With the new year just around the corner, now is the time to start thinking about your resolutions. This year, why not make some resolutions you can actually stick to? Here are some of what we'll be doing to improve ourselves, our city and our environment in 2017.

1.   Say goodbye to plastic bags, for good. Greenmarket is committed to reducing plastic usage at our markets and several of our farmers are now offering reusable totes, bread and produce bags for sale. In 2017, make it a priority to make sure you always carry a reusable tote and produce bags and let's cut down on the amount of plastic we put into landfills.
2.   Drop off your food scraps. Since Greenmarkets began collecting food scraps for composting, we’ve collected over 7 million pounds of food waste that would otherwise be in a landfill. The rich compost created from these scraps is then used in community gardens, parks and other green spaces. Composting has never been easier with 22 of our year-round markets accepting food scraps.
3.    Clean out your closets AND your junk drawers. Old textiles can be dropped off at 20 year-round markets or find a Stop ‘N’ Swap in your neighborhood to bring unwanted clean, reusable, portable items such as clothing, house wares, games, books, & toys so they can find a home with someone else. You might also find something you need for your home!
4.    Become a Greenmarket Volunteer. Greenmarket hosts volunteer orientations every month and provides opportunities to help, both indoors and out in the elements, year round.
5.    Sign up for your first Winter Fresh Food Box. Our popular Fresh Food Box program has expanded the number of Winter Fresh Food Box sites to 10 this year. Pick-up locations in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan provide access to a pre-packed selection of affordable fresh produce from December to May. 
6.    Boost your workouts with ancient grains. The high-protein, low-gluten grains our Regional Grains Project sells at their stand are the perfect base for clean, simple meals after the indulgent holiday season. Try this wheatberry salad with kale and butternut squash for a healthy, protien packed lunch or dinner. 
7.    Introduce a friend to the Greenmarkets. Shopping at a Greenmarket is not just about fresh, healthy, local food, it’s about the community. Make a shopping date with a friend who has never shopped at Greenmarket and show them the enormous bounty our region has to offer right at their finger tips each week at their local Greenmarket.
8.    Eat at a restaurant committed to sourcing their food locally. For those nights you just don't feel like cooking (never, right?), there are many restaurants around NYC that purchase from Greenmarket and GrowNYC Wholesale all year long.      
9.    Get your hands dirty. Looking for a fun way to bond with your coworkers while doing some good? Get your company involved and sign up for a corporate volunteer day to help build or refurbish a community garden in the city.
10.  Visit Staten Island. A trip on the Staten Island Ferry is always a nice ride but it’s even more fun now that you can visit our St. George Greenmarket year-round.    

On East 137th and 138th Streets in the South Bronx, four contiguous community gardens flourished for more than 25 years. Hundreds of Mott Haven residents tended to flowers, grew food, and met one another. Then, in 2015, a fire broke out in the neighborhood, burning infrastructure across the garden block. The City was forced to close all four gardens and the site lay dormant.

Starting in February of 2016, the NYC Parks Department’s GreenThumb program began the gargantuan task of rebuilding the entire site. With help from the Department of Sanitation and the Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation, the site was completely cleared, including thousands of pounds of debris and all the internal fences, and a fresh, vacant lot appeared.

GrowNYC joined the effort in May to restore the space to its previous horticultural glory, building more than 100 garden beds, a performance stage, murals, dozens of tables and benches. In September, we finished work on the new United We Stand and 138th Street Community Gardens. You can see the transformation in the before and after pictures, but let Efrain Estrada, a community garden member, tell the story:

“After the fire, the garden was closed. It was very bad: we had nowhere to garden, nowhere to hang out. It looked like a jungle, with a burned casita, and then people started throwing junk in there.

I felt bad that the garden was gone—I felt like a piece of myself was gone. The garden community is a family and the family didn’t have any place to go. I was close to crying. It was 25 years that we had made that garden and then it was gone. But then I thought, let’s go. It was spring and it was time to go again. Let’s start again. And that is where GrowNYC stepped in.

Working with the community and volunteers, we started rebuilding the entire site in the spring and we finished in fall.

People from the neighborhood say it’s beautiful now. We are proud. The people from the neighborhood see this whole new space on 137th Street and 138th Street. They see the flowers and all the vegetables and they love it.”

Join us for Greenmarket's First Annual Rutabaga Curling Competition! 

Union Square Greenmarket 
Union Square Park - North End 
Friday, December 9th
12pm - 3pm

This event is during the Union Square Friday Greenmarket and is free and open to the public for attending, viewing & cheering.

Sign up for the VIEWER - Rutabaga Curling Competition ticket if you want to attend but not participate. 
Sign up for the PARTICIPANT - Rutabaga Curling Competition ticket to enter in as a contestant (also free, but only 20 spots!). 
Attendee and Participant Tickets Here!
 

