By Chase Emmons

Over the past month, a lot of people have asked what was going to happen to our birds for the winter. We’d tell them not to worry and that we’d find a good winter home for them so they could come back in the spring. Most people would just snicker, figuring “winter home” was a euphemism for holiday stew pot. But no, we really planned to secure a good home for them, even if it meant they had to stay there permanently. Heck, they still have another 2 years of good laying, so stew pot would be a waste anyway.

Well, just so happens that my neighbor up in Western MA had a huge chicken coop, a bunch of birds, they get total outside freedom during the day, organic feed, basically chicken heaven, and he had room for our five girls. We made the deal, and then it was up to me to get them up here. It seems the best time to introduce new birds to a flock is at night. They’re too groggy to fight right away. So I hung out in the city until about 9:30pm when I met Ben and Laena at the farm. I had two large dog carriers and no seats in my minivan, so the plan was sound. We put some wood shavings in the carriers, then scooped the groggy birds out of their coop and into the carriers. Down the elevator and into the minivan parked in the loading dock. Whole scene was relatively surreal, but everything went according to plan. They were totally chill in the back of the van for the entire 3 hour drive. They didn’t even seem to mind me listening to Howard Stern for most of it, though their only other choices would have been Shade 45 or Electric Area.

At 1:30am I got home and shuttled them over to the coop, one by one. My neighbor has a huge flop eared bunny that lives with the chickens and thinks he’s a chicken. The resident birds didn’t seem to care at all, but when he came out to greet our birds, they screamed and jumped like the world was ending. Pretty much they had never seen anything like him before and were horrified. He kept hopping around them and I got a really good laugh at their expense. By morning all was well.

After only 2 days they were mingling with the flock and roaming the property during the day. But when they’d see me they’d all come running over. Resident birds couldn’t care less about me. Now I don’t think they actually recognized me personally, but they were so used to hanging with us on the roof that they identify more with humans than other birds. Turns out they like my neighbors golden retriever too, as they realized he is tight with the humans.

Somehow I think they won’t be too thrilled to come back to the roof in the spring, but then, all vacations must come to an end.

 By Chase Emmons

OK, I seriously still don’t believe how successful that was.  It’s like I’m going to wake up and it’s still Friday night before, subways to Rockaway are down, and a sudden storm front is about to roll in.

3 MONTHS EARLIER

I was hanging around with my beekeeping mentor, Dan Conlon of Warm Colors Apiary in Deerfield MA.  He holds a Honey Festival every year in Sept and we were talking about it.  All of a sudden it hit me, why not have an NYC Honey Festival now that beekeeping has been legal for a year?  Dan said that if someone hadn’t already thought of it, somebody would soon, so it might as well be me.  I picked his brain for a bit and then set off on this kooky mission.  It seemed like the perfect event for Brooklyn Grange to actually put on, and the partners all agreed.  That was easy.  Now I had to figure out a venue.  I remembered that my friend, David Selig, had mentioned to me that it would be cool to find events to hold at the Rockaway Beach Boardwalk, especially events that could extend the season a bit.  The Rockaway Beach Club Concessions is a new venture by a group of really cool restaurateurs who brought really good food and drink out to the Rockaway boardwalk.  David had opened Rockaway Taco 4 years ago and it has since become a huge success, so this was a logical extension of that.  Oh yeah, David is a beekeeper himself and actually got a bunch of attention for the maraschino cherry juice tainted red honey his hives produced in Brooklyn last year.  So perfect time of year, perfect connection to food/drink, and a perfect site.  Sure, there were some who claimed it was too far away, or too much of a hassle to get to.  But hey, doing it in Union Square or Central Park would have taken no creativity whatsoever, involved no risk/reward, and would have relegated the Fest to being just another “thing” going on in Manhattan that day.  There was also a very personal aspect to choosing the boardwalk.  I grew up in the Meat Packing District.  Back when I was a kid, it actually was a meat packing district, with dumpsters full of cow heads, friendly transvestite hookers, an abandoned elevated West Side Highway and Highline where me and my little friends could have urban Stand By Me adventures.  The time between that and what my neighborhood is now was an amazing time.  Such creativity, such open thought, such idealistic nonsense that was so totally fun while it was happening.  That’s the same feeling I get in Rockaway today.  I never went out there once in my life until this past winter.  Selig gave me the tour at the most dreary and depressing time of year, and I totally felt it.  Rockaway is having it’s time of dreams now, and I’m damn well gonna enjoy a portion of my second childhood out there.  So the choice was clear as there was no choice.  It had to be the boardwalk.  Selig said great, make it happen!

OK, now the hard part: making it actually happen.

