FRESH Teens and Urban Farms

Looks Can Be Deceiving
By Christina Carpenter
Never again will you say nothing good comes out of the hood.
Yesterday our FRESH Teens group went on a field trip to East New York. What shocked me the most is when I found out we were going to a farm in East New York. I thought it was a joke. Who knew that it was possible to have a farm in Brooklyn at all? All we hear about are the negative things like the high crime rates we have here in Brooklyn, so it was surprising to see something positive in East New York.

As soon as we got off the train and walked a few blocks, we were greeted by a large gated area of green vegetables, such as swiss chard and okra, which made me kind of eager to go inside and see what was going on. When we got there it was surprising to see teens such as myself running the farm. They had a lot of interesting things going on, such as a bee keeping area (which I was scared of), and a fish pond. They even had a green house powered by nothing but the sun. I'm always used to seeing them on TV, but I never thought I would have ever been actually standing in one. I don’t think I would want to stand in one again, it was extremely hot. They had different varieties of fruits and vegetables growing. There was one in particular called “bitter melon” which I never even heard of or ever saw until that day. They say if you eat the seeds inside, it's really sweet, but it looks very irregular on the outside so you would have never even guessed that. I guess you learn something new every day.

This whole experience got me thinking: maybe a couple teens from my neighborhood in Fort Greene can start our own farm. I mean, why not? With hard work and dedication, they have a huge beautiful farm in East New York. I bet we can do it in Fort Greene. We can recruit some youth who are interested, maybe take surveys to see if they think a farm would even better the community or not. In my opinion, I think it would be great if everyone can come together and further the development of the farm. I live in Fort Greene myself, and with all the violence that’s going on we need to come together as a community. But why just stop there? I bet we can have farms in all different parts of Brooklyn. Everyone can benefit from fresh fruits and vegetables, and feel proud knowing it was locally grown at that.

Christina is participating in MARP's FRESH Teens program, joining 5 other teens from the neighborhood to learn about food issues and build leadership skills to engage other youth. FRESH Teens will be blogging throughout the rest of the program, which runs through the end of October.

For more information about the FRESH Teens program, please contact Sam at 718.230.1689 or sam@myrtleavenue.org.