Go Seeds!

We’re having a T-shirt drive to raise money for our farm. Send us your old, light-colored, unprinted tees, and we will make them look awesome and then sell them.

Drop off your T-Shirts at Roberta’s or mail them to:

Roberta’s
ATTN: T-SHIRT DRIVE
261 Moore St
Brooklyn, NY 11206

Or drop them off in person with Chris, Gwen, Ben, Brandon or Anastasia.

Congratulations to Frankie’s Spuntino,  whose meatballs were elected best in the house by the judges and guests alike.

Special thanks to all of our contestants, including Frankie’s Spuntino,  Bamonte’s, Roebling Tea Room, The  Meat Hook and Roberta’s. All of the meatballs were amazingly delicious, and we can’t wait to bring out everybody again next year for the Second Annual Slapdown!

Finally, we need to extend a big thank you to our judges, Gina DePalma, Valentina Angeloni, Josh Ozersky, Eric Sherman, Jessica Amason and Patrick LaFrieda, our generous sponsors at Dairyland, Bacardi, and Union Beer, all of our volunteers, and especially our gracious hosts at Brooklyn Kitchen.

First Annual Brooklyn Grange Meatball Slapdown

Friday, January 15th at 8pm

The Meat Hook – 100 Frost Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 (map)

Join hosts Brooklyn Grange and The Meat Hook for the First Annual Meatball Slapdown! We’re bringing out five of New York’s top Restaurants to compete in the ultimate culinary contest. The contenders include Chefs from Frankie’s Spuntino,  Bamonte’s, Roebling Tea Room, The  Meat Hook and Roberta’s.

Sample New York’s best Meatballs (served with pasta), vote for your favorite, and take advantage of the open bar! Plus it’s all to support our farm, so you can get stuffed and tipsy without the guilt.

SOLD OUT!!

And now that we’ve shaken off the holidays like snow from our boots, it’s time to get down to business put all our ducks in a row before planting time rolls around in March. On his way back from Wisconsin the other day Ben wrote up a to-do list for us. It’s a wee bit long, but luckily there are six of us and we’re up for the challenge. Here’s where we’re at:

- Raise $100,000: Although Daunting, this is a task that we’re psyched to complete. We’ve already had three fundraisers, and they were a blast. This month we’re going to be holding a star-studded Spaghetti and Meatball contest with our friends at The Meat Hook, plus we’ll have another big food event at Roberta’s in February. More on this soon, and if you feel like contributing today, visit our Donate Page.

- Get incorporated: We are, after all, a small business, and like all businesses we need to register with the state and get a tax ID number and all that good stuff. Luckily, we have an awesome pro-bono attorney who is holding our hand through the process.

- Write/Sign a lease for a roof: We’ve got a roof, kind of. It’s not actually “ours” until we sign some papers. And it’s going to be a creative exercise to write up a lease that explains in legal jargon how we’re going to build a farm on a roof. I’m glad I’m not the one who has to do it.

- Plan out planting calendar, buy seeds: This one’s going to be fun, although it’s sure to be a lot of work. The goal is to get a maximum yield (both in volume and price) out of our farm, but we’re still going to want to have fun and grow some interesting stuff. Last year Ben grew some cool (but not necessarily lucrative) crops – like hops that he gave to the guys at Sixpoint – and I’m sure that we’re going to end up experimenting at the new farm, too.

- Make materials list, buy materials, install: Yikes. if we plan to plant in March, it means we have just over two months to get this together. Let us know if you want to help out with the installation – we’ll need lots and lots of volunteers! (write to brooklyngrangefarm@gmail.com)

And this isn’t even the half of it. We need to register as a farm with the Agriculture Department, we have to work out compost and drainage, we’re probably going to have to get a truck (preferably something with 36″ wheels, flood lights, and custom decals), and we still don’t even have a logo.

Happy New Year, time to get cracking.

*Just kidding, we can only afford one robot, so this year robot labor will only account for 35% of our workforce.

