Tuesday, December 14, 2010

our year of Chickens!

It has been a wonderful year for bk farmyards and our chicken projects. We were first approached by the New York Restoration Project only last March, and in less then a year we have accomplished so much! Here is a summary of our activities:
  • We built a beautiful coop, (we lovingly call Fort Hen) for the largest flock in Brooklyn.
  • We had over a hundred people from the community walk in off the street when seeing the chickens running in the garden (over 100 during bees garden hours on thursday alone!)
  • We hosted 3 elementary school classes, and one high school youth program at the garden for chicken workshops.
  • NYRP and us partnered with Just Food to host 5 workshops for the City Chickens Series
  • The workshops were very well attended, with about 25 people per workshop, and over 1/3 coming for the whole series; that's over 180 participants in educational workshops!
  • We had such a high demand for training that we started a more intensive apprenticeship program. we have had 9 apprentices so far, one of which is in the process of starting a new operation in fort green. our apprentices have spent over 450 hours in the garden, and i have given them over 48 hours lessons.
  • plus we brought lots of great attention to the Imani garden and NYRP through our networking and media coverage.
oh and the eggs!
  • we had 16 members during our summer/fall csa, and have 5 members for our winter shares.
  • our hens laid over 8,064 eggs
  • thats 52,416 grams of local sustainably produced protein, enough protein for 1,048 people for one day, or enough eggs for 18 people from may through January.

So in summary we are pretty happy with our first season. We greatly appreciate all the support and work from everyone involved. This has been a team effort, without the support of NYRP, the Imani garden members, our amazing apprentices, Just Food and Greg Anderson from Walt L. Shumel, all of this would not have been possible.

oh and did I mention all the press?
 and someone just passed this on to me, its pretty funny how the word travels
http://brooklynian.com/forum/crown-heights-and-prospect-lefferts-gardens/egg-csa