Results tagged “addedvalue”

Red Hook residents held a demonstration Saturday to protest a concrete factory poised to open between a park and the Red Hook Community Farm, one of the city's largest urban farms. The protesters are worried air near the plant will be polluted, and the organic produce will be coated with concrete dust. But the site, located by the Beard Street Ikea, is zoned for heavy industry, and the owner of the company assures the Daily News his plant will have "a lower carbon footprint than most of the concrete being made today." That doesn't placate pint-sized protester Matilda Armstrong, 11, who volunteers at the farm. She tells Brooklyn Paper, "Putting a cement plant right next to a park — how stupid can they be? They should put it in the desert so it doesn’t affect anyone." An aide to state Sen. Velmanette Montgomery is less cute: "I don’t think they appreciate the density of this area and how litigious New Yorkers can be. If you’re opening a cement plant in an area with a 40-percent asthma rate, you’d better open your pocket book, because you’re going to be spending a lot of time in court."

When the city demolished a Coast Guard housing complex on Governors Island last October, one official promised it wouldn't "sit vacant waiting for future park funding." And believe it or not, it's true! The Brooklyn nonprofit Added Value is already using the space for a three-acre organic farm. There's a nice story on City Room today about the project, which brings teenagers to the island to teach them about sustainable and local food. The farm is expected to rake in as much as $25,000 this year through sales at a farm stand and the island's new Water Taxi Beach, which opens July 4th weekend. Squash, tomatoes, sunflowers, eggplants and groundcherries are expected by the end of July, and the proceeds could fund stipends of $1,400 for as many as 25 teens who work at the farm. Ian Marvy of Added Value says, "The average household income in Red Hook is around $14,000. You're increasing a family’s income by 9 percent by growing tomatoes." Volunteers of all ages are also welcome to get their thumbs green every day Governors Island is open to the public: Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

The case for locally produced and consumed food will once again be discussed next Tuesday at a Museum of the City of New York forum that includes Blue Hill chef/owner Dan Barber and Greenmarket director Michael Hurwitz. Another speaker is Ian Marvy of Red Hook’s Added Value, whose farm will be just one of many volunteer sites comprising tomorrow's massive Earth Day initiative called the Green Apple Festival. The forum, an affordable $12, will be moderated by Gabrielle Langholtz, editor-in-chief of Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn (the new Brooklyn issue features a behind the scenes look at Williamsburg biscuit lair Egg, and a tour of Brooklyn’s many tortillerias). Looking ahead, one more tidbit of locavore news— New Amsterdam Market announced today that June 28 will be the date of the first Monthly Market for 2009; details, including a location, are forthcoming.

Seen here is the awesomeness of P.F. 1, the sustainable urban garden project now in its final days at the P.S. 1 art center in Queens. The project comes from the imaginations of Amale Andraos and Dan Wood. P.F. 1, winners of MoMA’s Young Architects Program, and is described in amazing detail on its website and this Times article. In a nutshell, however, P.S. 1 is a miniature farm constructed completely from recyclable materials: chiefly 260 gargantuan paper towel-esque industrial tubes. Andraos and Wood conjoined and converted them into working planters, building the tubes out to form a wavy plane that swoops up over a P.S. 1 wall brimming with things like beets, kale, and dill. Now at the end of the season, the plants are still growing, seemingly creeping off toward the sides of One Court Square just down the block, Day of the Triffids style. Also integral to P.F. 1’s design are rainwater collection and solar power systems, a tiny kiddie pool, and four chickens.

For decades, residents of low-income neighborhoods under-served by supermarket chains have been getting their hands on produce the old fashioned way: By growing it in their own gardens. In recent years, outer-borough farmers have taken urban agriculture a step further by selling their mostly organic haul at well-organized community markets.