Join KCC Urban Farm for free workshops with Farm Manager Silvia Torres. These workshops are open to Kingsborough students, faculty and staff. Contact Silvia with any questions at silvia.torres@kbcc.cuny.edu.
Tag Archives: KCC Urban Farm
Free Farm Vegetables!
Kingsborough students, get free vegetables today! Visit KCC Urban Farm between 11am-2pm (while supplies last) to get bunches of kale, fennel, collards, lettuce and so much more! If you can’t make it today, we’ll be back on the farm on July 10th distributing more produce. Mark your calendars!
Note: this distribution is open to KCC students, only. If you’re not currently a student, sign up for one of our summer classes or check in for future Continuing Education classes that are held year round.
Apply for a Class Bed at KCC Urban Farm
If you’re planning on bringing your class to KCC Urban Farm more than once throughout the semester, consider applying for a class bed!
Class beds are 8’x4′ raised beds at KCC Urban Farm that will be available for research and classes that go beyond what we already offer. Download or fill out the application form below for faculty, staff, and students interested in applying for space. We are looking forward to reading proposals from a variety of disciplines that will help us expand the reach of the Farm in creative and thoughtful ways.
Applications for class beds for Spring and Summer 2015 semesters are due February 13, 2015. Contact Mara at mara.gittleman@kbcc.cuny.edu with any questions.
Need some ideas? Here are some that have been done in the past!
- A culinary professor brought his students out nearly every week to watch how the changing season affected the availability of produce. They harvested herbs and vegetables to cook in class.
- A biology professor brought her students to the class bed in groups of 2-3 for hands-on practice after class
- A BEH Link class between English and Sociology used a class bed to reinforce ideas learned about Food Systems in class: seeds and seed-saving, access to healthy food, seasonality and local vs. conventional food systems, etc.
Here are some more ideas:
- Design and implement an experiment! Can we grow more nutritious vegetables than what we can find in supermarkets? How does the biodiversity found on the farm compare to that found around campus? What’s the most effective organic fertilizer? What are some best practices for pest management?
- Bring your class every other week to plant seeds and carry them through to harvest. While they’re on the farm, they can observe seasonal changes to harvest, flora, and fauna, or host small group discussions about our food system. At the end of the semester, the students can harvest what they’ve grown and share a meal!
Life on KCC Urban Farm
At KCC Urban Farm, we farm using organic growing practices. In organic agricultural systems, diversity is the key to a farm’s balanced ecosystem—and key to healthy, nutrient-dense yields. In place of using synthetic pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers, we rely on a variety of soil microbes, insects, plants, animals, weather conditions and farmers to keep our farm growing.
The images in this collection serve to reveal the wide array of activities and life on KCC Urban Farm. From images of microbes to photos of sowing seeds, harvesting crops, turning compost piles, insect eggs and more, these images represent the diversity and cycles of life that define organic agriculture.
Five varieties of greens
Volunteers preparing seed bed
KCC Urban Farm beets
Spring at KCC Urban Farm
Volunteer clears bed for new planting
Rainbow of cherry tomatoes
Urban Farming class
March early seed planting
Volunteers compost food scraps
Harvest time
KCC Urban Farm cucumbers
KCC CUlinary Arts class spinach harvest
KCC Urban Farm crew members
Morning harvest
KCC Urban Farm carrots
Flowers to attract beneficial inscets
Harlequin bugs
KCC Urban Farm early summer
Jalapeno peppers for bottled hot sauce
Crew member sowing seeds
Preparing salad greens for KCC Food Pantry donation
KCC Urban Farm Okra
Sowing seeds
KCC Urban Farm workshop
Young seedling
Spring on the farm
Cycle of life
KCC Urban Farm tomatillos
Radish bunches in early fall
KCC Urban Farm kale and collards
KCC Urban Farm microbial life
KCC Urban Farm microbial life
KCC Urban Farm microbial life
KCC Urban Farm microbial life
KCC Urban Farm microbial life
KCC Urban Farm microbial life
KCC Urban Farm microbial life
Vegetable Seedling Giveaway
Join us on the farm to take home free plants for your vegetable garden! KCC Urban Farm is giving away seedlings for tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, callaloo, tomatillos, basil, and parsley.
WHEN: Thursday, 6/19 and Monday, 6/23, 12pm-2pm
WHERE: KCC Urban Farm, between T8 and T2
See you there!
Spend the Summer at KCC Urban Farm!
Would you like to spend the summer at KCC Urban Farm? Sign up for one of our continuing education classes today:
Check out our Continuing Education on the Farm page regularly updated list of available courses at KCC Urban Farm.
To register for any of these classes, call 718.368.5050 of click here.
NYC’s Organics Recycling
Have you seen these funny looking garbage cans on the street lately?
image via Scott Lynch @ gothamist.com
They’re part of the NYC’s Organics Recycling program that just recently spread its pilot throughout additional NYC neighborhoods. If you’re lucky enough to be in a piloted area, the program gives you a starter kit that includes a brown organics bin and a small kitchen container. Collection is once a week with your normal recycling days. If you live in a neighborhood that isn’t currently part of the pilot, you can still dispose of organic waste at one of the cities many drop-off sites.
KCC Urban Farm at Kingsborough
KCC Urban Farm is engaged with so many different parts of the Kingsborough community. We provide soil samples used by students and instructors in Physical Science labs, supplement work in Community Health and other classes, offer cooking demonstrations throughout campus, provide produce used in the Culinary Arts kitchens and deliver produce that is donated to students through KCC’s Single Stop, just to name a few. Take a look at some of our hard work in action:
Cooking demonstrations at KCC’s Single Stop and other events on campus.
Yardsharing
Have you heard of My City Gardens? This yardsharing site (think freeshare, couchsurfing and car sharing groups) that connects landowners who don’t have the time or energy to roll up their sleeves and get dirty, with neighbors who are eager to get into gardens and grow things. Participants share land and skill, but also the fruits (sometimes actual fruits!) of their labor. My City Gardens is a Boston-based venture, but I feel like it’s only time until we see something similar in New York.
Looking at the map, some of the requests are really wonderful:
Eat Real Food
Eating real food sounds simple enough, right? Mark Bittman with the New York Times pulled me in with his cleverly titled “Butter is Back” op-ed. Following a recent study that questions the link between saturated fat and heart disease, Bittman targets ultra-processed foods, hitting on the use of unhealthy unsaturated fats, antibiotic-laden processed foods and environmentally unsustainable farming practices. Basically, we’re losing our connection to food:
“Many things have gone awry with the way we produce food. And it isn’t just the existence of junk food but the transformation of ingredients we could once take for granted or thought of as “healthy.””
tomatillos, KCC Urban Farm, Brooklyn, NY
While we don’t have animals (this article focuses on the consumption of meat), the KCC Urban Farm uses hands-on, experiential learning to teach students about local and global food systems and to re-engage students with healthy, environmentally conscious eating. We hope to soon have an online resource for environmentally sustainable, healthy eating, so stay tuned! In the meantime, please feel free to email (KCCurbanfarm@kbcc.cuny.edu) or call us (718.368.6578) to get more information.