Brooklyn Grange

Brooklyn Grange is a 2.5-acre organic urban rooftop farm in New York City, growing high quality vegetables and honey for local restaurants, markets, and community-supported agriculture. The farms span across two rooftops, one on a 43,000 sq. ft. building straddling Astoria and Long Island City, and the other atop the Brooklyn Navy Yard – the world’s largest rooftop soil farm.^[1] Together, they produce over 40,000 lbs. of organically-grown vegetables each year. The Grange also operates New York City’s largest apiary, with over thirty naturally-managed honey beehives, which yields approximately 1,500 pounds of honey annually.^[2] It was started in the spring of 2010 by transplanted Wisconsinite Ben Flanner, now President and Head Farmer, with the help of Anastasia Plakias, current Vice President, and Gwen Schantz, current Chief Operating Officer.^[3][4] The group took out loans, contributed their own money and found community investors to fund the project.^[5] The Brooklyn Navy Yard farm was financed in part by at $592,730 grant from the NYCDEP's Green Infrastructure Grant Program.^[6] In addition to growing and distributing local vegetables and herbs, Brooklyn Grange provides urban farming and green roof consulting and installation services to clients worldwide and partner with numerous non-profit organizations throughout New York to promote healthy and strong local communities.^[4]

Background

Both farms consist of green roof systems laid down before the soil. For the first farm on Northern Blvd, the job took six days of craning 3,000-pound soil sacks seven stories up to the roof. Brooklyn Grange laid down a series of drainage plates distributed by Conservation Technologies. The system is as follows: a layer of root-barrier, which prevents the plants’ roots from penetrating the surface of the roof; a thick layer of felt; drainage mats with small cups to hold excess water from heavy rainstorms (the soil and plants wick this stored water up in dry conditions to keep water use down), and finally, a thin layer of felt to prevent the drainage mats from filling up with soil.^[4]

The second farm at the Brooklyn Navy Yard has a green roof system which consists of a lightweight drainage aggregate, with a layer of similar felt above to filter the solid particles and keep the system together.^[4]

The soil is sourced from Skyland in Pennsylvania, a green roof media supplier. Almost a million pounds of the blend called Rooflite, an engineered soil mix that contains no actual soil, was used.^[3] The stones make the material lighter in weight and also slowly break down to add trace minerals needed by the vegetables. The beds are about 8-12″ deep with shallow walkways.^[4]

Brooklyn Farmer

Brooklyn Grange’s expansion is documented in the 2013 film BROOKLYN FARMER, which premiered at DOC NYC in November 2013.^[7] It follows the pursuits and trials of the Brooklyn Grange team as it sets out to expand their farm to a second rooftop, located at the Brooklyn Navy Yards, and explores the unique challenges inherent in operating a large, urban rooftop farm.^[8] The film goes behind the scenes with Head Farmer Ben Flanner to explore the day-to-day operations of the farm and COO Gwen Schantz to look at the organization as a business. BROOKLYN FARMER sheds light on true community innovators in New York City’s own backyard. The film was directed by Michael Tyburski and produced by Burke Cherrie and Ben Nabors in association with {group theory}.

References

External links

• Official website