Bed-Stuy Farm is in danger of losing half its land. HPD (New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development) wants to sell the lot to a developer to pay off a debt. What, you may ask, is so wrong with this? The Brooklyn Rescue Mission doesn’t hold title to the lot, and HPD helps people who don’t make a lot of money own affordable homes. Besides, HPD is offering the farm another lot somewhere else. What’s the problem? Read on.
- Rev. Robert Jackson checks on the crops as he returns the market sign to the shed. Photo by Clay Williams.
More than a Community Garden
This isn’t another story of a community garden being swallowed up by a money-hungry developer. First, this isn’t a community garden; it’s a farm and an educational center. Its effects reach into Bed-Stuy and way beyond. The farm was started by Brooklyn Rescue Mission, namely Reverend Robert Jackson and Reverend DeVanie Jackson, so they could have fresh produce for their emergency food program. What this little plot of land gives forth is impressive—7000 pounds of fresh produce a year that helps feed 3000 people a month. There’s often enough left over to sell at the Rescue Mission’s farmers market and sometimes to restaurants.
But the farm grows more than veggies and fruits. It runs programs in nutrition and farming, and draws visiting schoolchildren, filmmakers, ag activists, chefs, journalists, and the curious. “It’s worth saving just to be inspiring young people,” says Reverend DeVanie Jackson. “Young people of color, they don’t get exposed to black people running things. They see so many white folks come in and black people getting the help.”
More than Advocacy
It’s a bit of miracle that the Bed-Stuy Farm exists at all. It started in 2004, almost accidentally, because the Reverends Jackson never planned to become part of an urban farm movement. They didn’t talk about changing the food system. They didn’t know about food sovereignty. All they wanted was to grow some vegetables to feed people so they could fulfill the mission of the Brooklyn Rescue Mission—”to service the hungry, hurting and homeless people of Central Brooklyn with healthy fresh food and clean warm clothing.” The Jacksons had founded the mission two years earlier.
Much of the donated food didn’t fulfill the healthy fresh part of their vision. “We were getting a lot of canned foods,” said the Reverend DeVanie Jackson at the Brooklyn Food Conference, “Foods from all different parts of the country. We didn’t know how long it was in transit. We got pink tomatoes. We got food that made people not want to eat vegetables, and when people are not eating vegetables they get sicker.” Sicker was not what the Jacksons wanted. And they wanted to be more than advocacy and compensation.
The idea to grow their own came from the Reverend Robert Jackson, who’d spent his early years on his grandparents’ farm. The mission owned the plot of land behind the its building. (This is not the lot that HPD wants to sell.) The Jacksons rolled up their sleeves and began to clear the land. Right next door was another empty lot, filled with debris and weeds. (It is this lot that the HPD wants to sell.) Once upon a time, a “really beautiful, specially designed house with stained glass windows” sat on this lot, says the Reverend DeVanie Jackson. When the owner died, someone began renovating the old house, but suddenly something changed. In came a bulldozer, and then there was nothing but a pile of rubble. “The neighborhood was complaining, calling 311 on us,” (because of the rats) said Reverend DeVanie Jackson. Meanwhile, “we were furiously running around the city trying to get support, trying to get soil and training so we could get the farm up and running.”
They were also trying to find out who owned the empty lot next door…and got no answers. They went to the city’s GreenThumb program and got registered as an urban farm, then set to work making the space ready for farming. They dug out debris and wrestled with invasive plants. Amongst all the overgrowth, Reverend Robert Jackson recognized something from his childhood—a scrawny twig that looked like the beginnings of a fig tree. It was saved. Now it’s full and tall, and homemade fig jam is a fall highlight at Bed-Stuy Farm.
Happy Anniversary
When the Jacksons finally finished clearing the two lots, they still couldn’t plant. They needed to build raised beds, find good soil and seeds—resources they didn’t yet have. So they waited. Reverend DeVanie Jackson remembers looking out her back window one February morning and seeing something she didn’t expect. Instead of a clean lot, she saw a big pile of rubble “Like someone did a house cleanout,” she said, “Everything under the sun just dumped there. Like pieces of bathroom. Pieces of house. Pots and pans. Everything.” The night before a contractor had popped the locks on the fence and dumped his truckload. Some timing. It was the Jackson’s wedding anniversary.
From the start, they took a lot of flack. “People mocked us as we’d be out there trying to turn the soil,” said Reverend DeVanie Jackson. Yet there were many high points. John and Linda Amoroso of the Cornell Cooperative Extension gave them some of their first training. As much as they were mocked, there were others who thought what the Jacksons were doing was wonderful and pitched in to help. There were donations of shovels, volunteers and soil.
After such a struggle, Reverend Robert Jackson notes how everything now works out on its own. When the insects started gnawing on the plants, a couple of bird families moved in and took care of the bugs. And the bugs do their job too, he said. “Amazing how the ladybugs come when they’re needed. They ate the aphids.” The cats, however, don’t seem to know when to leave. “I know they take care of the rodents but they spend a lot of time lounging under the trees,” he said.
My Tour of the Farm
I was given a tour by Maggie Kung, who is interning at the farm this summer as part of the Summer Youth Employment Program. She’ll be attending the Culinary Institute in the fall. She said, “I thought I’d just be farming. I had no idea that I’d meet so many people.” She’d only been there a week and a half and had already met one of her heroes—Mary Cleaver, a pioneer in the sustainable food movement. She’d met restaurateurs and filmmakers. She showed me the pots of strawberry plants, basil planted throughout to deter insects, rows of collards, broccoli that is now yellow flowers, the fig tree, sunflowers, peppers, zucchinis, beans, tomatoes, lots of eggplants and grapes. There’s a brand new greenhouse, a shed, and a small pool where they plan a water garden. The back of the Rescue Mission is cooler and more private and feels more like a meditative garden than a farm. There are herbs and flowers there. Rose of Sharon in full bloom. Maggie called this section “the patio.”
- Chef Tree talks about white radishes at the Malcolm X Farmers Market. Photo by Clay Williams.
I could almost forget I was in a food desert, but there were a couple of clues. At the farmer’s market, Chef Tree sautéed beets with cilantro for her weekly cooking demo. A guy passing by with his friends hustled us for a handout. When I offered him some beets, he said, “No offense. I’m homeless, and I’ll go to any church service you want, but I won’t eat anybody’s food. I don’t trust it. Give me some money and I’ll go to McDonald’s.” Minutes later on my way down the stairs to the A train, I had to pick my way through a large spread of chicken nuggets and their ripped bag.
A Solution?
The Brooklyn Rescue Mission does not want to break Bed-Stuy Farm in half. That would severely limit their sunlight, which would reduce their yield, which means they’d be able to feed fewer people. Obviously, it would be difficult to manage and teach out of two different locations. According to the city’s land use figures, 6.1%, or 1,243 lots, in 2006 of the land in Community District 3 is vacant. Perhaps HPD could sell some of these lots instead and deed the lot on Decatur Street to the GreenThumb program.
Bed-Stuy Farm is about eight blocks from the Weeksville Heritage Center. Back in 1838, Weeksville was founded in 1838 by seven African American men. It was a self-sufficient, intentional community. They owned their land, grew food, kept goats and chickens, bartered with neighbors. “Growing food and eating well was a rebellious act, an act of survival during times of hardship and scarcity,” Jennifer Steverson, a Weeksville curator, said at the Brooklyn Food Conference. [Steverson's full speech] Seems those words are still true.
- Brooklyn Rescue Mission Senior Advisory Council Meeting at the Bed-Stuy Farm. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Rescue Mission.
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