EAST NEW YORK — Chickens and bees may make their home on an East New York block this summer as an urban farm plans to expand its offerings to the community.
The Urban Harvest Farm at Ujima at Riverdale Avenue, between Pennsylvania and New Jersey avenues, offers free, hands-on classes to neighborhood kids to teach them gardening skills and food education.
This year, organizers at the non-profit Slow Food NYC are hoping to branch out with the addition of a nearby lot with laying hens and honey bees, afternoon gardening for seniors and a weekly “food box” program for participants to take home fresh vegetables and herbs.
“Given the challenges that East New York faces, to us, this is a no-brainer. This is what we should be doing,” said Ed Yowell, member of SFNYC’s board of directors and co-chair of the Urban Harvest Committee.
“Seeing the kids with lots of vegetables and plants and fruits, and talking about things like nutritional labeling, is a help. It’s a place we think can benefit them and the kids pretty much love it.”
East New York has the highest diabetes rate in the five boroughs at 18 percent, according to city figures, and the obesity rate for the area is at 31 percent — numbers that Yowell said can be combated through education.
“Ujima” takes its name from the Swahili word for “communal work,” according to the organization.
Since 2010, the farm has provided summer classes for kids aged 6 through 17 from community organizations. Through a five-day program, they’re able to learn about food that is “good, clean, and fair,” Yowell said, with work including planting, tending, and preparing daily meals.
Teachers cover a variety of topics that range from plants and livestock in the food chain and sustainability, to healthy meat production and hunger and nutrition.
Children can taste and cultivate a variety of beans, squashes, peppers, herbs, cherry tomatoes, collards, and more, and this year Slow Food would like to send them home with a weekly harvest.
“Before” and “after” surveys from student farmers on their first and last days at the farm show that 93 percent of kids said they tried and liked a new fruit or vegetable while at Ujima, and there was a 65 percent increase in the number of children who knew where their food came from.
The organization is raising money to provide the “food box” program for kids and seniors, as well as inter-generational education opportunities between the two groups. With expanded hours of operation, Slow Food hopes to open up the farm for senior citizens to garden.
Another lot a few blocks away would serve as additional growing space, as well as a home for animals and insects, and they’d like to help kids operate their own community farm stand.
The nonprofit looks to raise $10,000 for the plans by the end of April.
