Download this image and poster it all over town! This month and next, to celebrate the amazing abundance of the end of the summer, we’re growin’ and cookin’ with some of our food heroes. This week it’s Van Leeuwen Ice Cream’s own Laura and Ben. Besides making some of the creamiest, finest quality, interestingly flavored and well-sourced hot weather delights, they also have spunky kitchen skills. Where better to hone your use of produce than in Bali (as they did, those sly cats), where the fruits and spices seem celestial in their deliciousness? This carrot-eater can’t wait to see what those two are going to teach us to make, Balinese-style, with local produce. Moreover, we CANNOT WAIT to have the little Van Leeuwen ice cream push-cart appear like a deus ex machina at the hot rooftop farm to serve fine flavors around noontime. Yum!
Learn to Cook Local!
Cucumbers to Pickles
July ends with cucumbers and August begins with pickles! Earlier this week we helped Shamus of Brooklyn Brine celebrate his fine company’s 1 year anniversary with a delivery of Rooftop Cucumbers. A swift text message let us know they’d been turned into a small specialty batch of whiskey pickles. This morning, thirty more pounds of cukes left the rooftop for 6 Points Brewery in Red Hook, where the talented Ms. Cathy Erway was concocting cucumber hot dogs for a Saturday food event. We’re not sure what either of these adventures will ultimately taste like, but we know our cucumbers taste good, so we’re off on the right foot.
Summer Markets Begin
Peppers turning red, greens refreshed after rain, and glorious onions coming out of the ground with the sharp, sweet juice of a good long spring: we’re back to market at the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm! Join us this Sunday from 10am-4pm as we pull carrots, radishes, turnips from the ground; mix spicy mustard salads, harvest basil of multiple types, and begin to celebrate the fruits of summertime!
So Hot Right Now
In our second week of tremendously hot weather and false promises from shallow, short rainstorms, the Rooftop Farm is certainly feeling the heat! Last year’s solid rains have never seemed further away.
New York City has some of the cleanest, tastiest drinking water in the country, so we’re doing our darndest here on the Farm to not use much of it to hose off our plants. The priorities are the newly sown seeds, the recent transplants, and our root crops–which need water to swell their tap roots and not instead go to seed. Crops on their own include the deep-rooted nightshades and cole crops, which, even as their leaves droop morosely, we’re hoping will draw upon the green roof membrane’s water reserves to make it through the next hot day.
As for your farmers? Annie & Co are wearing SPF 50, trying to keep the red neck from the rooftop at bay.
Top-notch top bar hive
If you think it’s hot outside, spend a moment with your hand inside (or just imagine) the inside off our hives right now. Without breaking a sweat, Meg Paska of Brooklyn Honey examines her top bar hive, as hosted by the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm. We’re happy to report despite the absurd temperatures (98*F today–seriously??) and suffering plants, the bees have been more productive than ever, generating a sweet, clear honey with the delightfully robust flavor we remember fondly from last year’s urban harvest. You go, girls!
Shortening days, lengthening arms
A day past the solstice, the daylight hours begin to shorten. Now is the time in farming when the seeds and transplants are set, and we watch as plants move towards fruiting–a sort of cruise control mode, in which vigilance against pests, hoping for rain, and making sure the chickens have lots of fresh water become the main preoccupation of the rooftop farmer.
To celebrate the transition of spring into summer, another practitioner of a patient art came up to the farm–neighborhood yogis! As the class raised their hands to the sky under a gentle rain, lightening began to crackle on the rooftop. We moved indoors to keep going, but later as the air cleared, went back up to the farm to eat lettuces rich with atmospheric nitrogen from the passing storm. Yum, and om.
“Bee” an urban farmer
As the sun set over the river, crops and skyline, Dancing Bee Garden’s Ross Conrad carefully lowered a frame sticky with bees and honey back into the top bar hive at Eagle Street Rooftop Farm. A class of rapt New Yorkers watched from above as Ross explained the parts and function of each section of the hive before climbing back up the staircase from the lower roof where the bees are kept to the green roof. One and a half hours later, everyone went home having tried fine raw honey, brains overloaded with information on the use of pollen, honey and propolis for health & healing.
Class workshops are offered at the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm as listed on our calendar. Educational programing is facilitated by Growing Chefs.
First Day of CSA
Yesterday, preceding a beautiful sunset, the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm held its inaugural pickup of the world’s first rooftop-based farm share Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Farmer Annie blogged about the importance of CSA in this month’s Atlantic. The June 8th 2010 share included lettuces (a rooftop custom-made mix), sorrel (recipe at GrowingChefs.org), eggs (chickens adopted from Liberty View Farm), and a freebie of mustard greens and fennel.
The next day, a love-letter came from a shareholder:
WOW!!!
these are some fresh greens:
spicy mustard greens….. check
amazing salad greens….. check
scallions pure and tasty ….. check
well done!
sarah and i are stoked.
see you next week!
sam
Many of our farm-fans have written to see if the CSA is full (it is). But there are a lot of farmers still looking for shareholders. You can find them at JustFood.org, NYC’s own CSA organizer. One such farm is our friend Adam Foreman, of Holton Farms. To get involved, contact him:
Main: 802.232.4207
www.holtonfarms.com
Chickens: Run!
This week the rooftop chickens got an exciting new addition to their coop: a 25-foot-long chicken run handcrafted by Brooklyn’s own hOmE. Over the course of a long, hot Sunday, designers and carpenters Evan and Oliver constructed a solid pine-wood mobile run while chatting with the farmhands, sampling sorrel and meeting the ladies (hens). As CSA members, the brothers can expect a long future of Tuesdays enjoying more rooftop produce, while the chikkies gambol in their new home.
Summer apprentices: go and grow forth!