The Secret Garden Tour/ I Love Plants Like Whoa

Someone recently said, "Your posts are so long!" without adding "And really interesting..." so here's a pretty short and sweet and matter of fact one for ya. Ya knows who ya is.

This summer I met two lovely people, Colin and Huong. They're artists and though I'm not sure about what kind of objects they make (if only objects qualify) they certainly know how to throw a party. Frankly, there is an artistry to that I greatly admire. Many fun times were had but this fun time in particular took place on their Secret Garden Tour. Colin has assured me it's not really a secret so I am at liberty to divulge. They've been developing the tours all summer and this particular one brought us to two very diverse examples of community growing.

Damn. I typed a whole bunch and then my computer shut itself down and it was all lost. There's a lesson in here somewhere but for who?

Let me regroup. THE FIRST PLACE WAS...Red Shed Community Garden on Kingsland Ave. and Skillman. They have a willow and fig tree, a shed, and a grill that they started to fire up at the smallest hint we'd be staying a while. Didn't bring anything to bbq though unfortunately. This garden is very reminiscent of a community garden I grew up next to in the East Village run by Open Road. I had a plot there which still remains. I planted a tree in it so they can't dismantle it. Cherries!

Anyway, at Red Shed there are the locals who've been living in the neighborhood and nearby projects for ever and there are the gentrifying intruders. As a visitor I can only say that things seem friendly. They have community plots and personal ones with lots of fruits and vegetables growing. Eggplants were flourishing when we were there and mosquitos. The keep extra bug spray in the shed.

Our second stop on the tour was Rooftop Farms on Eagle St. in Greenpoint. Rooftop is run by Annie Novak and Ben Flanner and they've been getting a lot of attention this year because they've taken the idea of a green roof and turned it into a working farm. The roof's owner wanted to install a green roof and Annie was called in to figure out how to make it all work. We talked for awhile before the tour started and it seems like that's what she does circling the world, stopping at farms and meeting challenges in growing. As she said several times in different ways, "I love plants like, whoa."

Rooftop sells their produce and welcomes volunteers. They're hoping to make the farm work as a viable option for other buildings around the city. The installation is quite expensive but since then she says they've been farming as cheaply as possible. With time the produce will begin to pay for itself and make up the original cost.

We walked down the rows of tomatoes, carrots, squash, beans, fresh herbs, melons and Annie told us about the different plants and their composting system. They also have two bee hives (!) and are growing hops up the side of one of their walls.


Now, I'm not a farmer. But I do love plants like...well, like something. What was especially exciting about the tour was the feeling that hey, you want to grow things, grow them! You want to start a community garden, start one! You want a farm, build it on the roof!

So how about it? Anyone want to start a community garden with me?

The next Secret Garden Tour is this coming Saturday Sept 12th starting at 2 PM at The Lotus Garden then going on to the Waterpod at Concrete Plant Park. If you can't come then find another time to visit either place (the Waterpod in particular looks cool as shit) or hell, just go to your nearest community garden and sit back on a bench. Enjoy the last warm days of September as the harvest comes rolling in. Think what you'll plant next year. Imagine it grow.

A Hirsute Heart

That's Vince. Vince is raising money for Just Food a very amazing local organization that is trying to build a sustainable food system in our fair state by connecting with farmers and NYC communities. They're also working to legalize bee keeping in the city. Throw your hands up!

So how is he doing this? The most convoluted way possible. Every dollar you donate is a 'vote' for your favorite beard, choices shown above. On February 28th the votes are counted and Vince will be shaving your favorite look onto his face. Why? Because it's Bearduary, apparently.

Now you may not (probably don't) know Vince so your interest in how much or little hair is growing on his face is probably pretty nil. Yeah, it's a great and worthy cause, but that's not why I'm imploring you, a stranger, to give a crap. It's because BEARDS MUST BE STOPPED.

Beards are the worst. They are lazy and repulsive, particularly on a young man who has beauty and symmetry of face. What a cruel waste! In my book only ship captains and guys who bare a vague resemblance to Santa Claus should ever put down the razor. But even then, what if they're a hot young ship captain? Or Sexy Claus? You see the murky moral territory we're in with even those concessions. Bearduary and all beard related celebrations should be SHAVED FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

So vote NO on proposition Vince Has A Beard. Put your dollar(s) towards Babyface and you're putting a dollar towards civility and smooching without stubble-burn. Here's how:

1) Check out the pick above to decide which is your favorite beard (NO BEARD- AM I RIGHT??)
2) Go to: http://www.nycharities.org/donate/c_donate.asp?CharityCode=2262
3) Enter your donation amount. Anything helps. Really.
4) Towards the bottom of the donation page, dedicate your donation "in honor of" the beard of your choice (NO BEARD-AM I RIGHT??) -- i.e. insert the name of the beard.
5) Then put this email address in the "notify someone" blank so Vince can receive a record of your vote. ( tvtrotter@hotmail.com ). You have till February 28th-don't delay.

