Visiting a Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn

Visiting a Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn

Written by Dan McDonald 

            I never visited New York City until I was 59 years old. I then found I took a strange liking to the city. I have now taken three vacations to New York City in three years, including that first one. I try to mix the normal tourist things in my visits to New York City with something I don’t think most tourists would do. In 2014 I found a pizzeria in Brooklyn called Roberta’s that attracted my attention. In 2015 I went to Staten Island and found the site where an officer named Ichabod Crane was buried, the man whose name Washington Irving borrowed when he wrote “the Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. This year I decided to take a tour of a rooftop farm in Brooklyn operated by Brooklyn Grange. Today I am presenting my story of the tour I took of the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm.

            As I grew up on a more or less traditional Midwestern farm I knew that Brooklyn Grange’s way of farming would be different from the farm I grew up on. Maybe that made the experience of seeing an urban farm, on a Brooklyn warehouse rooftop all the more interesting. I found the experience interesting and hope you will find reading my thoughts on the experience likewise interesting.

          1. A tour fits into Brooklyn Grange’s philosophy of doing business.

Members of our tour group walking between rows while a farmer harvests produce.

            One of the things I learned from taking the tour at Brooklyn Grange is that the people at Brooklyn Grange had decided to create their business guided by three principles summed up in three words beginning with the letter “P”. They wanted their business to do right by the people within their community, to do right towards the planet on which we live, and to be sustainable through earning a profit enabling those working the farm to have a livable income. Their tours are one example of how they seek to do right by the people in their community. They have a reason to show to the public how they have built their business according to their governing principles. They present to their customers a good product, a good business plan, a hard working team, and a desire that others might be encouraged to create businesses built on similar governing principles.

            2. The tour helped me realize how small farms can be multi-faceted businesses offering a diversity of products.

            I grew up at a time when traditional American farms were characterized by diversity of crops and livestock. My father, when I was young, had chickens, hogs, beef and dairy cattle; and we raised corn, soybeans, wheat, and alfalfa. Diversification helped protect farmers from the whims of weather and markets. Diversification also meant crop rotations could be implemented which allowed for one crop to extract minerals and nutrients one year that another crop helped restore into the soil the following year. Diversity of plants made economic sense and was also an investment into the soil out of which every crop grew.

            A small farm can also bring diversity to a farm by using the land for something in addition to farming. My Dad had been a welder and he kept a place on our farm where he could take in welding work. Many local farmers whose implements had been damaged came to my Dad to have their implements fixed. While the primary use of our farm was for farming, his skill in welding gave our farm an additional income stream. Brooklyn Grange is able to take advantage of their rooftop location in a similar even if different way. Some of the team members had worked in restaurants and had hosted events. Rooftop gatherings are very popular in New York City and with team members already knowing how to do that, the Brooklyn Grange team was able to use their rooftops not only to farm but also to host various gatherings. The principle work on the rooftops continued to be farming but other possibilities were pursued as well bringing helpful secondary streams of income into their rooftop farming business.

Diversity can be seen at Brooklyn Grange in numerous ways. There are bee hives on the rooftop. Bees help pollinate some of the plants grown on their rooftops, and they also produce honey. A small Brooklyn Grange honey business exists. I can gladly testify that their honey is some of the finest tasting honey I have ever eaten. Having honey bees wasn’t always legal in New York City, but after former Mayor Bloomberg supported making New York City a city where honey bees could be raised the urban beehives appear to be thriving in urban areas where they are permitted.

Bees flourish in urban areas like NYC.

 

Bees also lend a help in the pollination of Brooklyn Grange plants.

            In an earlier photograph, you may have noticed a greenhouse. The greenhouse operated on the farm serves multifaceted purposes. A greenhouse helps New York growers to start plants during colder periods that can then be transplanted when the spring weather is more favorable to plants otherwise susceptible to frost and winter kill. Once the plants have been transplanted the greenhouse can be used  for other purposes. One such purpose done in Brooklyn Grange's greenhouse is raising trays of plants like delicate herbs, small greens, and plants providing seasoning that are desired by New York City chefs who use the plants to add color or flavor to fine cuisine. These specialty plants fetch a good income using a small space.

 

Herbs and greens were growing in the greenhouse when I visited in late August. 

