Brooklyn Grange

Rooftop Livestock

This Thanksgiving I went upstate for a traditional family feast at my uncle’s farm. He lives outside of Cooperstown on several dozen acres complete with hay fields and pasture and woods and a creek. I always assumed that some day I would move out to the country and buy a farm like his to satisfy my unrelenting craving to be a farmer, but these days that bucolic destiny is fading fast as I come to terms with the reality that there’s just too much farming to be done here in Brooklyn.

There aren’t too many things that my uncle grows on his land that I can’t grow on a roof. Except perhaps sheep. A small herd of heritage breed grazers is likely too much for our roof farm to handle – although we could certainly set up a confined feeding system in somebody’s basement, it would be better to leave the sheep upstate in their vastly more humane pasture.

But if sheep are out of the question, that doesn’t mean we can’t raise something smaller. Brandon and Ben have been rearing bees, and we’re currently drafting plans for a fifty-bird chicken coop at Roberta’s, which will provide the restaurant with all its eggs starting next spring. Why not put some chickens on the roof, too? Or maybe some rabbits?

Last month we were visited by Novella Carpenter, a trailblazing urban farmer who raises all sorts of small game at her urban lot farm in Oakland, CA. She stopped by Roberta’s to teach a bunch of eager and edgy foodies about the ins and outs of rabbit slaughter and butchering. Unfortunately, she had to go back to the West Coast, leaving but a few puddles of bunny blood and a bunch of energized urban farmers in her wake. Hopefully we can get her to come back next fall in time for Brooklyn Grange’s very own rabbit slaughter – we’ll provide the rabbits if she brings the knife.

To learn more about Novella Carpenter’s work, visit Ghost Town Farm

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