A New Herban Farm is coming to Bed-Stuy

Yonnette Fleming has been building community around food for almost a decade. Check out this opportunity to join her and be a part of Bed-Stuy's Good Food Revolution:

The Creation of the Hattie Carthan herban farm
49 Van Buren Street Betweem Tompkins and Throop
Urban Agriculture Volunteer Opportunities available
May 15 - May 25th, 2011
 
The Hattie Carthan community garden is a place where people of color in Bedford
Stuyvesant have grown food for over three decades in Brooklyn.
 
In 2009, V.P of The Hattie Carthan community garden Yonnette Fleming helped mobilize gardeners and volunteers to reclaim and revitalize an abandoned lot for Urban Agriculture . The reclaimed space now hosts a weekly seasonal market, has distributed over seventeen thousand pounds of fresh, locally grown food to community residents, has a community composting systems which accept organic waste from community residents and manages animal manure from its two hen houses, is home to two hen houses a children's garden, a cob oven and more.
 
This year, the innovative Hattie Carthan community market is embarking on the creation of a new herban farm in Brooklyn which will grow and process herbs for added value ventures,  reduce the carbon footprint of the foods sold in the Hattie Carthan community market and allow us to expand our food justice work in District 36.

The ground needs to be prepared, asphalt removed from the roots of our trees, the weeds that have inhabited the lot for over two decades need to be removed and the soil remediated before serious planting can be done . We need your help!

We will use this ten-day volunteer effort to remove asphalt and road waste from the site, to clean the weeds and remove the rocks from our soil, before building our pathways around the farm, design large farm moundbeds, fill growbags with rich compost for growing herbs and food this season. We have a few neighborhood coffee shops dropping off fresh grinds weekly to help us work on improving our soil health. I invite master composters to join us in creating an in-ground composting system . We will be working on this exciting project every day from
10:00am till 5:00pm (May 15th - May 25th). 
 
 Please come and help us for a week, a day, an afternoon (any time you can spare) for this vital stage in creating the Urban Farm. Enter the Urban Farm from Van Buren Street.  The nearest subway station is GG - Bedford/Nostrand B38 to Tompkins and Lafayette . Walk 1 block on Tompkins then turn right on Van Buren Street. Don’t forget your gardening gloves if you have some.  Water provided – please bring a reusable water bottle.

Any questions please contact Yonnette Fleming at hattiecarthangarden@yahoo.
 
If you are interested in scheduling large volunteer groups or you would like to support the Hattie Carthan Herban Farm in other ways, please send us an email at
hattiecarthangarden@yahoo.com. 

Please let us know if you would like to write a newspaper or magazing article
about the ways that we are working to restore health to our community by growing
fresh food and creating opportunities for youths to get involved in growing food
and health. We also welcome all fundraising efforts to grow help us create
access to more small scale agriculture projects in Bedford Stuyvesant Brooklyn.
 
Help Brooklyn keep its farm heritage alive!
 
We look forward to welcoming you to the new herb farm.