Of course, if you disagree with my well formed and articulated opinion, bring it! Vote for the mutton chops or the gay one or whatever. Because what is right will triumph here...what is right must triumph.

Is There No Love More Sincere Than the Love of Food?

On Saturday, the Lord's favorite party day, I went over to the Red Hook Harvest Festival with my pal Ray who took a series of crappy phone photos of me posing with hot cider and desperately clutching a copy of Edible Brooklyn. I now regret not bringing a real camera but will try my best to illustrate all my important points through these images.


First of all, wow. I've never been to see the Red Hook farm though I've touted their organizers, Added Value. Added Value works in Red Hook on community programs that clean up parks, teach leadership, good nutrition, provide access to healthy affordable food and build urban farms, like the one in front of Ikea. That's right, there's an Ikea next door if you weren't sold before. I went without even knowing about the Ikea so just imagine my delight. In fact I had so little knowledge about where I was going or why that Ray and I wandered around for almost forty minutes before by the grace of an unseen force (Ikea?) we stumbled across the festival grounds.

Now I don't know what I was expecting but those expectations must have been low because I was pretty blown away by what from most perspectives was a less than breathtaking affair (Ray's perspective). First of all, they had the South Bronx bee man there, Roger Repohl giving a demo on the ways of the bees and violently disputing the lies promoted by Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie to the little children all around. Having seen a few demos of honey harvesting and bee hypnotizing I opted out but came back later for a tasting. Can I just say Wow! And Whoa! Roger harvests a few times a year, through summer to late fall, and every batch has a different color and flavor. Most larger distributors just mix all their honey in one big pot so they can get a consistent product. No generic sweetness here, each bottle contained a separate and unique bouquet of aroma and sensation. It's times like these that I wish I had a more colorful food vocabulary... particularly considering my supposed investment in food. Hmm. Let us just say they were fruity and burst across the palate with an amber fist of nostril flaring-eh, forget it. Let us just say instead that I spent my last six dollars on a bottle, six dollars that may break the bank for rent this month. THAT'S how good it is.


I wasn't going to go on and on about honey again but in that issue of Edible Brooklyn I'm clutching there happens to be an article about urban beekeeping and how New York is one of the few cities that outlaws it. It's pretty interesting and I think once I have enough start up capital (never) I may flaunt the law and my landlord and start up a hive of my own. Their fall issue isn't up yet or I'd link to it, but it is really interesting and can be picked up around town or you can check in later this month here.

Also Roger has a blog that seems to be largely about politics, oddly, and I haven't really reviewed his opinions...but he has a few funny articles about bees too.

There were a lot of vendors around but since I had a budget of eight dollars and spent six on honey my choices were limited. A dollar for cider and a dollar for a raffle ticket-fingers crossed I'll win that vintage bike! Amongst the people selling edible fall goodies were various organizations handing out information and free swag. Big ups to Heifer International for bringing loads of colorful lapel buttons featuring such classic slogans as 'Go Goat' and 'Bee Sweet'. Raymond took so many I was embarrassed to continue the button-glutton, but did manage to snag those two. Because I can get behind Goats and Bees, for realz. We weren't alone in our attraction to shiny colorful objects- a local step dancing troupe outfitted in fringed tie dye (hurray for classics again) had clearly stopped by the table before their performance. Maybe they'll look up what Heifer Int'l is when they get home...


There were also representatives from Compostville, or The New York City Compost Project. I don't want to belittle what they do or say that their table was anything but covered in pamphlets and helpful info on how to compost, but the guy I talked too seemed completely baffled by all my questions regarding my compost bin, which right now is just a garbage can full of rotten food.

"But, that's what compost is...", He said, smiling uncertainly.

"Yes, but it's almost full!! What do I do?"

Pointing at pictures from the pamphlets of what my bin looks like and reiterating that it's almost full had no effect. Luckily there's a compost helpline (Seriously): 718-817-8543. I haven't called it but may this weekend as my roommate and I have vowed to do something about the compost situation. Stay tuned for further reporting...Anyhow he loaded me down with booklets and magnets and sent me away to bother someone else.

The farm itself, which I realize still hasn't been described aside from being blessed by Ikea as a neighbor, sits on a piece of land that looks like it was once a park or playground surrounded by chain linked fence and rowed all across with hay and beds and its own tall compost pile. They have a greenhouse and a few chickens, plus a demo hut which in addition to the Bee Man also featured a canning/jarring how to. There was a even a pumpkin patch in the back filled with parents and shrieking children and some sadly crushed pumpkins. Better than sadly crushed children. Am I right?

The pumpkin patch encapsulated the urban farm for me. It was kind of crazy in there, full of diverse families crushing pumpkins...actually I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Maybe I mean to say that we think of farming and nature as being exclusively for rural parts of the country, and it's true that when you take farming to an urban setting it's not as picturesque as we like. But it is lively and inclusive and brings people together.


This image is beautiful. I may get a carrot-pierced heart tattooed on my chest.

