it at the time, but that had an impact on the environment. We acted too soon,” he reasoned. “We don’t know all the consequences with GMO products.” Sang Lee became a certified organic farm after a three-year wait in 2007.

hopping aboard the haystack ride

some of the Crown Heights CSA crew

Aside from pointing out these and other tenets about natural and organic farming methods, we were informed about the unique characteristics of soil in Long Island’s North Fork, transferring crops from greenhouses to fields for a longer harvest, and the importance of bees to the upkeep of their crops (the farm has several beehives, though one colony sadly fell victim to CCD last summer). While touting the principals of organic and certified natural farming methods, Fred made sure to emphasize that all farmers share many of the same values and principals. “All the farmers I know are really resourceful and hard-working,” Fred said, after cracking a joke that painted farmers in a buffoonish light. “That’s the way people tend to think of farmers working today, but it’s not the case.” For his part, Fred grew up on his father and uncles’ farms, but he also went to undergraduate school in Vermont and graduate school at BU. He was physiological psych major, Fred admitted with a laugh when I asked if he studied agriculture. But he also took many courses in botany.

just-picked purple asparagus, good even raw

a couple of Sang Lee’s specialty foods

With new CSA shares to service, new fields to till and a new harvest season approaching, Sang Lee seems off to a busy year. Fred’s wife and daughter Jennifer are avidly planning events such as dinners, cooking events and wine tastings at the farm over the course of the summer. You can be sure I’ll stay tuned in to those. And even if you can’t get down to the farm, or aren’t a member of one of their CSAs, you can now get a taste of Sang Lee in New York City. The Fulton Stall Market is opening on May 22, at the historic South Street Seaport. Sang Lee will be one of the small purveyors selling there every Friday and Saturday. In addition to fresh produce, they’ll be selling their freshly made prepared foods, like pestos, salad dressings, dips and jams. Of course, I love how so many of them have an Asian flair.

Not so long ago, I tended to associate Long Island with being stuck in squawking traffic on the LIE and guys in wifebeaters who wouldn’t think to eat an apple if the tree plopped one in his hand. True, the eastern trail of New York City never exactly conjured an agrarian idyll, replete with rustic farmstands and coastal pastures producing everything from grass-fed beef to tasty wines. But perhaps that’s just the Jersey in me speaking (ironic as it may seem, New Jersey and Long Island kids have a long, stupid rivalry). Because after a trip out to Garden of Eve organic farm in Riverhead, I was introduced to a world of old-school farming values being led for the most part by young and fresh-thinking pioneers.

Garden of Eve farm really began as just a garden — Eve Kaplan-Walbrecht’s, to be exact. In 2001, a friend invited her to sell some of her vegetables that she’d grown at a farmers’ market in Long Island. She made $40 that day, and decided to take gardening to the next level. Today, the farm boasts 70 varieties of vegetables, 20 herbs and 30 flowers, all certified organic, across its 100 acres. 500 Rhode Island Red laying hens run wild and free, producing rich eggs that keep the customers coming back. There are seven beehives, not so much for producing honey as to promote a healthy ecosystem. This spring, the farm welcomed a small handful of baby lambs to join their few goats, sheep and guard dogs, and next weekend, they’re planning to bring some piglets down from Vermont’s Tamarack Hollow Farm.

Along with her husband, Chris Kaplan-Walbrecht, Eve maintains a rigorously pesticide-free safe haven and believes in free-range, humane and healthy practices when it comes to food. A longtime environmental advocate, Chris grew into farming on his family’s conventional dairy farm. In a recent Long Island Press article, he lamented the exposure to toxic chemicals in that environment, and vowed to farm organic only for the benefit of the environment and human health. In addition to Garden of Eve, Long Island has seven other organic farms.

this feisty goat wanted a piece of me — my belt

a tuft of Tuscan kale

a lush greenhouse of pea shoots

While the sights alone were certainly a foodie’s paradise, my main reason for coming to the farm was to visit my friend Melissa (aka Midge Pingleton), currently soaking up the farm life as a live-in apprentice. I didn’t get to stay as long as I’d hoped, to help harvest and pack some of the last winter CSA shares (the farm serves ten CSA locations), so only got a taste of what it’s like to tough it out on the field from morning to dusk. I don’t imagine I would be very good at it. In late April, the field was windy and a week’s worth of rain had muddied almost every step. Nevertheless, I found Melissa and a handful of workers far, far down from the farmhouse in the field when I arrived, just finishing up their morning chores. Melissa was excited to find some kohlrabi she’d been searching for among patches of last winter’s crops.

