This fall, as the weather cools and the crops sweeten, you should take a big fat bunch of our rooftop kale and cook it…on a pizza! Thanks to neighborhood culinary heroes like Paulie Gee, we’re pulling pounds off our rooftop and putting it onto one of New York’s best wood-burning-oven pizza ovens. You can see our nutritious crop in action here on Hungry in Brooklyn TV.
This past week, a rainstorm turned to fierce hail in South Brooklyn. The weather destroyed the crops of many urban farming friends, including Added Value and BK Farmyard’s. The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm escaped bad damage, but we encourage you to support these farms with your volunteer hours, market purchases, and spreading the word.
This past week, we took the green tomatoes off the vine and called up local superpickler pro, Bob McClure of New York/Detroits’ McClure’s pickles. Delightful results: tangy, salty green tomatoes, the hot knock of our peppers, and a bit of hardneck local garlic from Keith Stewart’s farm in upstate New York. It was the best of all agricultural worlds (upstate and down) and a good beginning of the long goodbye to summertime foods.
This past Sunday, we shared a stunning almost-fall afternoon with two wonderful women: Anna Lappe and her baby daughter Ida. Daughter of Francis Moore Lappe and fierce authoress in her own right, Anna read to an eager crowd about the connections between agriculture and global climate change. Anna’s latest book, Diet for a Hot Planet, is a beautiful exploration of “the climate crisis at the end of your fork.” Both frightening in its narrative and empowering in its final message, Anna’s book is a good read for every type of eater (which is everybody). 
Glorious: the rain and cool air of fall has come early this year (at least for now). While we may wish for an Indian Summer in a few days, the break from six weeks of burning heat is welcome. The last burst of rain came on the final day of our summer apprenticeship program. Since late April, an incredible team of green thumbs have been making the produce at the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm a pleasure to cultivate, harvest and eat. From experienced growers to the wildly curious, the crew came on board for three days a week to learn agricultural techniques suited to rooftop growing, urban farming, and the time-tried practices of growing your own food. Thank you and best wishes to those farmers going forth (a few back to school, and some down to ground-level land): Karen, Doug, Jules, Midori, Amy, Tess, and Marla!
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!
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.
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!
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.
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!