PARTICIPANT INFO

The court is approximately 55' long, 8' wide, lined with wooden planks and ends with one big circular target. Contestants are divided into sections (three players per section). The top finisher in each section qualifies for Round Two and the top finishers from that round qualify for the Championship Round. The top two contestants in the championship round are awarded gold and silver, along with a small prize from the market and, of course, eternal bragging rights. Each contestant gets one roll per round. Once a rutabaga has been thrown it shall lay on the field of play until all other contestants in that section have rolled. Thrown rutabagas are subject to being knocked by subsequent rolls. 

Participants can BYOR (Bring Your Own Rutabaga), but we will also have some available for use. 

Participation is free, but if you sign up you as a participant you are commited so please be there! 

Questions? Contact Liz at lcarollo@grownyc.org. 

This week, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced New York State's investment of $15 million in the construction of a new Greenmarket Regional Food Hub in the Bronx.  

The hub, which will be used by GrowNYC's GrowNYC Wholesale program, will be a state-of-the-art 120,000 square foot facility that will greatly increase New Yorkers' access to the freshest, most nutritious locally grown food the region has to offer.

From the press release:

The Greenmarket Regional Food Hub will be located in the Hunts Point neighborhood in the Bronx and will include a wholesale farmers’ market, a cold storage facility for farmers, a food-processing center and other infrastructure to support local food businesses. The new food hub will work with a range of small- and mid-sized farms, providing unprecedented access to New York City’s wholesale marketplace. The processing facility will also assist Upstate producers and processors in targeting institutional and private sector procurement opportunities. In addition, the food hub will facilitate the expansion of farmers’ markets and youth markets in underserved communities.

GrowNYC's garden program has had a busy first half of 2016! 

Among other things, we've built four new community gardens, totaling 40,000 square feet of new open space.  Here's the skinny:

Windmill Community Garden
A vacant lot in Long Island City - who would have thought? We worked with a great neighborhood association and adjacent school on building out this 2,500 square foot space with raised beds, a shed, and, you guessed it, a windmill!  Lots more to come from this space in the 2nd half of 2016.
 

400 Montauk Community Garden
An existing garden in East New York, Brooklyn that had been extinct for several years, we started the year with a rubble-filled lot and, a few weeks later, had a total renewal - 20 new raised beds, picnic tables and garden benches, and more!  

Warwick Street Community Garden
Another extinct community garden in East New York that we worked with a host of community partners on identifying, organizing, designing, and building a new garden on a completely vacant space.  Now features raised beds, picnic tables, a shed, and, most importantly, plants! More info

United We Stand Community Garden
4 contiguous community gardens flourished for 30 years until they were decimated by fire in the Winter of 2014.  Flash forward to this February, and we'd worked with the garden groups and the Parks Department to tear all the internal garden fences down, clear the entire site, and start working on a design for 1 large united community garden that spans an entire block between 137th and 138th Streets in the South Bronx.  

Halfway through 2016, we've built 50 raised beds, a dozen picnic tables, a new shed, and a pathway linking the two streets.  We can't wait to put the finishing touches on the garden this summer!  

Volunteers are a major source of strength for nonprofits and GrowNYC is fortunate to have the time, effort and talents of so many dedicated New Yorkers. Whether they are corporate groups giving back to the community by helping with a garden build for a neighborhood or school or a single individual who feels passionate about what GrowNYC does, we are extremely grateful.  Want to volunteer with GrowNYC?

Jonathan Kong started volunteering with GrowNYC in 2014, quickly establishing himself as a tireless worker and enthusiastic supporter of all things GrowNYC.  But in 2016, Jonathan has taken things to a new level: Creating and undertaking The Greenmarket Challenge: a quest to volunteer at all 54 Greenmarket farmers markets in 1 year.  

We spoke with Jonathan what inspires him, which Greenmarket is his favorite, and much more:
 

How long have you been volunteering with GrowNYC?

This is my third year.

What is it about GrowNYC that inspires you to work with us?

I really like the environment, working outdoors, getting to interact with the public, doing hands-on activities such as the cooking demos, and learning something new about myself everyday.

Favorite activity when volunteering?

Cooking demos are always fun to do because I get to see the actual ingredients I'm using and use them with the recipe. Outreach is great since I get to see the diversity of people who live in different neighborhoods.

How many different Greenmarket locations have you volunteered at?

So far about 30, but I plan to volunteer at all of them by the end of this year.

Do you have a favorite Greenmarket?

I like Union Square a lot because there's a lot of different activities going on down there and it's really easy to get to. I also have favorite markets for each region: Forest Hills for Queens, Columbia for Upper Manhattan, Tompkins for Lower Manhattan, Fort Greene for Brooklyn, and Parkchester for Bronx.