workers pack just-harvested veggies into CSA shares

It’s an in-between week, or month, for farms in the metro area, straddling the winter and spring’s first harvests. According to the workers, the farm will “get crazy” with activity pretty soon. Along with Melissa, there are five other apprentices currently working on the farm, and six full-time staff including Chris and Eve. Their ages range from the early twenties to late thirties, most of them on the younger end of the spectrum. Many have worked at various other farms over the years. But Melissa (and many other young people in recent years, it seems) has taken to farming as an educational experience and conscious escape from city life. Previously a cook at Roberta’s Pizza and a Greenmarket Manager for CENYC, Melissa had been living in Brooklyn, and I might mention participated in almost every cook-off written about on this blog (including the s’MACdown, which she hosted). Her interest in food and where it came from was what drew her to farming, and her decision to embrace it hands-on for an entire season (March to November). Trading the subway for tractors and heels for sodden clogs, she works from eight in the morning to six in the evening, taking breaks for communal meals, and sharing living space with her co-workers. I can’t even really begin to imagine how drastic the switch must be. She noted that in the city, it was easy to pick up a snack of junk-food from a bodega. Now, several miles from any business that isn’t a farm, and between the work and a healthy, farm-fresh diet, she’s lost some ten pounds so far (not that she needed to).

Melissa’s pear tart

But all this hasn’t stopped her from cooking. During lunch break when I visited, all the workers gathered in the farmhouse for a family-style meal. They take turns at preparing the meals, and another is appointed the dishwasher. Though it wasn’t her turn, Melissa made a pear custard tart for dessert, which everyone dug into eagerly. While most workers hail from the states, two men are South American, via MESA exchange program. They speak little English, and are pretty unfamiliar with many of the crops grown on the farm, according to Melissa. Pointing to the tart at the table, one of the workers tried a few words in Spanish to describe it. The South American men nodded and sounded out a few more words in between bites, but for the most part, everyone seemed to be too busy enjoying the dessert to tie down an exact translation.

the farmstand’s store

Melissa, apprentice farmstand manager at Garden of Eve

As the busiest season for the farm approaches, it has some exciting programs up its sleeve. Thanks in part to Melissa’s expertise, the farm stand will soon begin serving lunch to the public, and a tantalizing, all-vegetarian menu is in the works. Visitors (not just goggle-eyed bloggers) will flock to the farm for tours and educational workshops. There is an annual Garlic Festival in early fall in which various garlic-oriented vendors will set up camp and a garlic cook-off will be held. And the farm will become a pick-up location for a raw milk club in the area. But most excitingly, to me at least, Garden of Eve will hold cooking classes this summer to the public. Most will be taught by Melissa. One will be taught by me, on July 12th. It’s going to be on vegetarian dumplings, of all varieties, using all sorts of summer’s bounty. And I just can’t wait.

More on that as the time approaches. For now, you can still visit Garden of Eve every weekend, or go to the McCarren Park Greenmarket in Brooklyn or Atlas Park Greenmarket in Forest Hills, Queens every Saturday to find Garden of Eve’s produce stand. If you’re a Long Islander (sorry if I’ve offended any of you with that intro), the farm sells at West Hampton Beach Greenmarket as well as right on on the farm, in Riverhead.

]]> http://noteatingoutinny.com/2009/04/26/from-gardening-to-farming-a-trip-to-long-islands-garden-of-eve-farm/feed/ 13 http://noteatingoutinny.com/2009/04/09/a-trip-to-apple-pond-farm/ http://noteatingoutinny.com/2009/04/09/a-trip-to-apple-pond-farm/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:52:26 +0000 Cathy Erway http://noteatingoutinny.com/?p=2704
It was only a matter of time before my love affair with small, sustainable farming would take me outside of New York City (yes, Melissa, I hope to visit Garden of Eve sometime!). No matter the rain, cold or wind we’ve been having lately. No matter the ice and snow that laced the rocky cliffs of the Catskills on the drive upstate — and up some 1,200 feet in elevation. It’s spring, at least on paper! And so I went to visit some sheep at Apple Pond Farm.

And goats! Like this bearded, curly-horned billy goat above, who made me feel as if I’d walked into a Grimm’s fairy tale. In a sense, I did enter an extraordinary place in Apple Pond Farm. A fully functioning, humanely raised livestock farm and renewable energy education center, it’s a gem as rare as rare goes, even in today’s day of renewed ecological awareness and “back to the land” interest. But I won’t flaunt my city-girl ignorance enough to call it “magical.”

a kindly sheep

guinea fowl perched atop a fence

Bought in the early 1970′s as a deserted auto junkyard, partners Dick Riseling and Sonja Hedlund spent several years transforming the land into an organic farm. Through solar, wind and horse power, their goal was to minimize its dependence on fossil fuels as much as possible. The farm is responsible for establishing the first on-farm wind turbine in the county, and employs a diesel farm truck that runs on used vegetable oil. Riseling has also spearheaded the “greening” of several neighbors’ homes with his free consultation, often calculating to the owners’ surprise that renewable energy is a cheaper option.

It might seem like no surprise then that when I arrived at the farm, one day last week, all the lights were out. Actually, the power had just gone out, and Riseling wasn’t sure if it was just his home’s or something throughout the area. Seated deep in an easy chair strewn with a lamb shearling coverlet, he didn’t seem to mind much either way. On the couch across the living room, also covered in shearling, I met Cheyenne, the farm’s current intern. Even though it was cold and wintry outside, the farmhouse was cozy thanks to an old-fashioned wood-burning stove, upon which my hosts placed a kettle of hot water for tea. After about an hour of chatting, the lights and electricity suddenly turned on with a hum.

pleasure horses munching on hay

a young lamb being fed from a bottle (by me!)

