Books, Videos & Articles
Check out these of New York City farming books, videos and articles.
Don’t miss Langston Hughes’ account of his season on the Criaris farm on Staten Island. Check out the chapter “On My Own” in Hughes’ autobiography “The Big Sea.”
Books
Staten Island's Greek Community, by Christine Victoria Charitis, 2006
See chapter two: “The Greek Farmers of Staten Island.”
From Pastoral to Urban: The Meyer Farms of New Springville Staten Island, New York, 1903–late 1950s, Second Edition, by Emilie Clothier Harting, 2015
Memoir of life on her German-American family’s Staten Island farm.
Ten Acres Enough, by Edmund Morris, 1864
Memoir of sustaining a family on a small ten acre farm in New Jersey.
The Big Sea, by Langston Hughes, 1940
Autobiography of Hughes’ early life. The chapter “On My Own” describes the summer Hughes spent on a Greek family farm on Staten Island.
The Rooftop Growing Guide: How to Transform Your Roof into a Vegetable Garden or Farm, by Annie Novak, 2016
Rooftop farming guide written by Annie Novak, co-founder of the nation’s first commercial green roof vegetable farm, the Eagle Street rooftop farm in Greenpoint Brooklyn.
Videos
Urban Farming NYC, The Point Action, 2009
Made in the Bronx, New York, by ThePoint Action, September 14, 2009
Meet Your Farmer, Brooklyn Grange, the World's Largest Rooftop Urban Farm
Brooklyn rooftop farm, by Local Roots NYC, May 22, 2019
Flashback: When Staten Island Farms Fed Manhattan
Slideshow video set to music, by Jan Somma-Hammel, for The Staten Island Advance, August 13, 2020
Former Bulls Head resident recounts Staten Island's past farm life
Cheryl Criaris Bonales shows where many farms were located on Staten Island. Video by Jan Somma-Hammel for the Staten Island Advance, November 29, 2017
Last Functional Farm in NYC, Decker Farm
Aerial footage of Decker Farm, by Mustang2005, August 7, 2016
Salt Hay Stacking
Wonderful video demonstrating the lost art of salt hay stacking, from Newbury, Massachusetts, by Christopher Drelich, October 9, 2009
Local Interest Farming Articles
How an 8-acre green roof atop the Javits Center is boosting NYC’s biodiversity
by Rosemary Misdary, Gothamist, October 30, 2023
Thanks to a project managed in partnership with the NYC Audubon and the company Brooklyn Grange, half of the Javits Center now has a green roof. Organizers completed the installation of 7 acres of this landscape back in 2014, and it now serves as a sky-high bird sanctuary with a bustling colony of around 160 herring gull nests. In 2021, Brooklyn Grange added another acre to the roof, creating a food forest featuring pears and mango-like paw paw fruit, as well as a year-round farm with a greenhouse.
Decker Farm: NYC’s oldest continuously working family-style farm
by Jan Somma-Hammel, The Staten Island Advance, September 15, 2023
The Decker Farm on Staten Island remains New York City’s oldest continuously working family-style farm. Today, Historic Richmond Town has teamed up with new American farmers and supporting agencies to keep the land cultivated in recent years and offer educational and public programming to the farm’s many annual visitors.
Street Chaos and Long Hours Push Farmers’ Market Workers to Unionize
by Liam Stack, The New York Times, April 26, 2023
Most of the workers at the city’s farmers’ markets are hourly employees who make between $19 and $26 an hour. Some work year-round, but many are part time or work erratic schedules. Few receive benefits or have job security. Now, hoping to improve their wages and benefits and persuade GrowNYC to focus more on their safety, they are forming a union.
8 Commercial Urban Farms in NYC (And Where You Can Enjoy Their Harvest!)
by Leah Butz, for the Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center, October 29, 2022
In the past fifteen years, New York City has become a hotbed of technological innovation in the urban agriculture sector and home to hundreds of community gardens bringing fresh produce, greenspace, and education to New Yorkers of all ages. There is however, far less commercial agriculture based in the city.
7 Best Urban Farms to Visit in New York City
by Sascha Bos, for MTA Away Newsletter, April 22, 2022
The MTA article lists seven NYC urban farms and way to get there by public transportation: Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, Brooklyn Grange, Harlem Grown, Oko Urban Farms, Queens County Farm Museum, Randall’s Island Urban Farm and Wave Hill.
Javits opens working farm in the skies over New York City
by Real Estate Weekly, September 16, 2021
A new one-acre working farm on top of the Javits Center is expected to produce some 40,000 pounds of produce a year.
A Staten Island Farm That's Reinvigorating the Borough's Farming History
by edibleBrooklyn, May 31, 2016
The Heritage Farm at Snug Harbor is producing vegetables for Brooklyn restaurants.
NYC Agriculture: A Timeline
By Gil Lopez, “Verdant Cities” blog, January 6, 2018
History of the urban farm/gardening movement in NYC.
Many Greek families found a new home here
By Cheryl Criaris-Bontales,The Staten Island Advance, July 25, 2013
Article about Greek immigrants on Staten Island, many of whom were farmers.
Farming the fields on Staten Island
by Jan Somma-Hammel, The Staten Island Advance, July 30, 2021
Agriculture played a significant and valuable part in Staten Island’s financial growth.
The Little Farm that Could
by James G. Ferreri, The Staten Island Advance, September 27, 2007
Driving through Staten Island in 2007, it is hard to imagine there ever was a farm, a goat, cow or chicken anywhere.
Salt marsh hay was once an important industry on Staten Island
By Clay Wollney, The Staten Island Advance, December 2, 2014
Salt hay was actively farmed on Staten Island prior to 1920.
Gericke Farm, Pioneer of Organic Produce
Secret Staten Island, February 8, 2018
Featuring a reprint The Organic Farmer, “The Story of a Staten Island Organic Farm,” by Alden Stahr, 1949.
Farming on Staten Island, Influence and Decline
by CUNY students, 2010
Farms on Staten Island were once a building block of the economy and grew everything from wheat to strawberries.