A Farm With a View: Long Island City’s Brooklyn Grange

Long Island City’s Standard Motor Products building takes up the majority of Northern Blvd. between 36th and Steinway streets. Its huge, sturdy and unassuming slab of industrial grey, located off one of Queens’s busiest streets, has a unique claim to fame: It is the foundation for New York City’s largest rooftop farm, the Brooklyn Grange. Yes, the 40,000 square-foot farm is on the roof, growing hundreds of thousands of fruits and vegetables, including 40 types of tomatoes, within its 1.2 million pounds of soil. I visited the farm, gaining easy access in thanks to The Greek, who volunteers there–managing their compost and tending to his bees, who also have a home on the roof. On this glorious afternoon I nibbled on some delicious Sungold cherry tomatoes off the vine, fantasized about the root candy thriving under my feet high in the sky and soaked in the heaving exhale of oxygen.

The farm, which has been open since the Spring of 2010 in Queens, is a commercial farm that sells its pesticide-free goodies to local restaurants, as well as the public through a CSA and many farmers markets.
With Manhattan in the background and the countless support sticks of tomato plants in the foreground, Brooklyn Grange, named before space in Brooklyn fell through and after founders established their name publicaly, is a very special place, home to a movement that  is directly linking the eater with the farmer. 
I saw so many succulent-looking fruits and veggies; I could barely resist the Scarlett O’Hara urge to chomp on them raw. Plump eggplant, bazillions of tomatoes, tomatillos… oh boy. Lost in the green.
and in the Cubanelle pepper yellow
Lend me your ear…
A mesclun mix
American Gothic, Urban-style

The Greek tends to his bees while being recorded by an independent filmaker… and photographed by a lowly blogger.