Recyclers' Urban Farm
A Recyclers' farm in the midst of the city is not only possible but attainable!!! . . Sure! we can!
Leader
Ana Martinez De Luco
Location
219 Mckibbin St., NYC, NY 11206
About the project
Sure We Can, with the help of Artfully Unforgotten and Musgo, have started a 'Recyclers’ Farm - Garden' in Bushwick, built by repurposing salvaged disposable recyclables available on site.
Our main objective is to involve those who bring their cans and bottles daily to the center together with other neighbors -including the school located close to our site – in rediscovering our capacity as a community, to grow our own delicious fresh and healthy food through planting, harvesting and chicken-raising at a low cost.
We hope to do so while transforming what, otherwise, would be taken as garbage or waste into art, beauty and useful space. This is part of our commitment of finding healthier and more sustainable ways of living in the midst of the vast city of NYC.
The Steps
1. Prepare posters / signs /short workshops to inform the neighbors and those who come to the Sure We Can site about the project, in hopes that they share with us their vision of their own “community garden.”’
2. Finish the compost bin and begin composting
3. Build the chicken coop.
4. Prepare the plastic crates / plastic bottles / tires that are to be used as planters.
5. Collect top soil / manure and prepare a vertical garden.
6. Build a small green house.
7. Invite people to bring their own seeds or plants and help create their own part of the garden. They are welcome to come and cultivate veggies or flowers, as they would like. We are all from different cultures-- Asian, South American, North American, European. . . we all have different things to share!
8. Build a rain water harvest system (there is no water in SWC site).
9. Convert a regular bike we already have into an electrical cargo bike to use as transportation. With it, we can collect rotten vegetables from local supermarkets/greenmarkets, etc. to use for composting pick up any other recyclable material that could be used as planters, or move any other donated materials.
Why we‘re doing it
This is part of our commitment to find a healthier and more sustainable way of living in the midst of huge cities like NYC. Already Sure We Can is addressing the problem of excessive non-degradable 'waste' products, used and discarded in the city by collecting soda, water and beer containers, redeeming them and returning them to distributors. But because there are so many other non 'redeemable' containers, we want to find ways of using them artistically and effectively, as much as possible.
On the other hand, most of us at SWC have previously been 'connected' to nature and in many cases to farming, but today we experience a total disconnect from the food we eat. The lack of accessibility to affordable local healthy food in our neighborhood is alarming. We want to empower our community to address this issue by growing nutritious, fresh and culturally-appropriate food at low cost while understanding both the beauty and responsibility that being interconnected with each other and with the earth means.