Favorite fruit and/or vegetable?

I tend to go for tropical fruits like mangos, pineapples and coconuts, but they don't sell them at the markets.

What would you tell someone who was considering volunteering with GrowNYC?

Volunteering with GrowNYC will help you improve your social skills, build confidence in yourself, and feel comfortable working with other people.                                                                                                                         

Severe weather in the city or in the greater region may affect markets. Markets may close early or farmers may not make the trip in to the city.

We are watching tropical storm Hermine. There are no market closures expected at this time, but please check back for updates.

In addition, we will post up-to-date information here: 
Union Square Daily List of Producers in Attendance 
Manhattan Greenmarkets Facebook
Queens Greenmarkets Facebook
Brooklyn Greenmarkets Facebook 
Staten Island Greenmarkets Facebook

A note from GrowNYC Executive Director, Marcel Van Ooyen:

Forty years ago this July, Greenmarket founders Barry Benepe and Bob Lewis organized a small group of farmers to truck their fresh produce into the city and set up shop in an empty parking lot across from the Queensboro Bridge. It was an experiment of sorts; to see if New Yorkers, dwellers of the concrete jungle, would respond positively to buying farm fresh produce from the region in an outdoor market space. When the farmers’ tables were empty within a few hours, it was clear that they had struck a chord with residents.

Since 1976, GrowNYC’s Greenmarket program has transformed city streets into bustling marketplaces where shoppers are able to connect with the land, agriculture, the city and their neighbors in a way that is impossible elsewhere in today’s world of big box stores and food delivery services. The community that is created when a group of farmers pop up tents and fill tables with what was just harvested is one that is cherished by both farmer and shopper alike. Relationships have been built and nourished in these spaces; education beyond what you can find in any classroom has taken place in these spaces; and lives have been forever impacted in these spaces by what started as merely an experiment.

Over the course of the years, we’ve heard so many stories of the myriad ways Greenmarket has affected our farmers, shoppers, chefs, tourists, city dwellers and countless others. In celebration of our 40th season we are chronicling and sharing these stories in what we are calling the “Greenmarket 40 for 40.” These stories are not just about the incredible food you can find at the market, although there will be some of those. These are stories about lives intersecting with one another, paths changing course, communities and businesses being built, and lessons being learned all in the wake of that fateful day in 1976.

Each week, from now until the end of this year, we will be sharing one of these stories with you here on our blog and you can also find them by following GrowNYC on Medium.com. We hope these stories will make you smile, make you laugh or maybe even shed a tear. We also hope these stories will inspire you to donate $40 to GrowNYC as a part of our $40 for 40 campaign so we can continue to bring the community of Greenmarket to New Yorkers for the next 40 years. We have some special vintage themed gifts for those that do.  

9/2/16: An Antidote to "Get Big or Get Out" by Gabrielle Langholtz
8/23/16: The Beat to My Life by Nicole Tucker
8/16/16: A Market Sonnet by John Martini
8/9/16: A True Farmers' Market by Stephanie Villani
8/2/16: From Organic to Ornery, the Story of Gorzynski Ornery Farm by Gabrielle Langholtz
7/26/16: Oh SNAP!
7/19/16: Happy Birthday, Greenmarket
7/12/16: Communities Create in the Now by Demetris Giovanni Edwards
7/5/16: A Bird's Eye View of Union Square Greenmarket
6/30/16: On the Street, In the Market by Jeanne Hodesh
6/22/16: Sergio's American Dream by Gabrielle Langholtz
6/15/16: Harlem's Best Block Party by Rose Pierre-Louis
6/7/16: Rick Bishop & the Evolution of the Tri-star Strawberry
5/30/16: How Do You Pronounce M'smen? by Hot Bread Kitchen
5/24/16: Behind the Plate with Greenmarket Founder Barry Benepe and Foodstand by Summer Rayne Oakes
5/17/16: The Best City Views Are for the Bees by Gabrielle Langholtz
5/10/16: Poetry Takes Root at the Greenmarket by Stacey Harwood-Lehman
5/3/2016: A Day in the Life of a Greenmarket Manager
4/26/16: Five Lessons Learned from Shopping at the Greenmarket by Chef Peter Hoffman
4/19/16: Health & Wellness for All New Yorkers at the Greenmarket by Women on Wheels
4/12/16: The Birth of Divine Brine by Robert Schaefer 
4/5/16: Final Call for the Earl of Edgecombe: My Last Day at Silver Heights Farm by Lee Houck
3/29/16: 40 Years of Greenmarket: The Rebirth of Farmers Markets in New York City by Marcel Van Ooyen

What's new:

About Project Farmhouse