Mark Bittman has a series of recipes designed to make the most of summer’s best tomatoes. Good thing, because we’re still raking them in, though the rate is beginning to slow down.
This week we harvested:
My harvest take this week
Farmers, our long national nightmare is over: after months of watering day and night, watching the tomatoes torture us with their stubborn greenness, imagining they would never ripen (ok maybe this was just me)… it is finally tomato time. Real tomato time, not silly little cherry tomato time.
After taking their sweet time through June and the first half of July, the tomatoes now can’t seem to stay on the vine. We went from zero tomatoes on July 20th to more than 20 pounds on July 30. And wouldn’t you know, they’re just delicious? I’m just starting to explore what to do with my bounty – luckily, the New York Times anticipated our dilemma and put out this series of summer-tomato recipes. I’m making the tomato stracciatella tonight!
It wasn’t all tomatoes, of course. Here’s a rundown of Prospect Farm’s harvests over the last two weeks:
July 20 & 23
July 27 & 30
On July 23rd we also sold a little of our harvest to neighborhood restaurants like the Brooklyn Commune and Crossroads Cafe:
Weekly harvest totals:
Week 3: 43.2 lbs
Week 4: 60.6 lbs (WOW!)
Other exciting developments: We have planted eggplant, a gift from a kind friend of the Farm. And the peppers have finally started to grow in!
Another fantastic week for harvesting at Prospect Farm! The cherry tomatoes are coming in like gangbusters and the garden has been generous with summer squash as well, including some massive zucchini! Most exciting for this novice farmer has been the basil, which is so much lovelier than any basil I’ve ever bought, whether from a grocery store or a farmer’s market. We’re growing types of basil I’d never heard of, including lime basil, with a fragrance will bowl you over!
We’re still waiting for the big tomatoes to ripen, but the first comer is starting to announce its arrival. And! – a new sight in the last ten days has been blackberries! No one was sure whether the blackberry bush would yield anything this year and it’s exciting watching them grow in.
We did not eat for free – a harvest day usually means a work day as well. We put in a few hours staking unweildy tomatoes and cleaning up the beds a bit, making sure the little things like basil don’t get completely shaded by giant things like squash leaves. It feels good to work for my food, but this tiny taste of agricultural labor is giving me a new appreciation for the effort that goes into making food on the scale of a true farm!
Here are our totals for last week’s harvests (July 13th and 16th):
Cherry tomatoes: 15.5 pounds (plus half a pound of green cherry Ts that had fallen from the vine)
Zucchini: 8.5 pounds
Cucumbers: 3.75 pounds
Kale: 1.6 pounds
Collards: 1.5 pounds
Peas: 1.55 pounds
Fennel: 1 pound
Basil: 1 oz
Total food harvested: 33.4 pounds!
It’s been 2-3 months since seeds/starter plants went into the ground, and by last week the Farm was finally ready to beginning harvesting some of the bounty! The members harvested on July 7 and July 9 (see many more pictures here).
For me – a new Prospect Farm member who had never set foot in a garden until this spring – the harvest was a chance to draw connections in my brain between the soil, the labor I’ve put in, and the delicious food I get to eat. I also learned a lot about process – how to tell when the peas are ready to pick, the proper technique for pinching leaves off of kale or collard plants, and that it’s okay to eat the green cherry tomatoes that have fallen off the vine prematurely.
All year long Prospect Farm will be recording the bounty of its harvests for a project called Farming Concrete, whose goal is to measure how much food is grown in NYC community gardens. We’re keeping a tally of how much of each crop we harvest. Here are the first week’s approximate totals (July 7 and July 9 combined):
Cherry tomatoes: 4 lbs 3 oz (about 180 cherry tomatoes)
cucumbers: 3 lbs 10 oz
zuccini: 10 lbs 12 oz
curly kale: 10 oz
regular kale: 1 lb 7 oz
collards: 12 oz
chard: 3.5 oz
mustard greens: 5 oz
peas: 1 lb 4 oz
basil: 2.5 oz
sage: 0.25 oz
oregano: 0.75 oz
squash blossoms: 0.6 oz
Total food harvested in week one: about 23 lbs 6 oz.
Each farm member chose to take evenly divided shares of some or all of the crops harvested on either Wednesday or Saturday. For my part, I left on Wednesday evening with 15 cherry tomatoes, a few sprigs of basil and sage, a few pea pods, half a large cucumber and more greens than you could shake a stick at. I enjoyed the food all week long in tomato sauces, sage-buttered pasta, sauteed greens with garlic and lemon juice, salads and more. It’s been a delicious week and I’m looking forward to my next harvest!
Hi,
This i my first post and my first year as a member of the Prospect Farm. I hope everyone enjoys the pictures of the harvest.
Please join Prospect Farm this Sunday at our Potluck Picnic. Bring a dish (labeled vegan, vegetarian, or meat) with serving utensil, a blanket, and your friends and family. We will be setting up on the peninsula at Prospect Park on the north side of the lake/duck pond Sunday the 26th noon to 5 pm.
Directions: enter Prospect Park from the Parade Ground traffic circle, go left on the main path. Go right when the path forks, following the edge of lake. Walk past dumpsters and bathrooms, continue to follow the water until you get to a field. Look for red blankets. Feel free to call Naomi for help: 917-535-4636
Please come to Prospect Farm on Saturday June 11th from 10 am – 2 pm to help clear the top of Prospect Farm for our Phtyoremediating ornamental plant garden. Bring gloves, drinking water, and any tools you may have. Adults only please.