After all that fresh air and love of nature we walked to Fairway and ate all the samples. I call it Urban Foraging. Here's another link to Added Value. They're great. Did I mention they have a farm next to Ikea? (I really couldn't care less about Ikea)

I Will Feed You Nothing But Yogurt and Honey

My first day on Frosty Morning Farms Karl drove me from Cortlandt to Commonplace. Jason and Alison were at the Farmer's Market in Cazenovia. My bus was an hour late and I was starving and experiencing the usual anxiety I get whenever I'm physically discomfited. We stood silently in the kitchen I'd get to know pretty well over the next ten days until Karl politely asked me if I'd like some yogurt.

I mentioned before that he makes his own yogurt from their goat's milk. How you make yogurt-heat a bunch of milk, add a container of yogurt. More yogurt ensues. Sorry, didn't write down the recipe. Really I'm not a huge yogurt fan but I'd taken a personal (and thus easily broken) vow to embrace whatever foodstuffs were thrown my way during this little trip, since that seemed like the spirit of eating locally and off your own labor. So I said yes, a bowl of yogurt would be dee-lightful.

From one of the coolers he plucked a mason jar full of white liquid. It didn't have the consistency of milk, exactly. Cream was gathering on top and it dripped slightly slower than water into a bowl the size of my head that he'd set out for me. "That's plenty!" I shrieked but it was already full up to the brim. I was holding a spoon and looking at the glop despondently when he pushed a second mason jar my way-this one was opaque gold and the top came stickily away. Honey, raised right there on the farm, unfiltered and the perfect compliment in a heaping spoonful to Karl's yogurt. I'm not exaggerating when I say these two things together were in the top five best flavor combinations I've ever had in my whole life. I slurped that mother up.

While the mysteries of yogurt propagation are less than intriguing to me, bee keeping is like Jedi Knight mysterious...by which I mean COOL. Honey itself is an amazing entity, something edible that never goes bad or sour or molds or does anything but taste like heaven sauce. Something my main squeeze Michael Pollan writes (about apples, not honey, in The Botany of Desire) is that in this day and age with sugar cheaply abounding we take for granted the transcendent power of sweetness. How precious a bee hive would be in a world without sugar. Can you picture the anticipatory mouth watering that happens in your mouth when you long for something sweet? How when it touches your tongue it's so overwhelming it's almost like pain?

A few weeks later at Cross Island Farms I got to peak into actual beehives and wear the hat and everything. David Belding keeps three beehives, two that he harvests from and one that is just building up its brood now. They're Buckfast, a popular variety that is a hybrid from England known for its gentleness...except in the Americas where they're known for their swarming and possible hybridization with the African killer bees blah blah. David prefers the Italian honey bees which are supposed to be quite sweet but they're very vulnerable to harsh winters and there are quite long harsh winters up by the St. Lawrence river. His last Italian hive died out awhile ago. He does still have an Italian Mentor, a man named John who came by the house one day to check on David's hives while David was out. I watched him open up the Buckfast hive and cut out combs the bees had been building in a gap between frames. He had a wild turkey feather he used to brush the bees out of his way and told me in a heavy Italian accent that David's bees were nasty and made no honey unlike HIS bees which were totally awesome super great. Later I found a wild turkey feather of my own by the house and have kept it to start off my bee keeping kit.



A couple days later David decided to check on the hives himself at John's urging. He and another bee-keeping friend, also confusingly named David, donned their suits. After watching John perform the same tasks with nothing more than a hair net and turkey feather they looked a bit like overdressed aliens wandering down the road in the blazing heat.

David Two was a very mild-mannered man who proudly showed me his swollen thumb, stung just a few days before. One of his hives had flown suddenly off which is not an uncommon occurrence. He'd found them in a tree near his house about fifteen feet off the ground and was considering how to reclaim them without being swarmed and stung at the top of a ladder. The interesting thing about bees (one of the many interesting things) is that even the most domesticated varieties might pick up and leave you someday or a wild variety might fall under the spell of man's hand, lured by sugar water and protection from mites or simply the hazy dream of a smoking bellow.

Perhaps you've heard about the sudden death of honeybees we've been having the last few years, huge populations dying out dramatically and unexpectedly. Most of the deaths are taking place in the large commercial migratory beekeeping sector. That's exactly what it sounds like-companies that tie up their bee hives, shove them on the back of a truck and cart them from farm to farm. It's mainly for pollination and without that pollination vegetable and fruit growth is detrimentally affected. David One and Two agree that the deaths aren't necessarily environmental factors such as pollution, the more likely cause is just plain old stress. Bees aren't meant for the highway (also the idea of a giant angry bee filled truck driving beside you sounds kind of like a bad idea on steroids). They're yet another example of something in nature that can be hugely beneficial to its caretakers when managed on a small scale, on site, but when taken to a commercial size will collapse in on itself.

Bees have some advantage. Unlike livestock shoved in CAFOs or genetically modified corn they can decide when they've had enough, close up their combs and set off for the wild wild woods, leaving us behind. With our sour yogurt.