Jam needs fruit & fruit needs a farm
My boyfriend, Ben Flanner, is starting an acre farm on a roof in Queens. It's amazing, innovative, crazy and wonderful. The team at Brooklyn Grange needs money to help get the dirt up there and the plants growing for summer! Check out their video and all the raddness:
Brooklyn Grange will be a 1 acre rooftop farm situated in New York City. Such a commercially-viable rooftop farm has yet to be realized in this country. We will use simple greenroof infrastructure to install over 1 million pounds of soil on the roof of an industrial building on which we will grow vegetables nine months of the year. Being in the country's largest city, the farm will create a new system of providing local communities with access to fresh, seasonal produce. We plan to expand quickly in the first few years, covering multiple acres of New York City's unused rooftops with vegetables. The business has many environmental and community benefits, and allows our city dwelling customers to know their farmer, learn where their food comes from, and become involved.
The farm will be run by Ben Flanner, who started and ran a proof of concept rooftop farm in the summer of '09. The beyond-organic produce will be sold directly to the community at an onsite stand, affording shoppers a direct relationship with the farm and farmers. Additional produce will be sold to a small group of market-driven local restaurants.
Our model capitalizes on an unused resource - rooftop space - and has the potential to change the way densely populated cities produce, distribute and consume food.
Your contribution will go towards ordering our lightweight rooftop soil, renting a crane to install that soil, and seeds and irrigation for our summer crops.
*All of our produce prizes are for local pick-up. It's a great chance to see firsthand how your food is grown. For those who can't pick up their produce prize in person, shoot an email with your address to brooklyngrangefarm@gmail.com and we'll send you a starter set of our favorite heirloom seeds so you can grow your own!