Category Archives: Food

Celebrate Bees and Chickens!

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BCM’s Celebrate Earth Festival begins next week on Monday, March 25th! We have a week packed full of amazing events celebrating our green museum, our community, our city and our planet! Here are a couple more of the wild programs we have planned.

Meet a BeekeeperThursday, March 21, 2013 – 1:30-3:30 p.m.

Beekeeping in New York City has only been legal for three years, but since 2010, the number of hives and urban beekeepers has exploded. Many urban bee keepers have hives right on their rooftops for hyper-local honey making!

Some even worry that there is not enough forage to sustain the number of hives. Now isn’t that a sad something? There may not be enough flowers in the city to feed our growing honeybee population!

This Thursday, visit the museum’s greenhouse to meet a real urban beekeeper, Emily Vaughn. Emily’s an urban farmer and freelance horticulturist. She teaches beekeeping workshops at 3rd Ward, one of the many places that hosts workshops and info sessions on this new urban farming phenomenon. Try on Emily’s beekeeping veil, test out her bee-calming smoker, do the bee waggle dance, and touch real honeycomb. Emily will answer all your buzzing questions so stop by for a sweet time!

 

Chickens in the Garden Friday, March 22, 2013 - 1:30-3:30 p.m.

Last year, we had a blast meeting the chickens of BKFarmyards. They arrived via bicycle, enjoyed the garden’s greens, and one hen even laid an egg!

This year for Celebrate Earth, we’re very excited to meet the chickens of the Hattie Carthan Community Farmer’s Market, a garden and market just ten minutes away from the museum. The market’s founder, Yonette Flemming or “Farmer Yon”, will answer all your clucking questions as she shows off her Rhode Island Reds. Get a preview of her story on the Hattie Carthan website. It turns out her mother and grandmother also raised Rhode Island Reds! I loved this sweet excerpt of her story:

“Livestock breeding and farming has been practiced by the women in my family for years. According to my grandmother's accounts, (a woman who raised hundreds of chickens at a time for consumption in her village of Berbice) when the women in our family got married, they were given five live eggs (as part of a sort of dowry arrangement) which were hatched (of course roosters were allowed on those farms) and they learnt how to raise those chicks, those chicks went on to lay eggs and have other chicks and that was the foundation of their livestock farm.”

Check out Hattie Carthan's events page for a list of awesome ongoing community events!

School Gardening Workshop

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There is definitely no shortage of resources for starting your own school garden in NYC! We've covered how you can DIY with GrowNYC's Grow to Learn program, start a school garden on a fence with the Wooly School garden program, or even pursue becoming an Edible Schoolyard NYC  garden site.

But if you really want to talk to the experts and get comfortable with the basics, NYBG is hosting another School Gardening workshop on election day- November 8th. Register soon before spaces fill up!

School Gardening Workshop at New York Botanical Garden

8:30 am – noon; Cost: $35

Come learn about the benefits of having a garden on your school site. Join NYBG staff and other gardening organizations to learn about logistics, resources, and curriculum connections for creating, maintaining, and  integrating gardens into your students’ learning. This half-day workshop is the perfect primer for helping you begin planning or even rekindling a garden on your school site.

For more information, contact Judith Hutton, at 718.817.8140 or jhutton@nybg.org. To register, contact Registration at 718.817.8181 or school_programs@nybg.org.

If you can't make the election day workshop, NYBG also offers more extended Professional Developments around school gardening:

 

School Gardening 101: Creating a Garden February 18-23, 2013

School Gardening 201: Curriculum Connections July 22-27, 2013

Farm to Table Card Game

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Where does our food come from? How many places does the slice of cheese on our burger see before it ends up on our plate?

At Brooklyn Children's Museum, we teach a program for school groups called, "It's Easy Being Green." We cover topics like proper recycling, energy efficiency, and sustainable food choices. The food activity splits kids into groups; each group is responsible for piecing together the life cycle of one ingredient on a burger. They're given cards that each represent one phase in, for instance, the journey of a slice of cheese. 

Now, here's the challenge: After students have pieced together the journey of their cheese (there are twenty cards or steps for the cheese alone!) they have to figure out how to remove pieces of the production-distribution-consumption-waste system to make the whole thing more sustainable. How can we get this slice of cheese to travel less? This activity can lead to great discussions on Farmer's Markets, local food, and composting.

