From our friends Rebel Diaz inspired by Occupy Wall Street.

2nd Annual Black Farmers & Urban Gardeners Conference

Growing Wealth, Health and Justice
Keynote address by
K. Rashid Nuri
Founder of Truly Living Well Center for
Natural Urban Agriculture in Atlanta, Georgia

October 14 – 16, 2011
Garden Tour 10-15 Inclues Brook Park

The Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners Conference connects growers, eaters and organizations across the country to nurture the health and well being of Black America and the environment as a whole. Attendees explore issues of race, class, health and food through panel discussions, workshops, films and conversations. Resources are exchanged. Ideas are pollinated. Solutions are born.

The second annual conference will be held from October 15th, 2011 9am to 5pm at Hostos Community College in Bronx, New York. Registration: $25
Oct 14th kickoff Fundraiser at Kiosk Restaurant 80 East 116th in Harlem from 6pm to 9pm.
October 16th, Farm and Garden Tour in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Newark. The Bronx Farm Tour will be during lunch on October 15th. Includes Brook Park!
Register here.
The Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners Conference is organized by Black Urban Growers (BUGs), an organization committed to building networks and community support for growers in both urban and rural settings. Through education and advocacy around food and farm issues, we nurture collective black leadership to ensure we have a seat at the table.

Fowl play: Bronx neighbors are staging a coop at urban chicken farms


“Today is my first day as a chicken farmer!” crows Lily Kesselman, who is cradling a speckled hen in a lush garden where rows of bell peppers, collard greens and string beans are flourishing on a late Indian summer afternoon.

Behind her, 14 more biddies scratch the dirt in their freshly dug run and explore their coop built by Kesselman and her peeps just the week before.

Neighbors rotate through the hen house to coo over their new feathered friends before signing up for shifts to feed the birds and clean the coop.

Pretty bucolic for the South Bronx, no?

It gets better:

The 4½-month-old hens, a crossbreed of Rhode Island Red and White Leghorn, were hatched from eggs tended by public school students as part of the Queens County Farm Museum’s 21-Day Eggs-periment program.

The farm then reared the chicks before donating them to the Friends of Brook Park in Mott Haven, where community members and “chicken deputies” from local schools will now take over caring for the flock.

“These are New York birds, through and through,” says Owen Taylor from the Just Food organization’s City Chickens Project.

aylor launched the City Chickens Project in 2005. It provides training, materials and chickens to help make fresh, locally grown food accessible to New Yorkers.

They’ve set up 14 chicken coops from Bedford Stuyvesant to East Harlem over the past six years as chicken-rearing has become an increasingly popular part of the urban farm movement. More than 530 members have also joined the New York City Chicken Keepers Meet-up group online.

“Raising chickens in New York City is not unusual,” says Taylor. “It’s legal, it’s sanitary, and if anything, we’re going back to normal, to the city’s agricultural roots, when everyone used to own their own chickens.”

Kesselman first hatched the idea for a backyard chicken run more than a year ago as she became more involved in the Brook Park community garden.

“I am very dedicated to my neighborhood,” she says, “and I started thinking that this could be a fun project for the garden.”

As she read up on the benefits of owning chickens – the birds aerate and fertilize garden soil, compost kitchen scraps and control the bug population – she realized they could be a great educational tool for kids hooked on sugary drinks and processed foods.

“It’s a great way to get neighborhood kids into healthier food by getting them to meet the chickens, interact with them and understand where [our] food comes from,” she says.

Together, Taylor and Kesselman scored a $700 grant from the Citizens Committee for New York City to pay for their coop. Kesselman raised another $750 by launching a sponsorship program online, where neighbors and classrooms paid $50 to name a chicken. The money goes toward feed, the project’s biggest expense. The 15 birds will run through a 50-pound bag of feed (about $20 apiece) every month.

The sponsors also get a glossy 4-by-6 photo of their hen provided by Kesselman, a professional photographer.

The community is already fussing over the new chicks on the block, which they hope will provide up to 4,300 eggs per year (to be doled out on the honor system) once the hens begin laying in the next month or so.

“Oh my goodness, I’m holding a chicken!” laughs high school sophomore Amanda Johnson, 15, who is using her service hours in the park for a class volunteer project. “It’s just so funny. The only time you ever see chickens in the Bronx is on a menu.”

“I love it,” says head gardener Daniel Chervoni, who has watched Brook Park transform from a vacant lot in 1990 to a busy community center.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to have chicken for supper anymore!” he says as a hen roosts on his shoulder.
Kesselman also hopes that their experiment will stage a coup across the borough.

“We have a lot of burnt-out lots in the South Bronx,” she says, “and they could all be urban farms.”

Read the whole article with MORE photos here.

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Justice 4 Families Community Rally on Stopping the Rail to Jail
Brook Park (141st and Brook Avenue)
October 4th, 6-8pm

Thanks to the Harlem River Working Group, which we helped form, our waterfront is getting more attention and design treatment from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Students in Associate Professor Eran Ben-Joseph’s Site and Environmental Systems class applied their knowledge to envisioning an integrated waterfront access plan along the eastern banks of the Harlem River in Bronx, N.Y.

To generate strategies for reconnecting the river to its adjacent communities, twelve graduate students in DISP (Department of Urban Studies and Planning) took part in the Site and Environmental Systems class (11.304/4.255) with Professor Eran Ben-Joseph. Together they applied their knowledge to envisioning an integrated waterfront access plan along the western banks of the River in Bronx, New York. Partnering with city officials and local organizations, together they envisioned a pedestrian friendly Bronx.

READ MORE HERE.

Friends of Brook Park has been concerned that MIT, an institution with, at the start of Fiscal Year 2010, an endowment of $7.9 billion, will use this design study as a wedge to compete for grant funds with local organizations. For example, we believe they have put forward a proposal for funding through the South bronx Waterfront Partnership of WCS and NOAA funded by Rep. Serrano. This is a limited pool of $ that longstanding local groups rely on. Why should we have to compete when MIT has billions? Is there design work to support local communities, or to compete with them?

NYC has announced the Bike Share program.

You can vote where the locations may be! GEt it in the South Bronx!

Click and Visit here.

Zoom into Brook Park at East 141st Street and Brook Avenue in the South Bronx and you can add a new pin spot, or vote to “Support” one of the pins already placed there on the map!

Click on image for larger version.

We launched Brook Park Chickens – the blog!

If you want to contribute, let me know! We will list the goings-on of the park, schedules, photos and fun! Spread the word ’cause these chicks will have a lot to say! Please add yourself as a follower and post on Facebook!

Lily