How do we make change in response to living in the climate crisis?
Want to hear more? You can listen to the other project collages here
You are here at the Columbia Street Red Hook Farm
Red Hook Farms is a youth-centered urban farming and food justice program in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The farm creates opportunities for teens to expand their knowledge base, develop their leadership skills, and positively engage with each other, their community, and the environment. They operate two urban farm sites, with programs that include a teen farm apprenticeship, three weekly farm stands, a CSA, and a school workshop program. Since 2001, Red Hook Farms has strived to transform vacant lands into vibrant urban farms, improve access to healthy, affordable produce, and nurture a new generation of green leaders.
To volunteer your time on the farm, please fill out the Volunteer Intake Form here
You may donate to support the operations of the farm here
Red Hook Farms operates two urban farming locations
Columbia Street
Formerly a concrete baseball field, the Columbia Street Farm was founded in 2001 and is now a thriving 2.75 acre produce production, compost site and outdoor classroom that supplies our farms stands and CSA. We harvest over 15,000 pounds of produce each year, welcome hundreds of volunteers and host community events throughout the growing season.
560 Columbia Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231
Red Hook Houses Farm
One of the first urban farms built on public housing land, the Red Hook Houses Farm is a 1.1 acre operation based at Red Hook Houses West. The Farm was built in 2013 through a collaboration with Green City Force, the Mayor’s Office, and the NYC Housing Authority and harvests over 5,000 pounds of produce each year. Residents of public housing take home produce for free by caring for the farm or by bringing in food scraps for us to compost.
30 Wolcott Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231
Since 2018, The Warmest Years on Record has collected audio interviews that explore people’s emotional, psychological and sensorial experiences of living in the climate crisis. Through these conversations, we try and answer the question, ‘what does it feel like to live on a rapidly warming planet?’
In the summer and fall of 2021, I partnered with GreenThumb and interviewed almost 60 gardener members at thirteen community gardens across Brooklyn. These folks reflected not only on how climate change has shown up in their emotional psyches, they also shared hyper-local knowledge about how their growing seasons have changed over the past many decades.
Each participating garden hosts a unique sign outside their fence facing the sidewalk. I invite you to visit each garden site, enjoy the green space, and listen in on our other people are wrestling with the big questions of this unique time.
To listen to the full project archive, please visit The Warmest Years on Record here.
If you’re concerned about the climate crisis and don’t know what to do about it, I encourage you to join your local community garden. These spaces are vital for the health and resiliency of our city as we move into an uncertain future. An abundance of green space sucks carbon and other pollutants out of the air, helps with rain water drainage and takes stress off our city sewage systems, cools down the temperature, and most importantly, provides food, nourishment and community in our neighborhoods.
The Warmest Years on Record is supported in partnership with NYC Parks GreenThumb and is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC)
Signs for this project were designed by Ashley Smestad Veléz
Audio mix by Michael Simonelli
Music for audio by Charles Waters
Website designed with Matthew Spencer