Want to try this activity with your class? Email GoGreen[at]Brooklynkids.org for a PDF version of the full set of Hamburger life cycle cards!

 

Gardening Adventures

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This spring at Brooklyn Children’s Museum, we’ve guided our 2nd and 3rd grade after school kids in their first gardening adventures. Each student got a 2 x 2' plot to call their own. They removed the weeds, turned the soil, seeded, watered, and after about a week, sprouts began to grow!

Some students seeded with extra enthusiasm and ended up with beautiful, super crowded plots. We told our lil gardeners to choose their most thriving plants and give them room to grow. They plucked out all the sprouts closely surrounding their star specimens. They could either replant the spouts in an empty space or enjoy them as a tasty treat!

After about six weeks of watering and waiting, the kids’ gardens did look quite lush…a little too lush. We discovered common ragweed and crabgrass encroaching on a good chunk of their plots! Did you know that there are an estimated 100,000 dormant seeds in every square meter of arable ground?These native, annual weeds spread thousands and thousands of seeds in their spring-to-winter growing season in hopes that a relatively few will take root.* The kids enjoyed pulling out these pesky plants and reseeding their plots with cinnamon and lime basil seeds.

What challenges will these new gardeners face next? Tune in to follow their progress!

* The "Eastern Forests" Peterson Field Guide by John Kricher and Gordon Morrison offers awesome, concise but thorough paragraphs on common New York plants, animals, and all things ecology. We're bound to be citing Kricher's tidbits again and again.

Farm to Table Card Game

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Last month, we got kids thinking about where their trash ends up with Trash Talk and Loop Scoops. But let's start at the beginning. Where does our food come from? How many places does the slice of cheese on our burger see before it ends up on our plate?

At Brooklyn Children's Museum, we teach a program for school groups called, "It's Easy Being Green." We cover topics like proper recycling, energy efficiency, and sustainable food choices. The food activity splits kids into groups; each group is responsible for piecing together the life cycle of one ingredient on a burger. They're given cards that each represent one phase in, for instance, the journey of a slice of cheese. Take a look:

The journey starts here at "Sunset Farm". But why are we starting on a corn field if we're trying to get to a slice of cheese? 

To feed the cows! Unfortunately, most cows in the US are fed corn rather than the tasty grass that their stomachs were built to digest. The cow's milk then has to be transported to the cheese factory. That's two big truck rides so far for one slice of cheese!

The cheese then gets stored in a large warehouse with other grocery goods. 

A truck picks up the cheese from the warehouse and takes it to the grocery store where it's stocked on shelves and finally awaits your purchase.

Your cheeseburger can now be assembled and enjoyed! And now what? What about the packaging your cheese slice came wrapped up in? What about all your other food scraps? Where do they end up? 

Most of the time, they end up in a landfill.

Now, here's the challenge: After students have pieced together the journey of their cheese (there are twenty cards or steps for the cheese alone!) they have to figure out how to remove pieces of the production-distribution-consumption-waste system to make the whole thing more sustainable. How can we get this slice of cheese to travel less? This activity can lead to great discussions on Farmer's Markets, local food, and composting.

Want to try this activity with your class? Email GoGreen[at]Brooklynkids.org for a PDF version of the full set of Hamburger life cycle cards!

Plants on your Plate

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In our last post, we started thinking about where our food comes from. Here are a few food ingredients whose plant source might surprise you!

Vanilla comes from the seeds of a vanilla orchid.

Cinnamon comes from the bark of a tree native to Southeast Asia.

Black pepper comes from the seeds of a woody vine in the rainforest.

Ask your students to write down their favorite meal. Then see how many ingredients they can name. Which ingredients come from plants?  See if they can take it one step further and name the plant sources of all those ingredients. This could be an excellent research project. Have students report back on their most surprising findings. (The fungi and minerals in our food might throw them for a loop!) Students could even compose a collage of all the plants in their favorite meal.  An example of tracing an ingredient to its plant source might go something like this:  Burger to Beef Patty to Cow to Corn Plant.

