Inviting everyone who has helped out and who is interested in getting involved to celebrate our third birthday, meet with the farmers, have good food and fun! Special guest Nancy Romer of the Brooklyn Food Coalition will speak. Prospect Farmers will report on the 2012 season and share plans for 2013.

All are welcome: members (past, present and future), volunteers, and neighbors. Please RSVP to prospectfarmbk@gmail.com

Our biggest concern was related to our fruit tree prep project, which has involved clearing a large area of the upper hill on the farm and creating terraces reinforced with walls made from rocks and rubble conveniently located on the land.

After finishing up some of the terracing, we mixed in compost to prep the soil for the trees and covered the ground with burlap coffee bags secured with rocks. This should help keep the rain from washing loose soil away and onto our lower beds.

Hard at work in the herb bed this summer

Our big project for the next few weeks is planting six new fruit trees. We’re excited to be getting a donation from MillionTreesNYC of two plum trees, two apricot trees, and two apple trees. The trees will be delivered in November, so in October we need to clear and prepare places for them.

We welcome volunteers to come help us out with fruit tree prep and planting (and any other farm tasks that need to be done) on the following dates:

Sunday, October 7, 12-3pm
Sunday, October 28, 12-3pm
Saturday, November, 10 1-5pm

Once the fruit tree project is done, we hope to start building a covered platform where we can hold gatherings. Stay tuned for more info and volunteer opportunities!

In other composting news, Eileen, the composting coordinator at the farm, recently completed the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Master Composter certificate course. Congrats, Eileen!

We track the amount of all of our harvests as part of Farming Concrete’s Crop Count, a community-based research project to track how much food is grown in NYC’s community gardens and school gardens. Here’s a sample from a couple of our harvests in August:

Last year Prospect Farm received financial support through NYC-based crowd-resourcing platform ioby to build six new composting bins. Those bins made it possible for us to expand and improve the composting operation at the farm. We owe many thanks to our donors, as well as to our team of compost monitors and all the neighbors who save their food scraps and bring them by at our two weekly drop-offs.

Farm members and volunteers building the new compost bins in 2011

Keep those food scraps coming!

"Black gold" from the Prospect Farm composting bins

Learn about composting!

Prospect Farm’s composting guru, Eileen, will be giving a short lesson on composting during compost drop-off hours this Saturday, July 7, 10AM – 12PM. All are welcome!

If you’re not familiar with lemon balm, it’s an herb in the mint family that looks quite a lot like spearmint but has a delicate lemony fragrance and flavor. When I was growing up it grew like a weed around our house, but we rarely used it except for an occasional garnish on a glass of iced tea. But there is much more you can do with lemon balm. It’s lemony-minty flavor makes it perfect for refreshing beverages and cocktails, like the Honey Lemon Balm Spritzer, Lemon Balm Martini or the ridiculously good-sounding Rhubarb Lemon Balm Spritzer.

Here’s our own recipe for Lemon Balm Simple Syrup. As the name suggests, it’s an incredibly easy way to try out lemon balm and has many uses: stir into carbonated water to make a soda, add to lemonade or iced tea, use as a mixer in cocktails, or drizzle onto vanilla ice cream.

LEMON BALM SIMPLE SYRUP

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

6 sprigs lemon balm

Combine water and sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and stir until sugar dissolves completely, about one minute. Remove from heat. Immediately add lemon balm sprigs to the mixture, pressing gently on leaves with a spoon to muddle them a little. Allow to sit for about 15 minutes, then strain the syrup into a glass jar. Store in the fridge up to two weeks.

Note: This recipe works well with a number of herbs, including mint, lavender, and rosemary.

One-time volunteers are welcome. Bring water and work gloves or tools if you have them.