NYC Entry 2: The Farm Education Track
An entry from General Manager Billy Polansky
After the keynote speech, panel discussion and lunch I took the “Farm Education” workshop track which shared stories and showcased programs happening at urban farms in NYC. The workshop took place at the Battery Park Urban Farm. We took the subway to the Battery. On the subway I spoke with some conference go-ers about why they were at the conference and their interest in urban ag. Titus was a conflict mediator, with more urban agriculture in the city there was bound to be more conflict! He was there to learn about the different projects that were going on to help him facilitate mediation sessions better when it involved urban farmers and gardeners. He shared with me a theory he had about electricity and stress. Humans are electric beings, meaning our nervous system uses electricity to communicate messages, and we’re running around all day with rubber-soled shoes...so where is the excess going? It gets pent up and makes us stressed and crazy! Titus advocates for walking barefoot in the grass regularly, so that you may “ground” yourself and stay sane...something to think about. A few stops down the line we made it to Battery Park.
The park is located on the southern tip of Manhattan, where the East River and Hudson River empty into New York Harbor. Surrounded by the towering financial district, this green space is popular among tourists and businesspeople alike. Inside of the park there are gardens, plazas, historic monuments, ferries launching, a waterfront promenade and of course an urban farm. On the waterfront, there are men fishing, families posing for pictures and old ladies feeding peanuts to squirrels. Looking into the harbor you can see a lot: boats cruising, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Governor’s Island, Brooklyn, even Jersey. The park is bustling with activity.
For our workshop we are led to a circle of child-sized benches in the lawn, sitting under the shade of a big tree. We first learn about the urban farm we’re at, Battery Urban Farm, and their programs. Their farm provides outdoor classroom space with many uses: groups can come for a quick field trip, stay for their summer program, they also offer professional development for teachers to learn how to teach gardening to their students and integrate gardening into curriculum. We got to tour the garden and see the spring plants growing and learn about how the garden is used. Half is used for field trips and educational programming by the farm staff. The other half consists of beds which are adopted by teachers who have gone through the professional development classes and bring their students out to take care of the garden plots.
The second presentation was from staff of East New York Farms! ENYF! manages two urban farms and works with a large network of community gardeners throughout East New York. Their internship program gives the opportunity for young people to engage in hands-on learning at the farm and garden sites. One of the ENYF! staff, Cameal, had previously served as a youth intern for four years with the organization. She spoke about how the program helped her to mature and develop to be an adult with the skills and confidence to pursue a career in early childhood education. Previously, she lacked direction and self-confidence, but all of that was turned around after her experience working with ENYF! staff and the support they offered to help her grow. Her job coaches set clear expectations and held her accountable for her mistakes. Cameal gave a passionate and tear-jerking account of the skills she gained over her four years as an intern. What I found the most interesting about her story is that not once did she mention gardening or food. Cameal wasn’t telling us that she learned how great tomatoes could taste or how her gardening skills improved. She was talking about how her life changed and about the type of person she had become. For Cameal and for other ENYF! interns, gardening is a means to an end. Through gardening she learned about responsibility, time management, and communication. Through gardening Cameal learned to believe in herself.
Our third “Farm Education” presentation came from staff at Edible Schoolyard NYC. This non-profit works in two elementary schools. In each school there are two main components of their programming: the garden and the kitchen. Twice a month every classroom comes out for educational experiences at their school garden. Once a month, every classroom goes to the kitchen to make a meal with food from the garden. At the Edible Schoolyard, they are focused on evaluating the successes of their programs. They have quantitative and qualitative data showing the impact of their programs. Edible Schoolyard NYC has increased fruit and vegetable consumption among their students and decreased processed food consumption. This type of information is very important to the sustainability of these programs. If programs are only “warm and fuzzy,” but aren’t producing measurable changes in participant behavior, then the program needs to be adjusted or discontinued. Measuring how well programs work will help create models that can be replicated across the country.
Our final presentation of the day came from a non-profit group called City Growers. This organization is in a unique circumstance with a unique history. In 2010 a for-profit business started the Brooklyn Grange, a 1.5 acre rooftop farm on top of a Brooklyn Navy Yard building and then later a one acre rooftop farm in Queens. The for-profit business was receiving many requests for tours and educational experiences. Although they liked the idea of people visiting their farms, the Brooklyn Grange didn’t have the time for that. Enter stage left: City Growers, the non-profit partner. City Growers could do all of the things Brooklyn Grange couldn’t and the non-profit didn’t have to worry about running a farm, so they could focus on their curriculum. For a while, though, the non-profit struggled to fit in. They couldn’t actually participate in the farming, they could only observe and groups that came to learn couldn’t touch or taste. This proved to be a serious limitation to the educational programming. With much communication the two groups settled on allowing City Growers to have a demonstration plot, where participants in their programming could get their hands dirty and participate! Now they offer 90-minute classes to K-12 students about chickens, bugs, honeybees, and of course vegetable crops.
It was really great to see the many ways that garden education was being conducted. These programs are all different, in different neighborhoods, organized by different groups, each with a different focus; and they’re all successfully producing results. There is more than one right way. Will we make a step-by-step replication of any of the programs we learned about that day? Doubtful. Will we take bits and pieces of what we learned and adapt them to fit our programs to serve our town? You’d better believe it.
Our last day in New York we ate lunch at the Riverpark Restaurant. This restaurant is on the ground floor of a skyscraper which looks out over the East River. In the large concrete plaza surrounding the building there was the restaurant’s 15,000 square foot farm, made entirely of milk crates. Milk crates, stacked two-high are lined with landscape fabric and filled with soil. All of the food growing here went into the restaurant’s meals. Who said you couldn’t farm on concrete? There is a local version of this milk-crate farm at the Columbia Area Career Center, where culinary arts students can harvest herbs and fresh veggies to use in their schoolwork.
If I learned one thing on my trip to New York, that would be that the possibilities with urban agriculture are endless and as urban populations continue to grow, urban agriculture will be the link teaching us confidence, patience, science, math, gardening and good eating.