January 20 Launch of Food Matters Film & Discussion Series

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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

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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

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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.

wallbuilding

wall

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.

 

layingburlapsacks

Fall projects and volunteer opportunities

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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!

herbbed

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!

Summer Harvests

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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.

Cherry tomatoes

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:

Prospect Farm harvest tally

Tons of Compost!

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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!

Composting takes a holiday for July 4

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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.

Compost

“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!

Lemon balm recipes for hot days

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Prospect Farm has been fortunate to have a great crop of herbs growing in our raised beds, containers, and interspersed here and there in the in-ground growing plots between tomatoes or kale plants. Before I left the farm after our work day yesterday, I snipped some several sprigs of what I thought was mint, but turned out to be lemon balm.

lemonbalm

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.