I can’t say I was much help at farm chores in the morning. Actually, there was little to do, since it’s still pretty much winter in the Catskills. All the animals — thirty sheep, slightly less goats, some hens and horses — were fed, and a group of sheep moved from one stable to a barn, so their fleeces could get dry before the shearer arrived that weekend. When spring starts setting in, many of these sheep will spawn lamb, and can graze on the farm’s grassy pastures. For the time being, bales of moist hay and for two wayward babies, bottles of formula, were fed. Also in the warmer months, the farm will become busy with visitors, who come for tours and ecological workshops. More interns will arrive to tend to the animals and land, and vacationers will rent out the farm’s guest rooms.

the farm’s compost station

You might be wondering why in the heck I came upstate, and to this farm. Well, besides the obvious escape from the city, I’m pleased to have an exciting project with them in the works, very soon to be announced. And where’s the beef — er, Easter lamb, sheep’s milk and cheese? It’s all connected, I promise. Though eating may have been (for once) the lesser of my concerns after meeting all the animals and the conscientious owners over my brief visit at Apple Pond Farm.

colorful roosters sunning on a lawn

It might be a far cry from the aforementioned upstate farm in scope, but the humble farm in Queens is on its way to becoming what Agricultural Director Michael Grady Robertson described as a more “blue collar” Stone Barns. As described in a recent New York Times article, Queens County Farm Museum has undergone major transformations in the past year that’s hoisted it from a mere historic landmark and barnyard animal petting zoo to a viable farm producing sustainable crops and humanely raised meat, which are sold at the Greenmarket. The farm was originally built in 1697 as a family farm. Since then it’s withstood wars, fended off development and has survived the virtual flight of farming in New York City proper.

the farmhouse’s kitchen hearth

the circa-1697 house

One can appreciate both the farm’s past and future while touring its 47 acres. The old farmhouse, which has been restored to its 1855 appearance, offers a glimpse into 19th-century life (humbling for all those complaining about poorly equipped studio kitchens). The old-fashioned candies and other souvenirs of “simpler times” found in the gift shop are now accompanied with fresh eggs from the cage-free hens down the path ($4 a dozen). Over by the greenhouses, well-tended micro salad greens sprout from the soil in their cold frames, concrete plant beds with fiberglass tops that are closed whenever frost might threaten. This week, the baby beet greens, spinach and frisee are looking particularly fetching. Robertson explains that these sort of lettuces can only be picked a few times before they’re done for the season, and a grass-like “cover crop” will go in the beds to nurture the soil before they house their next plants.

spring lettuces grow in cold frames

some just-picked baby beet green plants

At one of the animal pens, visitors rub the big belly of a spotted pig from behind a short fence. At eight months old, the hog is already 250 pounds of pork (the average lifespan of a commercially-raised pig is considerably less, often slaughtered at 4 months). But in a few days, Robertson tells visitors while covering the pig’s giant, flopping ears, the pig will be sent to the slaughterhouse. (And consequently provide the farm’s Greenmarket stand with its spring supply of pork cuts and sausages.)

“Aw, I better not get attached to him,” says one visitor.

This kind of lesson is everyday life on a farm. The pig seems less inclined to follow it, though. Robertson hops out of the pit and the Old Spot, yearning another pat, follows him along the fence. “Let those people pet you,” Robertson tries to direct him. The pig drops his head. I lean over the fence and give the coarse-haired creature a rub under the ears.

a friendly spotted pig warms up to visitors

the first egg of a new chicken flock

A new-ish flock of Rhode Island Reds has just produced its first egg on the day I visit. The brown, small-ish (I’d say “medium” if I were buying a carton of them at the supermarket) egg sits lukewarm atop wood chip-strewn nests in the chicken coop. In another few weeks, this group of roughly 100 birds will start producing some 80 eggs each day. A few pens over, another flock of Rhode Island Reds are slightly older, and more accustomed to human contact. Eager to inspect their intruder, the chickens gather in the pen outside their coop to swarm me, pecking at my boots.

chickens and me

Ducks, geese, goats and more pigs occupy several more patches of land along the farm. There is a lone brown cow that looks to be the grizzled great-grandmother of all cows. And that was pretty much my tour. I’ll admit that most visitors aren’t really supposed to walk into chicken pens, or necessarily get to interview the farm’s agriculture director, so food blogger perks are on display in this post. And okay, I didn’t really take the subway to the bus to get there, but received a ride to the farm at the mercy of a friend. Please take my apology if the chicken coop part was misleading (not that everyone wants to get pecked by a bunch of hens). I can assure, however, that you’ll have plenty to soak in at this historic, and still-evolving farm in Queens. Plus, hayrides. I didn’t get to go on one of their famous weekend hayrides.

visit Queens County Farm Museum‘s website for more info, or purchase products from the farm at Union Square Greenmarket every Monday.