There were plenty of outside crops being harvested on their farm also

 

3. Praising our guide who conducted our tour at Brooklyn Grange

I want to express my appreciation for our tour guide, Michelle. She conducted a wonderful tour. She set us at ease with a pleasant guiding of the tour. She gave us a wealth of information regarding the farm and its workings, and kept everyone's attention with stories from the farm's young history. While at points I compare the model of business at the Brooklyn Grange with what I knew growing up on my Dad's farm, mostly what I am presenting about the Brooklyn Grange operation is simply an abridged form of what our tour guide so ably presented. I hope some of you are able to get the actual tour. I recommend anyone near New York City or planning to visit the city to find a suitable time to visit the farm or take one of the farm's tours. Here is a link for information about visiting the farm.

Michelle, our tour guide, is here telling us something about Brooklyn Grange.

 

4. Some stories from Brooklyn Grange’s experience teaching people in their community about urban farming and the environment.

Brooklyn Grange sets a wonderful example of a team selecting principles to guide their corporate operations and then living out those principles. The team sets out to do well by the people in its community, with the planet and building a sustainable profit so those working with Brooklyn Grange can earn a living wage. There are tours set aside for students from area schools that help educate the community around them to better understand the farm's relationship to the community and the environment.

Michelle mentioned how rewarding it is to see a child begin to understand the relationship of our food to dirt and to the soil. She told how it is easy for a child growing up in the metropolitan area to associate food with a store similarly to how one thinks of tennis shoes coming from a store. Then a farmer pulls a carrot from the soil and the child begins to understand in a fresh manner the relationship of our food to our soil. The Brooklyn Grange farms keep a few chickens at each of their rooftop farms despite how chickens proved to be a bust for them economically. The chickens however are useful in showing a farm animal in a farm setting to the school children coming to Brooklyn Grange's rooftop farms.

Since almost every Brooklyn Grange farmer was raised in a city, and never grew up on a farm; the Brooklyn Grange farmers are able to use themselves as examples of how the sort of farming done at the Brooklyn Grange facilities can be learned and done even by kids that grew up never seeing a farm. It becomes a way to encourage children to realize that the world has more possibilities than might be suggested by the limitations of our neighborhoods.

One of the most interesting stories we heard was about the environment. I might not remember the story exactly but it went something like this: As some students were asked what they had been learning in school about the environment, one student answered that the environment was something important for people in New Jersey, but that since New York was a big city it didn’t have an environment. The story though humorous can be a metaphor for our understanding of environmental issues. We are usually much better at pointing out what someone else could do about the environment than what we can do. Brooklyn Grange can describe to students how their farm is beneficial to New York City’s desire to have a better environmental relationship with our planet.

New York City, like many older Eastern coastal cities has a system that joins together sewer and ground water drainage systems. This antiquated system has created an environmental problem. When a significant rainfall occurs, with as little as a half of an inch of rain, the storm water runoff overwhelms the system. Since the storm water and raw sewage are combined in the antiquated system, the rainfall runoff forces the city to pump both the excess rainwater runoff and the untreated human sewage into the New York harbor. Almost every significant rainfall results in a mixture of rainfall run off and raw sewage being pumped into the harbor. Many storms result in people complaining about the brown waste water they see entering the harbor. It is a disgusting environmental failure for the city of New York. There are also other cities with the same problem. With taxes already high in New York City, and an ideal fix separating storm water runoff from sewage drainage to cost many billions of dollars; the city is trying to fix the problem gradually. In the meantime one way to mitigate aspects of the problem is to create more green zones. In a city made of concrete most rainfall simply runs to the closest drain and into the city’s storm water drainage system. But when rainfall falls on soil where plants are growing, a large portion of the water is absorbed into the soil and then soaked up by the thirsty plants. This water absorbed by soil and plants does not enter New York’s harbor. The rooftops farmed by Brooklyn Grange, used to be rooftops where with every rain, the water would find its way to a drain and enter into the waste water system. But now a large percentage of the rainfall coming down on the Brooklyn Grange rooftops are absorbed by the soil and soaked up by thirsty plants helping to protect the ground water drainage system. Brooklyn Grange’s existence provides a small but meaningful help in New York City’s attempt to mitigate its serious environmental problem.

