Brooklyn Grange, Urban Farming

In a soulful, honest documentary directed by Michael Tyburski and produced by Group Theory, the story of Brooklyn Grange’s most recent foray into urban farming unfolds. “Brooklyn Grange: A Portrait of Urban Farming” captures the journey and experiences of the farm, focusing as much on the blood, sweat, and tears as on the cheer-deserving outcome. Earlier this year, Brooklyn Grange, well-established as the largest soil rooftop farm in the world, leased a 65,000-square-foot location at Brooklyn Navy Yards but the process of cultivating a successful farm at a new site was harder than just waiting for the rain to fall. Skepticism descended upon the project as storms battered down and time ticked away, but the team hunkered down to expand their vision of sustainable urban farms in arguably the most urban city of them all.

Since its launch in June, the farm produces delicious vegetables and also raw honey to be sold at a local market, along with a missionary word or two about the farm’s non-profit arm, City Growers. It is fascinating to know that through the hard work of skilled urban farmers, bright-eyed interns, and caring volunteers, rows upon rows of green vegetation sit aloft in the sky – and that chickens too have made their home up high.