Urban farming is a growth industry in New York city’s concrete jungle, and with little open land, agriculturalists and beekeepers have taken to the rooftops to pursue their passion.
Andrew Cote uses the emergency fire ladder to climb up to the roof of his East Village building, where he tends to 250 bee hives.
Cote, a professor of Japanese literature, doubles up as president of the New York City Beekeepers Association, and is happy that the city authorized beekeeping in the middle of last month after an 11-year ban.
PHOTO: AFP
“The city wants to plant 1 million trees, and the trees need to be pollinated,” Cote said.
The ban forced beekeepers into hiding, fearing a US$2,000 fine if caught. Now Cote believes the bees are vital to helping keep the city green.
“Our bees pollinate, and they clean the air. It is a way to connect with nature,” he said.
Bees also produce about 45kg of honey per hive per year, he said — honey that he sells at the city’s various farmer’s markets.
Cote said he has received several requests to install rooftop beehives, and the demand is such that yesterday he was scheduled to offer a course for aspiring apiculturalists.
On the other side of Manhattan, in the posh Upper East Side, Eli Zabar, owner of the upscale “Vinegar Factory” delicatessen, inspects the crops he is growing on the roof of the old factory bought in 1991.
“I began the green houses 15 years ago,” Zabar said. “I grow heirloom tomatoes, lots of different kinds of lettuce, herbs, basil, rosemary, thyme, raspberries, figs, beets. We use the heat of the bakeries and pastries, we recycle the heat. With the use of the heat we have eliminated our [carbon] footprint.”
“You harvest in the morning, you sell in the afternoon, you don’t refrigerate, it tastes better,” Zabar said. “We pick everything ripe and ready to eat. All our products here are organic.”
Depending on the time of day, Zabar says with a smile, “the green houses smell of bread, brownie or croissant.”
About half of the items Zabar sells in his deli comes from rooftop farms.
From Manhattan to Brooklyn, whether on rooftops, backyards or in any of the city’s 600 community gardens, urban farming is a growing phenomenon.
The movement is helped along by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who seeks to turn the city into a sustainable development champion. Through “PlaNYC 2030,” a program he launched on Earth Day 2007, people who install “green roofs” can get a tax break.
At Randall’s Island, in New York’s East River, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department is currently testing 16 different types of vegetation that could be placed on the roofs of schools, hospitals or other public buildings.
“These are patches of succulent vegetation, like sedum, which protect the roofs, [and] isolate the buildings from the heat because the UV [ultra-violet] sun is not hitting,” senior project manager John Robilotti said.
VENEZUELAN ACTION: Marco Rubio said that previous US interdiction efforts have not stemmed the flow of illicit drugs into the US and that ‘blowing them up’ would US President Donald Trump on Wednesday justified a lethal military strike that his administration said was carried out a day earlier against a Venezuelan gang as a necessary effort by the US to send a message to Latin American cartels. Asked why the military did not instead interdict the vessel and capture those on board, Trump said that the operation would cause drug smugglers to think twice about trying to move drugs into the US. “There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people and everybody fully understands that,” Trump said while hosting Polish President
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
A French couple kept Louise, a playful black panther, in an apartment in northern France, triggering panic when she was spotted roaming nearby rooftops. The pair were were handed suspended jail sentences on Thursday for illegally keeping a wild animal, despite protesting that they saw Louise as their baby. The ruling follows a September 2019 incident when the months-old feline was seen roaming a rooftop in Armentieres after slipping out of the couple’s window. Authorities captured the panther by sedating her with anesthetic darts after she entered a home. No injuries were reported during the animal’s time on the loose. The court in the
Another tanker carrying liquefied natural gas from Russia’s sanctioned Arctic LNG (liquefied natural gas) 2 project has docked in a Chinese port, ship-tracking data showed, days after Russian President Vladimir Putin met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing. The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) tracking data indicated the Russian Voskhod LNG tanker was anchored at an LNG terminal in the port of Tieshan in Guangxi, China. The Russian flagged tanker, with a cargo of 150,000 cubic meters of LNG, was loaded up at the Arctic LNG 2 facility in Gydan in northern Siberia on July 19, LSEG data showed.
RSS