5. Farmers with a unique view

I offer one last photograph from my visit to the Brooklyn rooftop farm. It must be a special experience for this group of farmers to look up from their working with fruits and vegetables and look down their rows and see Manhattan’s downtown district from their farm. Make no mistake about it. The Brooklyn Grange team members are farmers. They grow food valued by their customers. They decide what to plant into the soil to make enough of a profit to allow them to live within their city. They weed and harvest their crops. They see that their produce is taken to markets or to places where customers will pick up the produce. More than 90% of their produce is consumed by customers within four miles of their farms. They keep extensive records to help them optimize their business. They are farmers in every sense of the word. But they are farmers with a unique view when they look down the rows on their farms in Brooklyn and Queens.

Not all farmers see such a view when they look over their crops.

 

I will continue to write about the Brooklyn Grange story in a future blog when I write a review of a book entitled The Farm on the Roof, written by Brooklyn Grange co-founder Anastasia Cole Plakias.

 

Hospitality and the birth decision

Hospitality and the birth decision– A Human issue

Written by Dan McDonald

 

A Prayer:

Our Father we are astonished to know you have created us in your image. Even in our follies you have visited us in grace and kindness. We have received mercies without boundaries from your heart so that we might extend grace and hospitality to those around us. Our Lord, teach us thy beautiful ways. Amen.

 

            The issue is a deeply divisive one in American politics. For many people, abortion is to be viewed as the taking of an innocent vulnerable right. For others, a woman’s body is her body to control as is her conscience and the state should not interfere with a decision which concerns her body. The debate has raged for decades and the lines have become well established and the perspectives set forth time and time again. But I wonder for those of us who view ourselves as pro-life, if we have set aside our most poignant way to address the issues of mother and child when abortion is being considered. We have tried to win a legal battle, while setting aside the more compelling arguments of the heart appealing to the possibilities that we might be gracious, merciful, and hospitable. We have argued over what is right and wrong rather than appealing to the desires of men and women to live beautiful lives. What is the sense of reason in these issues when instead of arguing right and wrong, lawful and unlawful, we ask “what is gracious, hospitable, and beautiful?”

            We so easily set aside the beauty of the Gospel message when seeking a politicized answer to the drama of a woman carrying a child while believing she is not prepared to face motherhood. The pro-life argument that fails to appreciate the drama of a woman with a child for which she is not prepared is surely going to appear to be insensitive to the woman’s needs. The pro-choice perspective that fails to appreciate that at the very basic level, a fetus is a growing human life will never convince the other side that disposing of a growing human life is a reasonable option. By treating the issue of abortion as primarily a political issue we have reached a political stalemate. For the person who is pro-life this is a stalemate which has been on the legal front already lost. It is not likely that anytime in the near future there will be a change of law to protect the unborn infant. But the Christian does not need the support of a law to make his appeal to men and women everywhere that there is a way of beauty, grace, and hospitality which reaches out to both mother and child in a way preferential to abortion. Why do we insist on the constraining powers of the state to argue for a way of life that if presented as a beautiful way of life has the stronger appeal?

            In the Biblical message of the Gospel, the first promise of redemption was given in the promise that the woman would give birth to a son who would overcome the seed of the serpent. The Gospel message has been given to us within the hope of a woman giving birth to the deliverer. I suppose there are ways to make the story oppressive or to diminish the value of womanhood outside of an act of giving birth – but I do not believe such minimization of womanhood was God’s intention in the promise. Yet the promise of redemption was somehow extended into our humanity as a promise of a woman and her offspring bringing God’s promise into the world.

 

A Shutterstock image

 

            In the New Testament fulfillment of that promise the angel Gabriel comes to Mary and announces to Mary that she is chosen of the Lord to bring forth a son, the Holy one, who shall be the Son of God. She wonders how this could be when she had not been with a man. Gabriel explains that she the Holy Spirit would enable her to conceive and thus God’s redemption would come into the world through her. In this instance, as Luke tells the story it appears that God doesn’t invade Mary’s body but that he explains to her His desire to bring redemption into the world through her. Mary responds in a way that treats this promised infant who would inhabit her womb as an act of hospitality. She replies to Gabriel when she understands what he is telling her by saying, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38 NAB) In Christmas sermons we often hear ministers describe how there was no room at the inn when Jesus was about to be born, and so we are asked if there is room in our hearts for Jesus. Do we in an act of faith and hospitality, say to Jesus “Come in, there is room for you within me?” Luke describes how Mary let her womb become the first inn for God and God’s redemption as he came into the world.

