Featured Farmer: Plenty Farm at Trinity Grace Church Brooklyn

Farmers: John and Natalie Foote; Michael and Mary Castillejos

Summary from Farmer John Foote:

Plenty Farm is a GreenThumb community garden located at 19-21 Hunterfly Place that was founded in 2009.  Since it began, the mission of Plenty Farm has been to grow and donate food in the neighborhood.

Plenty Farm runs a completely organic garden, fueled by their own compost, growing crops from premium heirloom seeds that are native to this area.  At any given time they have 20 or more crops in the ground, as well as fruit trees, herbs, and edible flowers! In the Fall of 2010, Trinity Grace Church made a generous donation to Plenty Farm that enabled them to purchase several tons of clean topsoil and compost to help ensure that food can grow free of any dangerous toxins lurking in the ground from years past.

Farmer John Foote has this to say about Plenty Farms: “We are a true community garden with no individual plots—all food is grown and donated. Except for small quantities given directly to neighbors who stop by and help when we’re out working, we bring our entire harvest to BSCAH.”

Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger’s partnership with Plenty Farms others over the last few years has been unbelievably valuable; we truly appreciate all the produce they donate to help us feed our neediest neighbors.  Mr. Foot says that “they couldn’t fulfill our vision without such a great partner to manage distribution and keep the produce fresh until donated”.

Most of the volunteers who work at Plenty Farm attend Trinity Grace Church. (http://www.trinitygraceparkslope.com). During the growing season (roughly April to October), volunteers work at Plenty Farm every Saturday from 10:30am to 12:30pm, and welcome volunteers! It’s an especially great place for kids to come and get their hands dirty, and to learn about fresh delicious food.  Plenty Farm’s public email address is info@plentyfarm.org.

Link to a video of Plenty Farm: http://www.trinitygraceparkslope.com/2011/05/09/plenty-farm/