Today is the winter solstice, and a snowy one at that.  Brooklyn is blanketed in about 10″ of powder, the kind that finds apartment dwellers staying inside and huddling around whistling radiators.  You might think this weather would bum out an urban farmer, remind her of how long it’ll be before the last frost and first seedlings of Spring, but in fact the snow is a farmer’s ally.  In rural areas, snowfall is crucial to healthy water levels in  rivers, lakes and acquifers, and without sufficient precipitation agrarians would be faced with their worst enemy: drought.  Snow plays another crucial role in our world of urban agriculture: snow makes rooftop farming possible.  The propensity for big blizzards like the one we experienced this weekend are exactly why structures in the Northeast were built to withstand loads as heavy as a couple tons of wet soil and row upon row of ripe, juicy heirloom tomatoes.

So today, on this white winter solstice, we’re optimistic as we look ahead.  We still have a couple punishing months before winter abates, but the days only get longer from here.

Never a dull moment, this morning Shamus stopped by with about 15 empty bushels from his pickling – so our crate collection has begun!  Let’s hope City Winery gets their big shipment of grapes again this Spring – those famous white bins are so rad.

Get ready, Summer!

And the soil hunt continues.  We know what worked at Eagle St.  It’s a good light compost, however it’s not cheap and has to be shipped a couple of states.  I met Paul Mankiewicz last night, the very intelligent and knowledgeable inventor of the light-weight rooftop Gaia Soil.  I can’t wait to get my hands on it, blend with some Hudson Valley compost, and start some testing with Brandon. I still can’t help but wonder – can we create our own compost blend?

Next stop: Crane!  Would anyone want to take a guess at how many pizzas = a free crane to lift a million pounds of soil onto a roof?  Just kidding, sort of.

Coming soon… plant selection updates.  What does everyone want to see us grow? What do you want to eat?

And… we have some cool t-shirt plans in the works! Save your old shirts (old, stained, holed – no worry!). We’ll have a plan for them very soon.

Talk to y’all soon.
Ben

Thanks to bobo, our sponsors, and everyone who came out Monday night in support of the farm!

A holiday cocktail  party and fundraiser for our one-acre rooftop farm!

Join Brooklyn Grange and friends—chefs, restaurateurs, food enthusiasts, and farmers—for cocktails, snacks, and bluegrass at bobo.

Monday, December 14
7-10PM
180 West 10th St. at 7th Ave (map)
Tickets: $50

Tickets are limited, so please order now at our Events Page.

This Thanksgiving I went upstate for a traditional family feast at my uncle’s farm. He lives outside of Cooperstown on several dozen acres complete with hay fields and pasture and woods and a creek. I always assumed that some day I would move out to the country and buy a farm like his to satisfy my unrelenting craving to be a farmer, but these days that bucolic destiny is fading fast as I come to terms with the reality that there’s just too much farming to be done here in Brooklyn.

There aren’t too many things that my uncle grows on his land that I can’t grow on a roof. Except perhaps sheep. A small herd of heritage breed grazers is likely too much for our roof farm to handle – although we could certainly set up a confined feeding system in somebody’s basement, it would be better to leave the sheep upstate in their vastly more humane pasture.

But if sheep are out of the question, that doesn’t mean we can’t raise something smaller. Brandon and Ben have been rearing bees, and we’re currently drafting plans for a fifty-bird chicken coop at Roberta’s, which will provide the restaurant with all its eggs starting next spring. Why not put some chickens on the roof, too? Or maybe some rabbits?

Last month we were visited by Novella Carpenter, a trailblazing urban farmer who raises all sorts of small game at her urban lot farm in Oakland, CA. She stopped by Roberta’s to teach a bunch of eager and edgy foodies about the ins and outs of rabbit slaughter and butchering. Unfortunately, she had to go back to the West Coast, leaving but a few puddles of bunny blood and a bunch of energized urban farmers in her wake. Hopefully we can get her to come back next fall in time for Brooklyn Grange’s very own rabbit slaughter – we’ll provide the rabbits if she brings the knife.

To learn more about Novella Carpenter’s work, visit Ghost Town Farm

To contribute to Brooklyn Grange, visit our Donate Page