Insert Big Apple Pun Here
Rooftop Farm in Midtown Manhatten
This is not only an excellent example of urban agriculture, it's confirmation that my idea is not completely crazy. There shouldn’t be any reason we can’t do something similar. They're considering a stand to sell to passerby, and even brewing beer. A brewery is a little too ambitious for me, but the stand has potential.
Once they’re ready to harvest, the group plans to provide local restaurants and other community organizations with their crops. But only very local ones—they plan to transport everything they grow by bike. Nearby Greenpoint restaurants might be in luck, like Anello, where the group often picks up compost scraps from. The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm might also set up a stand for passer-by customers later in the summer. Ben plans on growing some hops for Sixpoint Brewery soon.
I like that they’re working with bees, too. I’ve been wondering if an apiary would be viable but I haven’t done any research yet.
And chickens. In my wildest dreams, I’d love to keep goats, too, but I realize that will be extremely unlikely. Chickens, though, could be possible if we can eventually get a full time staffer. It’s good to know of another project with such similar goals. We wouldn’t even need to worry about keeping them on a roof.
They’re calling themselves a farm rather than a community garden, though, which is interesting because I’ve been thinking about precisely this term for what Rose Park Community Gardens has set up right now. Wasatch Community Gardens rents out plots to community members to generate revenue and ensure a certain level of community participation, thus, it’s a community garden. RPCG, on the other hand, has one large plot that everyone works on, sharing the harvest among everyone who shows up and works. The latter is more like a community farm than community garden. I initially figured I’d refer to this plot as the Collective Parcel to differentiate it from any other parcels we might get in the future where I would like to institute plot rentals, but I’ve been uncomfortable with the term. This is Utah, after all. So I’ve been thinking of calling it the Farm Plot instead. Much more innocuous, kind of rustic and homey, in fact. Framing it this way might also help with my hope to eventually replace the chain link yard fence with something a little more inviting.
And since I mentioned the fence, I’ve got another crazy idea that’s hard to put into words. I’ll need some kind of botanical artist, and I really don’t know if such people exist. I imagine they must, I just don’t know of any. So I’m picturing the rustic lookinhg fence and integrated into it, like in the corners, for example, would be these sculptural, botanical installations that grow and develop over the years. And, of course, they would have to have some practicality to it all, so I’d prefer whatever trees or shrubs are twisted into the sculptures would yield fair amounts of food, as well as a good amount of aesthetic charm.
UPDATE: Apparently, botanical artists are folks who draw plants. I guess I should use the term horticultural artists.