            The New Testament does not withhold from us the difficulties Mary faced bearing her child. Joseph, her fiancé was suspicious. He did not instantly think that Mary was a virgin happening to carry a child in her womb. He began to consider how he might set her aside for her unfaithfulness while not seeking to shame or destroy her in her young age. Then God revealed to him what was taking place. Joseph, when doubting her faithfulness to him as his fiancé, showed that he was desirous nonetheless to seek a just and merciful way to release her from the vows she had seemingly broken. By his mercy and his extending a gracious hospitality to her future well-being he showed that he was the man whom God would call upon to raise the child as his own. He had shown faithfulness and hospitality to the mother with the burden of bringing into the world a child she could not explain.

            In coming into the world, Jesus Christ as believed upon through the centuries is the fullness of God made the fullness of humanity. We can grant that it is a mystery when the fetus within a mother’s womb can be said to bear the image of God, except that the incarnation redefines the issue. When God chose to enter the world in the humanity of the son of the woman, he entered the world “conceived of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit.” When God entered the world in human flesh he associated with our humanity from the beginning of human life, at conception. Jesus’ fullness of humanity – perhaps the greatest of mysteries – began at conception. That is when the mystery of humanity began to be revealed into the world.

            Yes indeed human life is a mystery. It was a mystery as the Psalmist looked back to his being brought to creation in his mother’s world and would be a mystery as the same Psalm could describe the Jesus who was invited by Mary into her womb. The Psalmist praises God for his act of creation within his mother’s womb. He views her womb as a continuation of the act of creation. Her womb is the earth, even as God created man from the dust of the earth, and then he enables the woman from the earth of her womb to bring forth life of one created in God’s image. The Psalmist praises God in this mystery saying, “You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you, so wonderfully you made me; wonderful are your works! My very self you knew; my bones were not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, fashioned as in the depths of the earth. Your eyes foresaw my actions; in your book they were all written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be.”

            In his humanity, Jesus entered our humanity with us in our being conceived within the wombs of our mothers. He has associated with us in our conception. This is not a good scientific answer as to when our human life began. It is not a good philosophical answer in regards to what point in our development we became persons in the image of God. But it is a beautiful answer in the mystery of incarnation. God created man in his image that God could visit humanity in our humanity. The story of the incarnation leads us to realize that we receive God when we see humanity in need. For God is unseen and so we display love and show truth of our worship by showing love to our neighbor created in God’s image. The story of the incarnation celebrated at every Christmas is the story of God entering the world in conception, sharing our humanity beginning with the mystery of life in the womb. The story describes how Mary said yes in presenting her womb to become an inn for the human life about to enter the world. The story describes how Joseph saw a woman with child in need and sought to show her mercy.

            The Gospel from the first promise in Genesis 3 was the description of a woman who would bring salvation to the world in her offspring. It was also an act of hospitality, when a woman allowed her womb to become the inn for creating a life created in God’s image. The woman with her child was also for those around her; family, friends, lovers, communities an act of hospitality helping mother and child through the difficulties of giving birth and motherhood.

            I wonder if perhaps God has chosen not to bless our desires for legislative answers, for his greater desire that we might learn hospitality in remembrance of the sacred promise of a Gospel declared in a woman’s bringing forth of a child. If we as human beings learned these lessons of grace, mercy, and hospitality in relationship to the woman and the child in her womb, I suspect that soon abortion would become rare even if no law were passed. I believe my greater need is not to be a crusader who gets a law passed to make abortion illegal, but my greater need is to be one through whom my neighbor is encouraged because I have shown grace, mercy, and hospitality so as to help prepare a way for their life decision.

 

My silent month

My Silent Month

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I usually post several blogs a month. I write on my latest big thoughts or experiences, or those big issues of the day. But this month writing desire evaporated like a puddle under the hot summer sun. I had nothing profound to express, no imagined keen insight; nothing but a lack of confidence that I had anything to give to the world or to my friends who might occasionally read some of the words I offer. I could feel that my writing was taking a back seat to a silent season. I could feel some of the reasons why it had to be so, even if I could not express the season of silence I was entering.

            I found myself facing events in life that I could not pretend to be able to understand or explain. I have tried to express some sort of perspective in my writing while acknowledging mystery alongside the abilities we have to understand the reality of life in which we are involved. But in the past month I found that rather than me being one who studies life; life is what is studying me. Life has taken hold of me, drained me of my self-confidence and left me in similarity with the Psalmist responding to life, or specifically to the God who gives us life and saying to Him who studies me: “Search me, O’ God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23,24 RSV)  The 139^th Psalm teaches us that there is no place we can go to escape from the God who searches us, who knows us, who forms us and seeks intimacy with us. We imagine ourselves studying life, but the one who formed all living life is the one who is studying us. We are not the ones who study life, but are the ones being studied by the Living one in whom all life exists. I was being made to see who it is who is the evaluator; the keen student as well as the Creator. I was being brought to take the lower seat, not the seat of watcher observing, but of creature observed. I was experiencing life and had no wisdom to report, only an experience of a place in life where I had no real wisdom to understand or explain the life in which I was participating.

