Four Season Farm

We were heading up to Maine anyway so we dropped in to have a look-see at Elliot Coleman's and Barbara Damrosch's farm, Four Season, in Harborside. I have been working my way through Coleman's book "The New Organic Grower" after it was multiply recommended and was really excited to see the place in person. What I have found especially useful, in my current work, is Coleman's focus on making efficient use of well-designed hand tools. 

Please note the little bits of tubing on the rake. Instant row marker for seeding.

 This works for the scale that Coleman and Damrosch are farming. After being on such big organic farms I was suprised to hear that Four Season Farm is only a little over an acre yet produces so much food and for the majority of the year. It's not called Four Season for nothing and producing food through the Maine winter is no mean feat. When we visited it was all sunshine and honey bees but over the darker months the temperature averages between 20 and 30 degrees, and that's Fahrenheit, folks. That's a nice range of -1 to -6 Celsius. Needless to say these guys make good use of greenhouses. And these are either unheated or minimally heated during the growing season.

It is probably obvious that I aspire to be a farmer and there are lots of reasons why. One is that farmers are some of the most genius people I have met. And they need to be. They need to constantly and creatively problem solve, adapt and invent. In one of my new favourite books "Shop Class as Soulcraft",  Matthew B. Crawford, amongst other things, talks about the immense satisfaction he gets from fixing motorbikes. Indeed this realization was the main impetus for writing the book;

 "This book grows out of an attempt to understand the greater sense of agency and competence I have always felt doing manual work, compared to other jobs that were officially recognised as 'knowledge work'. Perhaps most suprisingly I find manual work to be more engaging intellectually".

I've been working on a farm for a few months now under the guidance of two farmers, both very experienced and just two of the smartest people I have had the pleasure of knowing. They are able to approach a problem with a wealth of theoretical and experiential know-how that extends not just what could be done but how to actually do it. Like, how to use tools and make tools especially for the job. Watching them work makes me want to go back to high school and pay attention to mathematical and physical principles. But I might just keep working on the farm and learn that way...the view is nicer. But back to the farm.

I present to you Exhibit A: The Tilther. This little gem was conceptualised by Coleman and combines existing technologies, culitvator and hand drill, to create a nifty little machine that can be used safely (no petrol fumes from a rotary hoe, for example) and with less energy in a greenhouse to gently cultivate beds to prepare for re-seeding. I'm guessing you could recharge the drill battery through solar or other means if you had that rigged up.

Four Season is also home to about a couple of hundred chickens, around half of these are layers and the other half are meat birds. We saw this neat set up for rotating young chicks around pasture.

They also have a couple of pigs. It seems like a farm on this scale would struggle to manage any bigger livestock (and provide feed and good habitat for them). Speaking of scale, we were able to ask a couple of questions about the composting system. There is a sizeable area dedicated to composting, but apparently it is difficult to produce enough material for the area that is under cultivation, so compost is also brought in.

An aspect of the planting design on the farm which is both beautiful and educational is the progressive plantings of one crop in a particular area. Like these onions. It's like a living flowchart. You can see dug onions curing on the ground at the back, the next couple of nearly-done rows just pushing themselves out of the ground and young green shoots in the foreground. This is immensely satisfying to see. From my backyard gardening experience I know there is a fair amount of faith/hope involved, especially in sowing the tiniest of carrot seeds, for example. It's like, 'sure, these will become carrots, uh huh, ok...whatever you say". I think I'll always find it incredible to scratch around a 50 day old carrot plant and find the impossible orange beneath.

I gave Elliot some Tasmanian Miellerie honey to say thanks for letting us look around the farm (he mentioned the Tassie honey when describing his last trip there). Luckily I had filled my bag with Gould's farm grown herbal tea and jars of the best honey I know. Being over on the other side of the world opens my eyes to things I've never seen before and gives me space to reflect on what's so good back home.

Chocolate fields forever...

Brooklyn Grange Farm - on a roof top in Queens, NYC

 I think we could be forgiven in that we were just a little lost when looking for the farm. In a neighborhood dominated by warehouses, mechanics, roadworks and general industry that sea of green that typifies a farm takes a little finding. And after walking around for a bit, looking around, looking up, scratching our heads - we found it. Here we are, obviously...

ok...

be a hero, take the stairs

live chickens...watch out

and thar she blows

Brooklyn Grange is a private business owned and run by 3 owners and is actually a series of farms. I visited their flagship farm in Queens but there is a second farm being set-up on a rooftop in the Brooklyn Navy Yard this season. There are only a handful of other roof-top farms in the city and these are mainly greenhouse and hydroponic set-ups. Have a look at Gotham Greens and Eagle St Farm. 

