In this piece, Deborah Greig, Urban Agriculture Coordinator for East New York Farms!, explains the history of the organization in the context of the neighborhood.

For more on East New York’s history since the early 1960s, a good first place to look is Walter Thabit’s 2003 book How East New York Became a Ghetto.

In this piece, Holly Leicht, Deputy Commissioner of Development at HPD, explains the recent history of the city’s involvement in East New York and how strategic site disposition enabled the homegrown urban agriculture movement to flourish.

In this piece, we hear from Perry Winston, an architect formerly with the Pratt Center, who has worked with the community since the early 1990s. He describes how he brought together a diverse coalition of organizations, including the Cornell Cooperative Extension and the East New York LDC, on a grant from the Yamaha Corporation to map assets and engage the community in visioning sessions to identify development priorities.

If you want to learn more about East New York as a community, one first step is to look at some land use and demographic information:

Profile: Brooklyn Community Board 5

OasisNYC.net: Community Maps

In this piece, we meet Johanna Willens, the first farmer to sell her produce at the East New York Farmers’ Market in 1998.

For all you budding urban farmers out there, here are some
DIY tips to get you started on your own community garden:
First, the materials:
The New York City Compost Project
Gardens Alive

Then, some community workshops:
Brooklyn Botanic Garden: Gardening Page
Green Thumb NYC

And finally, some tip sheets and online resources:
The City Farms Tipsheet
OrganicGardening.com

In this piece, we explore the East New York farmers’ market. It’s open every Saturday between June 28th and November 15th. This August, the farmer’s market celebrated its tenth anniversary.

Clearly, there’s a lot more to this story than we were able to include. Check out some other precedents, community groups and further reading below, and send us links you think we should know about:

Earthworks Urban Farm: Detroit
Nationwide Urban Farming Site Listing
NPR: Farms Take Root in Detroit’s Foreclosures
Growing Home, Inc.

And last but not least, the live performance you just heard at the East New York Farmers’ Market is original work by local MC and vocalist “Lyrical Artist.” Check her out on MySpace:
Lyrical Artist on MySpace Music