OF LIFECYCLES AND LEASES

NewsCommunity

Jan 13

We’ve made the decision to radically scale back operations at our Long Island City farm in 2022. While the space won’t go completely dormant it will not be operated as the same commercial farming juggernaut like it has for the last dozen seasons. Read on for the full update.

New York - (January 13, 2022) - On a farm, we ask a lot of our ecosystem. We prioritize birth, growth, fruition. We celebrate fecundity and rarely laud the plant that has reached the end of its season, the stemmy stump left behind once we've harvested away the fruit and leaves. Businesses, as a whole, hold the same values, glamorizing the start-up, the capital raise, the scale-up. Over nearly two years, we’ve had the opportunity to step back and examine the health of our business, our culture, and our ecosystems. We’ve made space and time to explore what sustainability means at Brooklyn Grange: to our ecology, to our team, to our community. And what we’ve discovered is that in order to support healthful growth in certain areas of our business, we have to allow for dormancy and actively reduce our output. In nature, plants grow, then die back, and during these periods of withering and decay, ecosystems build themselves and balance is restored.

In this spirit of natural cycles, we’ve made the decision to radically scale back operations at our Long Island City farm in 2022. While the space won’t go completely dormant it will not be operated as the same commercial farming juggernaut like it has for the last dozen seasons. We will not be growing dozens of market crops, setting up a weekly Saturday farm stand, or distributing CSA shares at that location. Rather, we will plant the roof with a low-maintenance mix of sunflowers, cover crops, and peppers for our hot sauce. We will dramatically reduce the time we spend on that roof, and increase focus on our various other endeavors: farming and programming at our Brooklyn Navy Yard and Sunset Park farms; our new operation at the Javits Center and Staten Island’s Corporate Commons 3, and our various Design/Build projects all over New York City.

All the while, we will continue to hone our vision for our Long Island City roof and explore the multitude of ways that the location can best serve Brooklyn Grange, our neighbors in Western Queens, and New York City's ecosystem at large. Although it feels like we're closing a chapter for Brooklyn Grange and for our very first rooftop farm, we are confident about our progress. For farmers, no matter how long you've been doing this, there is always a moment of self-doubt when your soil is bare, and you need to trust that, in time, the seeds will germinate, and the buds and leaves will come back again. There is a pause before the regrowth occurs, and patience and trust are key to this work. Thanks to all of our neighbors in LIC for your support, patience, and trust, as we rest this field.