The produce grown on this roof is sold at multiple farmers markets and direct to restaurants.The farm itself spans across an acre of roof and is made up of roughly 1.2 million lbs of soil and over 20,000 linear feet of green roofing material. Yikes.

The all important work bench. I appreciate it's mega size

Tomatoes are one of their most important crops (over 40 varieties growing). The solanaceae family did seem to be thriving in these conditions.
 

The farm has one full time employee (as well as the owners who work at the farm), 30 interns (mainly college students gaining experience and credit who work 10 hrs/week) and a few volunteer apprentices.


It seemed to me that a venture like this would need a lot of investment to start off. Thanks to Michael who kindly gave us a tour and shared some history.

The funding came from the combination of crowd funding (via kickstarter) as well as private investment. The crowdfunding approach allows members of the public to donate any amount in order to get a project started. This allows a proactive (and somewhat cashed up) public to get something off the ground without having to wait for an often lumbering public bureaucracy to make the move. Michael mentioned that there has also been some really successful crowdfunded energy investment to pay for neighborhood-scale sustainable energy in the states.


Amy Cortese in her recent book describes this approach to social enterprise as "locavesting" and argues that "this peer-to-peer crowd funding model of aggregating many small sums promises to unlock new opportunities for investing in businesses whose needs are not being met by conventional sources". Through the Brooklyn Grange kickstarter campaign the donors were rewarded with gifts depending on how much they donated. This "thank you" could be a CSA share for a year, a single box of veges or a private farm tour, amongst other things. 

there is just a lot of sky when you farm on a roof

 So how does someone let you build a farm on their roof? Well, it turns out the landlord was looking for a green roof and there are incentives for building owners to 'use their land' in this way. First off they get $100,000 over 4 years in tax write offs plus they get rent from the farmers (a  previously untapped revenue stream). Presumably they also get some pretty serious cultural cred. Farming is so hot right now.

I was really excited to see some bee hives on the roof . Apparently two years ago the city changed the laws around bee keeping and now the only condition of setting up hives is that you register them with the city government. Look here for more details. There is no archaic by-law about how far the hive is from the nearest dwelling (like we have in Hobart, Tasmania) and this opens up the landscape for enterprising beekeepers. The  bees are a significant part of the Brooklyn Grange farm not only in terms of revenue from the honey produced but also because of their pollination prowess.

The roof also is home to a handful of laying hens. The eggs from these hens are sold, along with the produce at a weekly farm market actually held in the lobby of this building.These hens are as important for educating children and adults alike about eggs and keeping chickens, as for their contribution to the produce basket and their place in the overall system (e.g. eating weeds and turning them into eggs!). 


There is a lot that is surprising about a rooftop farm but something that really took the cake is the chocolate covered fields. You heard me. If you notice yourself getting a little hungry, drooling a little perhaps, when you are weeding, you are not alone. Brooklyn Grange makes use of a commerical byproduct to help add organic material, nutrients and a mulch to their beds. Direct from a chocolate company. Cocoa beans. And yep, it really smells like chocolate. Totally dreamy.

 

Ok, for those interested in the more nitty-gritty details of how you actually transform a roof into a farm here are some details from the BG website:

Can the building hold that much weight?

Our farm was designed and installed with the support of engineers and architects who assessed and approved the site. The building was constructed in 1919 and is built like a rock. The roof is made of a thick reinforced concrete slab, which is approved for loads far in excess of the 30 lbs per square foot of materials that we have installed.

"How is the farm built?

Before laying down the soil, we laid down a green roof system, distributed by Conservation Technologies. The system is as follows: a layer of root-barrier, which prevents our 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 our water use down), and finally, a thin layer of felt to prevent the drainage mats from filling up with soil.

What kind of soil do you use?

We bought our soil from Skyland in Pennsylvania, a green roof supplier. The blend is called Rooflite and is composed of compost for organic components, and lightweight, porous stones. The stones make the material lighter in weight and also slowly break down to add trace minerals needed by the vegetables. Our beds are about 7.5″ deep with 1″ deep walkways."