 Happy fall fellow farmers!
Summer is winding down and school is starting up. After collaborating with the folks over at the Academy for Urban Planning in the summer months, construction is nearly finished on hydroponic systems that complement an already impressive soil garden at the school.
With both farming approaches running side by side, students will get to sharpen their math and science skills as they collect and compare data on their produce. Viva hands on learning experiences!
The systems at CDSC are humming along quite nicely these days as well. In fact, the successful partnership between CDSC and Boswyck Farms has earned us a spot in this year’s Seed Grant guidelines as a featured Urban Farming Specialist/Consultant . We are quite grateful that they included us in their documentation and look forward to bringing more greens to the communities that need them!
Any social service providers who are interested in building hydroponic systems to supplement their pantry food supply should check out the grant guidelines here at www.feednyc.org.
And with a new season comes a new face-lift for the loft farm. Over the past few weeks, the Boswyck Farmers have been working on a complete redesign of the systems at Dekalb Ave. While the rooftop farm at the Bushwick Starr has been our summertime pride and joy, we are eagerly looking forward to having the loft looking just as lush and lovely this winter as the Starr has been these past few months. We are reusing our building supplies as always, looking to re-purpose whatever materials we can.
PS. Keep an eye out on Chrissy from Chrissy’s Cooking Club, she is working magic with our produce at the farmers market in Bushwick!
Earlier last week, Boswyck Farms welcomed Margarida Correia from New York Bounty to the rooftop of the Bushwick Starr. Check out her interview with Lee, held at our “Willy Wonka-esque” farm full of heirloom produce varieties long unseen in supermarkets. Don’t forget to keep reading once you get over there– New York Bounty has plenty of fact-packed articles and updates about the rise of urban agriculture in NYC.
Believe it or not, roof top hydroponic farms can handle hurricanes just fine!
Once the winds and rain of Irene abated, we found the rooftop of the Bushwick Starr unscathed, save for some missing seedlings. Many thanks to Peter and Jacob from NYFloristics for their help getting our systems extra ready to withstand the storm conditions.
 Chrissy, of Chrissy’s Cooking Club, recently stopped by the Bushwick Starr, the location of our rooftop research and development. Chrissy’s Cooking Club (find them on facebook here) is a not-for-profit organization that promotes and facilitates all natural, from scratch cooking. You can find her at the Bushwick Farmer’s Market every Saturday cooking up some delicious foods, like french toast, blueberry buttermilk pancakes, and made to order grilled cheese sandwiches (pictured on right). The Corbaci Pepper, which was our first pepper of the season, was featured on many of the sandwiches and added a rich, sweet flavor. The Corbaci Pepper (pictured on left) is an heirloom variety that originated in Turkey and is a voracious producer, giving us unique yellow to red fruit. As more foods come in, we look forward to working with Chrissy and her crew to get our awesome local produce into her delicious meals!
Stephanie Berzon from the Brooklyn Food Coalition stopped by in May to check out the farm and interview Lee for the blog, “It’s Mad Easy Being Green”. She wrote a great piece about our farm, that you can check out here. This is a wonderful blog that follows the green movement in Brooklyn and the greater NYC region. She covers a lot of the urban farms that are popping up in the region and various local foods related news that’s happening. We love getting visitors to the farm and are fortunate that there are so many bloggers, journalists, filmmakers, and the likes, that are interested in what we are doing! Thank you Stephanie for stopping by! We highly suggest that after reading our article, you check out the rest of her blog because there is a lot happening with the greening of our neighborhoods and she does a fantastic job of covering it!
For the last several months, Boswyck Farms has been working at The Point in the South Bronx to teach an after school program with hydroponics. As the school year has ended, we have wrapped up our time with them, but are looking forward to partnering with this amazing organization in the future. The kids, mostly 4th and 5th graders have learned various grow systems and have built their own soda bottle systems which are currently growing fresh herbs. They learn basic botany, team work and get a chance to get their hands dirty in the coconut husk mixture we use in some of our systems. The kids also built two different types of drip systems using 5 gallon buckets and a raft system based in a Rubbermaid tote. They’ve even participated in aquaponics (although not with us).
The Point Community Development Corporation is a non-profit dedicated to youth development and the cultural and economic revitalization of the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx. Each of The Point’s programs is based on the principles of asset-based community development. Their programs and projects embrace the belief that the residents of the South Bronx, especially the young people, have the inherent vision and ability to transform their neighborhoods. For The Point, at-risk children and teens are not bundles of problems – they are wellsprings of solutions. 
Brooklyn Spaces recently stopped by the farm to interview Lee and learn more about our operation. Brooklyn Spaces is a fantastic blog that documents interesting spaces around the borough and contacted us to do a piece a few weeks ago. Thank you Oriana for the wonderful write up! Click here to read the article and add Brooklyn Spaces to your RSS Feed as Oriana posts some great pieces about other fascinating spots around Brooklyn.
Also, than you to everyone who stopped by the Bushwick Starr for Bushwick Open Studios this weekend. Though the “L” train was not running this weekend, we still had quite a few folks stop by and check out our rooftop farm. We met some great people and luckily, the weather was beautiful and cooperated nicely, despite being sandwiched between to scorching weeks. The plants are growing quickly on these hot days and we will be posting pictures soon!
We are busy on the roof at the Bushwick Starr this week getting ready for Bushwack and Buswick Open Studios! The Bushwhack Series is a performance festival devoted to the development of new work within the neighborhood of Bushwick. Performances are Thursday – Sunday at 8 pm. Also, Bushwick Open Studios is Saturday and Sunday from 12-6 pm. The Open Studios is a community event that showcases local artists, visionaries and businesses in the neighborhood, and is a great social event in Bushwick! We will be on the roof all weekend with our systems up and running. Stop by and see what we have growing, grab some refreshments and have a chat with us! See you next weekend!
The Child Development Support Corporation will be proudly harvesting the first heads of lettuce at 1 pm on Tuesday, May 24th. It’s so exciting that after many months of planning, construction and getting all the last minute glitches worked out, that all of the hard work put in by our crew, CDSC’s staff and countless volunteers and interns, has paid off! The normal harvest days will be on Wednesdays after this week, so that the greens will be at their freshest for the Thursday food pantry. The first harvest will be an heirloom variety of lettuce, but soon we will also be growing collard greens and bok choy. Our mission, as a company, is to decrease the amount of food deserts in NYC and help make fresh foods more available to people of all income levels. We are very grateful for the opportunity to work with the CDSC to provide fresh, organic greens to a portion of the Bed-Stuy community. We will be bringing more updates on these systems in the future, so check back in!
The folks from CUNY-TV stopped by recently to check out the system we built with the CDSC and see what we are all about. Check out the article.
Hydroponic Farm from CUNY J-School Broadcast on Vimeo.
This weekend is the premier of the Big Green Theater at the Bushwick Starr. We will be at the BGT Benefit Event on Saturday, enjoying some great theater! If you haven’t already bought your tickets to the event, we strongly encourage that you buy them in advance. The Benefit Event will have drinks, refreshments and a dj providing some great tunes, and most of all, you can step out onto the roof top for the second season unveiling of the roof top farm! We will be there all day today, working hard to get the system up and running, excited to get growing season off to a great start!
See you this weekend!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE2bSTJzEqk
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