This food investigation could go in many directions and offer some unique teaching moments.  How do they know what the cow in their beef patty ate? Students might get stuck on the multisyllabic chemical ingredients in some of their favorite processed foods. Do chemical foods offer the same nutrients and plant foods? What exactly are “artificial flavors”?

We'd love to hear where this food activity takes your class!

Pancakes, Pancakes!

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Here’s a sustainability epiphany that many kids may be surprised by. Almost all food either comes from plants or the animals that eat plants! It’s easy to look at a carrot or an orange and understand that it came directly from a plant, but what about candy, cheese burgers, or pancakes? It can be hard to make the seed-to-plate connection when your food doesn’t seem to have much to do with a garden or a farm.

Eric Carle’s book “Pancakes, Pancakes!” could be a great tool for little ones starting to think about where their food comes from. Of course, the beautifully crafted pictures in this book offer a nostalgically outdated version of our food system (think pitchforks and red barns vs. combined animal feeding operations and genetically modified seeds), but the book succeeds in getting the wheels turning regarding how much nature goes into a simple meal.

“Pancakes, Pancakes!” follows a young boy on a farm as he follows his mother’s request to track down all the ingredients needed to make his yummy breakfast.

Chickens in the Garden

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Yesterday, we had some feathered visitors from BKFarmyards join us at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for a program sponsered by National Grid. Take a look at the fun!

Madison and Stephanie arrived on a bicycle with three hens visiting from their coup at Imani Garden down the street. These ladies are graduates of the Chicken Apprenticeship program offered by BK Farmyards. The program runs for three months and leaves you with the knowledge to begin raising your own hens in the city! The program begin at the end of May and applications are being accepted now.

Kids had the chance to pet the chickens and asked some awesome questions: What is that red thing called on the top of their heads? A comb! Why do the Chickens peck at the ground? They're looking for worms and seeds to munch on.

Brave visitors  had the chance to feed the chickens leafy greens from our garden. And then…

We got a surprise when one of the hens laid an egg on the spot! Talk about getting kids to understand where their food comes from…they were able to feel the warm egg! 

I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know these friendly hens. Have you ever been to Imani Garden? BK Farmyards offers field trips and farm tours for school groups. You can visit Imani Garden or have the chickens come to you! Contact them at eggs@bkfarmyards.org.

Woolly School Gardens

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Spring has arrived and there’s no better time to get gardening! If you’ve been interested in starting a school garden but hesitated because your school just doesn't seem to have the green space to spare, a Woolly School Garden might be a perfect option for you. Woolly Pockets are hanging planters made of recycled plastic and engineered to wick water straight down to your plant's roots. These gardens can hang on any available wall, rail, or fence at your school.

With a little time and effort, you can also build your own vertical garden. Start with a south facing wall close to a water source….vertical gardens need to be watered 4-5 times a week because they lose water faster than other gardens. If your garden will be hanging on a wall, you’ll need a solid waterproof barrier to prevent water seepage and mold. You also want to be sure that your wall can bear the weight of wet soil and plants. Check out this do-it-yourself guide for more tips on building a vertical garden.
One nice thing about Woolly Pocket edible gardens is that their design helps conserve water and take out the guess work involved in building your own structure. They also come with standards-based nutrition and gardening curriculum and cost relatively little to install compared to the price of installing some full scale school gardens. The whole kit costs $1000 and Woolly Garden offers lots of fundraising options and tips. The even have a “Contribute” section on their site where people can donate to your project!

Edible Schoolyard NYC

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Are you interested in teaching kids more about food, gardening, and cooking at your school? One option is to become an Edible Schoolyard site. The program, started by Alice Waters, turns open space at schools into gardens, and then teaches the students at the school about growing, cooking, and eating food on site.

What can your students learn by growing and eating fresh food like these tomatoes?

So far, Edible Schoolyard has one location in NYC: PS 216, right here in Brooklyn. But they are looking to expand, and plan to have one school in each borough next school year.

That’s where you come in. If you work at a public school located in the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens or Staten Island, you could apply. Your school must serve, at a minimum, kindergarten through fifth grade and be a Title I school. Accepted schools receive tons of help and resources to turn their available space into a teaching garden.

For more information about the program and to apply, go to Edible Schoolyard NYC’s website. Applications are due by February 28, 2012- good luck!