During the discussion of how to organize our community garden out here in Bushwick, many of the older community members took issue with food composting because in the past, it has attracted rats. At the time, I felt like it would be a little rude to counter their reluctance with blaming the maintenance of the facility even though many of the old folks discredited by opinion because of my age (a.k.a. “inexperience”).
Though Mr. Joseph and I are still going to work out a way to integrate food composting in our garden, so when the rest of the community notices the lack of rats, we will pull the wild “there was food in that bin all along!” card as a way to let the old folks see the benefits.
I was riding my bike around Park Slope yesterday and came across the Garden of Union. This is a classic model of a well-run community garden. There, I ran into Claudia Eve Joseph who started the NY Permaculture Exchange which has been on my sidebar since I started this blog a few weeks ago. She was very helpful in advising me on what I should look for when planning on spending some of my summer on a sustainable homestead somewhere outside of the city (more information on that when it arrives). I also asked her to give us a quick tour of their garden’s (super advanced, permaculture-inspired) compost systems:
Later in the day, I rode by the Ft. Greene farmer’s market, which seemed rather lively up by the park. Here’s a good directory for Greenmarkets in Brooklyn.
