Saturday April 26, 11am – 2pm. 1194 Prospect Ave.
Demonstrations and Activities: Drying Herbs, Composting and Worms, Rainwater Harvesting, Starting seeds and planting, Music, Light Refreshments, Children Welcome, Contributions Welcome
News
January 20 Launch of Food Matters Film & Discussion Series
FOOD MATTERS: A monthly film and discussion series
Hosted by: Prospect Farm and the Brooklyn Commune
Film: The Power Of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
When: Monday, January 20, 6:30 PM
Where: Brooklyn Commune, 601 Greenwood Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11218
This is a free event. All are welcome.
Producing food in our industrial civilization consumes enormous amounts of fossil fuel energy. How will our food system be affected by oil depletion? This is a compelling documentary about the years when fossil-fueled food production in Cuba was devastated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the massive decline in Cuba’s available oil. Learn how Cuba successfully transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system dependent on the finite resource of oil, to one using organic, renewable methods of farming and local, cooperative urban gardens. It is our future.
Guests:
Tom Angotti, Professor of Urban Studies, CUNY; Founder, Prospect Farm
Kady Ferguson, Executive Director, Brooklyn Food Coalition
DOWNLOAD THE EVENT FLYER HERE TO SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!
Prospect Farm is a community garden with membership open to all. We improve and farm the land, while sustaining ties with local residents, businesses and organizations. We invite you to join us in our monthly Food Matters film and discussion series to share ideas, concerns, and inspiration.
Prospect Farm: 1194 Prospect Avenue between Seeley and Vanderbilt Streets in Windsor Terrace.
www.facebook.com/ProspectFarmBK
Prospect Farm Annual Meetup and Celebration – Sunday, Feb. 3
Sunday FEBRUARY 3, 4-7 PM
1511 10th Avenue, Brooklyn (Knights of Columbus Hall)
F/G Train to 15 St. – Prospect Park
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
Sandy and dirty
With Hurricane Sandy on its way, this weekend farm members came out to prepare for high winds and heavy rains. Fortunately, at this time of the year the growing season is pretty much over, so we don’t have to worry to much about damage to our crops. We’ve secured buckets and other composting supplies that might get carried away by a powerful gust, and our tools and supplies are snug and safe in the lovely shed we built last winter.
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.
Fall projects and volunteer opportunities
We’ve had a productive growing season at Prospect Farm and enjoyed a wonderful variety of fresh foods (exact harvest amounts are coming soon). Growing is winding down, but the fall is a great time for non-growing projects, and we need you to help!
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!
Compost drop-off now Saturdays only
Fall is upon us, and so compost drop-off at Prospect Farm is now Saturdays only, 11am-noon. This schedule will be in place through the winter and early spring.
In other composting news, Eileen, the composting coordinator at the farm, recently completed the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Master Composter certificate course. Congrats, Eileen!
Summer Harvests
Great things are growing at Prospect Farm: tomatoes are still in their high season, and there is eggplant, cucumbers, pole beans, chard, kale, tomatillos, melons, lettuce, and lots of herbs. We harvest three times a week at Prospect Farm. It hardly takes any time for a ripe tomato to fall off the vine, and other vegetables (especially cucumbers) grow so quickly this time of year they can get bigger than we want them to be. Sometimes the cherry tomatoes seem to ripen in the couple of hours we’re out for our Saturday workdays.
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:
Tons of Compost!
Prospect Farm has collected about 2,880 lbs. of food scraps in April, May, and June 2012. When you add this amount to the 2,780 lbs. we collected in the first 3 months of the year, that’s about 2 1/2 tons of food scraps diverted from the waste stream!
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!
Farm to Table In Just a Few Blocks
Recently on the menu at Bracaccio’s Food Shop: Cavatelli with Prospect Farm Sage, Fresh Ricotta, and Butternut Squash Seed Oil. Brancaccio’s is a Friend of Prospect Farm located just a few blocks from Prospect Farm in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. Now that’s hyper-local!
Composting takes a holiday for July 4
Due to the July 4 holiday, Prospect Farm will not be accepting compost this Wednesday. Composting drop-off will be back on its normal schedule Saturday, July 7.
“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!
Prospect Farm 