            There were issues within my family. My sister had been diagnosed with cancer. So far she has been responding well to treatment and is viewed as in remission. In the midst of this, we heard the news that my brother Paul had been found in his home, having passed away from an apparent heart attack. My brother and I had a difficult relationship. We were opposites except where we were frighteningly alike. He had been a Vietnam veteran. I am only gradually realizing how scarred this left him. For some years after the war, a loud noise or someone surprising him from behind could result in his moving into a combative stance. He experienced a marriage disaster. He never recovered from those experiences. I don’t think most of us ever learned to figure out a way of being a support to him. He could be suddenly belligerent and mercurial in temperament. He was obsessed with his failed marriage decades after it took place.

Looking back I realize that I had a harmful perspective. I viewed life as an object and me as the student of the object. I sought to understand and explain life. But wasn’t it the opposite? Wasn’t I a creature participating in life, with life and specifically the God who gave us life being the one who was evaluating me the creature? Do you realize how differently those perspectives regard friendships or relationships between brothers? The student of life seeking to understand and explain life is tempted to imagine an ideal way brothers should relate. We frame our understanding of brothers being by nature supportive of one another and we imagine our times together to be positive and enjoyable. But if I believed that I was being studied by life rather than the one studying life my perspective might be altogether different. Maybe I would not have imagined brotherhood or friendship in terms of enjoyment but rather in terms of brute sharing of realities. I did not have to enjoy being around my brother. That was sometimes an unrealistic ideal. But I should have been able to feel his pain and anguish of a man suffering brokenness. To expect brotherhood or friendship to provide a sense of enjoyment is perhaps sometimes a shallow superficiality imposed on our closest relationships.

A casual blurred photo of Paul and me at a family gathering

 

            There were other painful events intervening in my normal ways of viewing life during the past month. I like to imagine myself as someone who tries to understand the issues of our day. I have been sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement, simply because I am quite sure that often we who are white and those in our midst who are black often face different realities from the histories which impacted us to the daily ways we are perceived in life. As a white person I grew up perceiving police primarily as public servants who served and protected. If I had grown up in an African-American home that history would be less clear. I would know that law enforcement worked to return slaves to masters because the masters were owners whether kind or abusive. Law enforcement had made sure segregation was carried out with its painful results in the African-American community. If some of the worse experiences of our history were behind us, there remained a tendency of nervousness between the once separated races. I recalled my own feelings when three or four polite young black men walked into a convenient store in my white shopping area. Their behavior was exemplary but something in me made me nervous. From that day forward I realized residual racism might affect us when ideologically we have left racism behind. I have little doubt that African-Americans face some actual racism and a lot of residual racism. Of the two, the residual racism which carries unquestioned assumptions into our daily perceptions of life and culture, might form the more dangerous threat to African-Americans. Someone who never questions his assumptions might react without understanding why to a perceived threat coming from a residual unrecognized racism. If the idea were presented to him as an idea he would quickly reject it as an evil. But if it is part of an unperceived bias he might respond to that perception in a moment requiring a quick decision. I believe there are real problems in racial relations. But this month we saw violence in both directions until we realized that black lives and blue lives felt under attack and we had few answers. We only have beginnings such as a picnic in Wichita which replaced a planned Black Lives Matter march with a gathering of people involved in Black Lives Matter with the police of Wichita in a public picnic. We have lots of things to work out as people in America and they aren’t easy things to work through. Our ideals imagine we ought to be able to become instantly friends who enjoy one another’s company despite our differing perspectives, but perhaps the deeper relationships involve a sharing of felt pain more than shared joys. But if we share some joys along the way it would sure be encouraging. But we are not the ones studying life, but the ones being studied by life.

 

Black Lives Matter picnic with Wichita Police (photograph NPR)

 

So this month I have been quieter than most months. Hopefully a new perspective is making me different. I will study life that is what I do; but hopefully I will study it knowing more clearly that I am in return being studied.