AND!
From 1-4 pm we will begin to level a flat area for our 3-bin composting system. Prospect Farm has been successful collecting food scraps. Help us turn your scraps into rich fertilizer for our crops. Bring gloves, drinking water, and shovels. Adults only please.
Volunteer Sat June 11th, 2011
@Prospect Farm
1194 Prospect Ave, Brooklyn
10am – 4pm
Prospect Farm and Sustainable Flatbush are proud to present Brooklyn Dirt: Monthly Talks on Urban Farming and Gardening.
Dirt Talk Five: Permaculture
With Speakers Dan Miner and Olga Kuchukov
June 15th, 2011
7 – 9:30 pm
Downstairs @ Sycamore Bar and Flowershop, 21+
1118 Cortelyou RD, BK (Q train to Cortelyou)
$5 suggested donation (proceeds benefit Sustainable Flatbush & Prospect Farm)
Tell your friends you’re going on Facebook.
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Dan Miner has been involved with a variety of urban sustainability projects as a volunteer organizer with Post Carbon Institute and the Peak Oil NYC Meetup, and as past Chair of Sierra Club NYC. He wrote a 2008 report about how NYC can expand support for its climate change initiatives by preparing for higher and more volatile energy prices, and recently promoted the City’s white roof painting project in western Queens, referring 15 buildings to the program. At his day job, he assists Queens businesses as SVP of Long Island City Partnership. Dan completed a Permaculture Design Certificate program at Hancock Permaculture Center. He will discuss how the Transition movement’s organizing model and permaculture can be applied to NYC, and next steps in urban agriculture.
www.beyondoilnyc.org.
Olga Kuchukov has lived 34 plus years in NYC wondering why things are the way they are and how can they be better. As a massage therapist and solo sustainability warrior, she understands that change will come with a deep integration of thoughtful intention and habit, along with a healthy dose of practical new skills. After tuning in to the reality of our oil-dependent life, she traveled to Australia to help her friends who are building a transition town situation on their 6-acre property an hour north of Melbourne. She also visited the 2.5 acre food forest home of the co-originator of permaculture, David Holgrem. She will present her impressions along with viewings from the instructional DVD, Establishing a Food Forest with Geoff Lawton.
Sustainable Flatbush brings neighbors together to mobilize, educate, and advocate for sustainable living in their Brooklyn neighborhood and beyond.
www.sustainableflatbush.org/
Prospect Farm is a community group in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn that is working together to grow food in a formerly vacant lot, with the mission toward creating a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Farm that can feed and serve our community.
www. prospectfarm.org
Prospect Farm will continue to plan volunteer events but there is plenty to help with around the neighborhood too.
Benefit House Party for the Brooklyn Food Coalition & The Indypendent Thursday June 2nd fantastic Indian dinner cooked by professional chef and Indy editor Arun Gupta, dancing under the stars, surprise announcements, and special guests including Jeremy Scahill (investigative reporter & author of Blackwater). Eat, drink, and chat with other activists and celebrate the coming summer.
445 6th Street (upstairs, between 6th & 7th Avenues, Park Slope, $20 advance/$25 door. Tickets online: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/176136. Details: http://brooklynfoodcoalition.ning.com/events/bfc-the-indypendent-hosting-a
BIG Native Planting Day, at the Church Avenue Communal Garden, June 4th This Saturday, June 4th, from 11am-4pm, Sustainable Flatbush will greatly expand the native plant gardens already underway at the Church Not only is this a rare chance to break ground on a native plant garden that will benefit the Flatbush community for decades to come (learn why here), it’s an opportunity to learn about plants native to our area, the many benefits they provide, and how they can be used in gardens. Avenue Communal Garden at the Flatbush Reformed Church.
Saturday, June 4th, 11am-4pm at Church Avenue Communal Garden at the Flatbush Reformed Church
890 Flatbush Avenue (enter at East 21st Street and Kenmore Terrace). Details: http://sustainableflatbush.org/2011/05/30/big-native-planting-day-june-4th/
Compost for Brooklyn Block Party June 5th Music, raffle, bake sale, and lots of great workshops including: Composting with Brooklyn Master Composters; Recycled Bottle Terrariums with Rani August and Jennifer Dorman; Planting Herbs and Herbal Remedies with Kristy Bredin; Recycling with Sustainable Flatbush; Bokashi with Vandra Thorburn; Make Your own Necklace with Rebutton Studios; Citizen science with Farming Concrete; Green City Challenge; Bring your broken stuff to be fixed by the Fixer’s Collective; Cooking with Miriam Garron; Trench composting with the Prospect Farm; Compost Tea with Jenny Blackwell and Luke Halligan from the NYC Compost Project in Brooklyn; Pin the pollen on the pistil with the Flatbush Farm Share; and so much more.
Sunday June 5th at Compost for Brooklyn; Newkirk Avenue and East 8th Street Details: http://compostforbrooklyn.org/events/
Please join Tom Saturday May 28th, 2011 at Prospect Farm to plant some sunflowers, 11am.
Bring gloves, drinking water, and tools if you have them. Email prospectfarmbk@gmail.com with your questions. Directions to the farm are here.
Prospect Farm 