Tag: hurricane

Help Farmers, Post-Hurricane

We urban farmers escaped the storm’s worst after-affects, but we’re deeply saddened  by news of the ongoing problems caused by Hurricane Irene for our farmer friends and mentors upstate.  The timing of this bad weather will affect farmers now and during the winter months, as many of the end of summer crops they’d planned to store and sell throughout the off season (potatoes, onions) were lost last week under the waters of heavy rains.  Worse yet, we’re expecting seed prices to rise dramatically next year, as the farms that grow the seed (Johnnys and High Mowing Seeds, for example) were also under flood waters during the tropical storm.  

What can you do?  Buy locally and buy it now; buy more than you need and can it and put it up.  If you’ve never made tomato sauce, get out to your Greenmarkets and make it today.

Specific farms are rallying together benefits and buyer options for future crops–we’ll keep you posted as we hear about them.  On October 16th, 2011 the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm is holding an all-day snack attack with Rockaway Taco to benefit Evolutionary Organics, our mentors in New Paltz, New York.  Join us then and in the weeks before, shop locally.

Pre-storm preparations

Late on Friday night and early again on Saturday morning, the Eagle Street Rooftop Farmers prepared for the oncoming rain and stormy weather.  The ripen and close-to-ripe tomatoes and peppers were harvested, any loose buckets, boards and posts were brought downstairs, and the apiaries were weighted down with multiple cinder blocks.  In case of flooding, the nursery flats were carried up to the farm and weighted down between the rows of taller pepper and tomato plants.  The chickens were brought from their upstairs coop to the farm market room.  The coop is too solid to move (and weighted down, as well), but for the chicken’s well-ventilated coop, there’s always the threat of sustained sideways-blown rain. Dozens of tweets and phone calls came through all morning offering help.  The final step, after the drains were cleared and everything was sealed off?  Saying goodbye to this season’s sunflowers and cosmos, whose tender blooms may not make it through the wind.