PROSPECT HEIGHTS — The Brooklyn Museum’s newest exhibit is really fresh.
In fact, it’s straight from the borough’s own gardens.
Every Thursday through November, the museum will host an afternoon and evening farm stand on Eastern Parkway to sell fresh fruits and vegetables grown in East New York and Brownsville. And starting next week, urban farmers will break ground on garden plots on the museum’s lawn to cultivate even more freshness for the new market.
It’s all part of the runup to an exhibit coming to the museum in October, Crossing Brooklyn, that will showcase artwork from all over the borough. In that spirit, the organizers of the farm stand, Project EATS, said they want the effort to start conversations about and between Brooklyn people of all stripes.
“We hope that it creates a dialogue between the two communities,” Prospect Heights plus East New York and Brownsville, said Charlie Wirene, program and operations manager at the Active Citizen Project, the organization behind Project EATS.
Wirene said the stand will have lots of late-season goodies like leafy greens, peppers, tomatoes and eggplants and will be run by youth fellows who maintain farm plots.
“The volume depends on the harvest, which depends on the week,” Wirene said, adding that he expects the stand to have at least 10 or 15 different items from the group’s three Brooklyn farms.
Visitors to the stand will also get an education about urban farming and access to fresh food in a video presentation at the site. And sometime in the fall, Project EATS will set up a “human energy” project at the farm stand where people can peddle stationary bikes to produce electricity for various tools used by the farms.
The museum’s new farm stand is the third farmers market to open in the area around Prospect Park this summer. Last week, two locally sourced produce markets opened on the southwest side of the park with the help of a Crown Heights-based nonprofit, Seeds in the Middle.
The Project EATS farm stand is open every Thursday from 3:30 to 9 p.m. through November at the corner of Eastern Parkway and Washington Avenue in front of the Brooklyn Museum’s glass entrance.
