I've long been drawn to the idea of urban farming. When I lived in Brooklyn, I had two plots in two community gardens , in addition to three massive tomato plants on the back deck. Planting seeds and growing vegetables was an unlikely pleasure. For me it was connected to good eating: I loved to cook and eat the freshest vegetables I could find. Getting to the source is something we often e...
It sounds like an easy question to answer, but sometimes even I have a hard time remembering where Blake is half the time (Don't even get me started on what time zone he lives in). I can only imagine what casual readers might think. In the past three years we've both lived in a combined total of 9 or so apartments, which doesn't include Blake's month of couch surfing, which might bring...
A couple days ago Elin and I went to our community garden plots to asses things after a two and a half week absence from New York. When we left, our garden was thriving with tomatoes, kale, collard greens, beets, carrots, corn, and peppers. Despite our best efforts to screw things up, the Brooklyn soil continues to sprout edibles.
We returned to find out tomato plants brown, drooping,...
It was the most fantastic feeling in the world--especially for someone who has no idea how to grow food, like me. A bunch of seeds Elin and I planted months ago in a nearby community garden--tomatoes, kale, peppers, cucumbers, snap peas, beets, radishes, onions, lettuce, and corn--had been growing into large green bushy things that we hoped weren't weeds. Were they healthy and sated with water...
Photo from Flickr user Flatbush Gardener
I didn't see this coming. I didn't imagine that suddenly, aged 25, living in a city, I'd want to be a gardener. Gardening does not seem cool. Nobody thinks gardeners are trendy. It's as old and musty a hobby as any. Yet there I found myself this past Saturday, spending seven hours of my weekend at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden , where a larg...
At the Red Hook Community Farm, a farm literally on top of a parking lot. Read here , and see here .
Since moving to Boerum Hill , groceries have been tough. We used to live steps away from a B61 bus stop, which takes you directly to Fairway , where almost any food or ingredient can be bought, and at reasonable prices (though their produce isn't always the best). But now going to Fairway truly is a hassle, and I don't think we've since been. Shopping in Manhattan is fine in small...
Bushwick, named by the Dutch Boswijk for “town in the woods,” is no longer a town in the woods—it is a rapidly gentrifying section of Brooklyn southeast of tragically hip Williamsburg. Once one of the most blighted areas in town after the blackout lootings of 1977--at that time, it was characterized by empty lots, drugs, and arson, and the majority of residents who could leave, l...
By some miracle, my girlfriend and I have recently moved into a beautiful, spacious, freshly painted apartment with a backyard, a washer/dryer, and a dishwasher: three luxuries that most New Yorkers offer up onto the pyre of compromise very early on. It’s simply assumed: you won’t have those things. You live in the city because the people that live here are interesting, and there are o...
Lest you all forget my infatuation with the pickled cabbage , it is powerful. When I worked in Manhattan, the attraction to the stuff had me trudging over to the Korean buffet at least once a week. But I no longer work in Manhattan, and while I'm very happy with my new job, I do miss my kimchi.
I’m not sure why it never occurred to me until now to secure my own stash. Like a lot o...