There are nearly 500 community gardens scattered across the five boroughs of New York City. In a city of 8 million people, this is undeniably a large number. Data is widely available to determine where community gardens are located and how big they are, but in this agglomeration, one crucial set of data is missing- how much food is being grown? This is where Farming Concrete- a volunteer, citizen science project- comes in. The mission of Farming Concrete is to quantify how much food is grown in New York City community gardens.
I stepped into this project in late July, as it was nearing its apex. My position title was “Urban Agriculture Researcher.” As a researcher, I would be assigned to drawing maps of gardens, measuring the dimensions of each garden bed, recording the number of produce growing, and collecting completed harvest logs. Yet, already 20 somewhat researchers were roaming the streets, equipped with paper and pencil, tape measures, mapping forms, and scales. What was my role in this grandiose scheme? Would I be able to catch up with my fellow team members? I was excited to begin mapping yet uncertain of my capabilities.
It seems that Mara, the project coordinator, was a bit hesitant as well to let me venture out into the field on my own. A week later, I received an e-mail from Mara, suggesting that I take on a new role. I panicked; what did I do wrong? Did I say something to offend Mara? Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned my disinclination to visit gardens in neighborhoods deemed unsafe or too far away. Nonetheless, this was not the time to begin arguing with my supervisor.
My new role was to be a project coordinator- a nice title as well. For the next few weeks, my job was to coordinate mapping across the boroughs, which entailed reviewing the master spreadsheet and keeping track of which gardens had been visited and which ones needed someone to go map them. In addition to this task, I went through hundreds of garden addresses, identifying the ones which were erroneous or had missing data. Although the work was quite tedious at the time, it proved to be extremely useful. Once corrected, the data was quickly exported into a Google Map, available for use to all researchers and volunteers searching for gardens to map in their neighborhood.
By early September, I began to grow restless of my job. The main purpose of this internship was supposed to be to go out into the field, speak to gardeners, draw maps, do crop inventory and measure plot dimensions. I had the uneasy feeling that my contribution to the project as of far was minuscule. With a determination to be more involved, I emailed Mara and asked her if I could visit a few gardens on my own in Coney Island- the closest location to me. To my surprise and pleasure, Mara wholeheartedly encouraged me to pursue Coney Island- an area of Brooklyn that has received little coverage. I had a paradox of feelings: on the one hand, I was all too eager to trek through gardens, counting tomato and pepper plants; on the other hand, I had neither idea of where to begin once I arrived at the garden nor any foreknowledge of plant identification.
My first visit to a garden was disastrous; I didn’t know whether I should begin by drawing a map of the garden or do crop inventory. Furthermore, I didn’t know whether I should count each individual vegetable or begin counting by plants. Luckily, on my second visit the following week, I came better prepared. I had written down the steps I would take and austerely followed them. The most satisfying aspect of that day was speaking to the gardener himself and hearing his story. I listened to him regale how he built the garden from scratch, the struggle of fighting with the city when it sought to decimate what he had built, and his final triumph in winning the fight against the city. Now, he works to preserve and promote the garden as a place for everyone in the neighborhood to enjoy. It is often mind-boggling to me that ordinary people can make such a stark contribution to a neighborhood.
As the harvest season is beginning to near its end, many new tasks await to be done. In addition to making final garden visits, there are harvest logs to be collected, phone calls to be made, mailing addresses to be retrieved, thank you letters to be sent out, and evaluation forms to create. For those who are interested in learning more about our project, there is an interactive map of our results so far on the following website: http://harvest.farmingconcrete.com/.
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