I knew I had to get a group/team/gaggle together in order to pull this off.  Had to be beekeepers or even wanabees.  Had to be cool and open minded people, not saddled with entrenched and hobbling beliefs, but also intelligent and pragmatic.  Ability to be social, laugh, and adventurous a must.  Shared vision a must too.  Tall order!  Well, turned out not so much.  Timing is almost everything, network/connections makes up the rest.  Within a week I had a core group of like minded individuals, and 2 weeks after that I had the rest. Some were serendipitous finds, some found us, and some felt the disturbance in the force and had to investigate.  I openly referred to myself as Tom Sawyer and the group as my fence painters, so from now on I will use “we” instead of “I” almost exclusively.  Without further ado, the usual suspects were:

Megan Paska: The Brooklyn Homesteader.  Megan has been a huge force in the NYC urban agriculture sphere.  Her credits include everything from rooftop beekeeping, to a well-read blog, to backyard chickens, to writing a book, to slaughtering her first chicken and writing about it on HuffPo, to founding the NYC chapter of Backwards Beekeepers.  And a huge amount in between.  If the group has a Queen, Megan is it.

Lydia Turner: LT&Co.  That insanely perfect flyer and logo?  Yeah, she created that with basically no guidance.  That whole old-timey look which worked so perfectly with the boardwalk venue?  Yeah, that was all her.  I can’t imagine any company not feeling blessed to get their hooks into her.  Hey Lydia, we have an amorphous idea for an event or product, mind whipping us up an entire brand identity in a couple days?  We know whatever you come up with will be absolutely perfect on the first try.

Molly Byrnes:  Responsible for our digital identity.  What’s an event like this without an amazing web page, amazing Facebook page, Twitter, etc?  Not just that, but Molly was integral in keeping the group on task without ever coming off as pushy or overbearing.  She’d come up with ideas, we’d say sure, go for it!  And she would.  Molly was definitely the subtle binding agent, or propolis as it were.  She also brought us the next cast member…

Amanda Rodriguez and Andrew Povolny: AmandaRodriguez.com and yoitsandrew.com  Actual architects of the web site, securer of server space, and always available to make last minute changes just as fast as we could bombard them.  And not just basic IT stuff, but the actual creative layout of the site.  Oh yeah, and the day of the Fest Amanda had a table where she did the most awesome bee themed nail paint.  Next year she’ll be doing full art, with a gun, laser removal required at a later date, must be bee or honey themed.  Drink with reckless abandon and leave with a hive on your back.

Tim O’Neal: Boroughbees.  Tim…how to describe him?  Well, he knows a load about keeping bees both in the country and in the city.  He’s a researcher in an HIV vaccine lab with all sorts of radioactive and caustic stuff laying about.  He bakes the absolute best pies EVER.  He actually has groupies that hound him for dates after they see one of his bee talks or demos.  He spearheaded an effort to get a bee burlesque show for the after party, though an appropriate venue ultimately was not found.  He was the human megaphone for all the announcing at the Fest, stripping his vocal chords to shreds and happy to do so.  And to any TV producers out there, all this and the stuff I can’t put in print add up to the most amazing reality show ever.  “Being Tim”.  I get 10% for that yo!  Don’t mess with me, I gots representation!

Kelly York:  Yellow Queen Honey  Kelly was our muse and had some amazing contacts.  Hooked us with several great participants and sponsors.  Her delicate and demure demeanor was always a treat, especially when it was set aside for her to drink every one of us under the frakking table without the slightest effort!  Better yet, she’s the one who hooked up 6 Point Brewery with the honey they turned into 5 special brews just for the fest!  So wait, she was responsible for the BEER, maybe she needs to be listed first?

Emily Vaughn:  Emily had the knack for writing copy.  Had the knack for tweaking the web site.  Had the knack for utilizing her contacts through Slow Food.  She also continues to have the knack for being one of Tim’s beekeeping students without falling victim to his almost mystical sway over women.  With all the work she did, she was unable to actually attend the Fest.  Talk about dedication!

Michael Meier:  The Brooklyn Homosteader.  Yes, this is his self appointed nom de guere, and he was an amazing find!  From the get go he was cycling all over the city getting our flyers to every farmers market possible.  Networking, spreading the word, he was our Paul Revere.  Better yet, and not Honey Fest related, he ended up being one of the best Grange farm volunteers ever.  From the perspective of my official role with Grange, this was the best thing to come out of the Fest.

Ross Brown:  First year beekeeper, super gung ho, amazing pad in BK with a garden, grills an amazing spread upon request, and gets some good schwag to raffle off, too.  Never tagged him for having body art, but at the after dinner he gave us a triple whammy:  arm, hip, and a… NAVEL RING!  Somehow I think if there were a few more drinks involved, there would have been even more reveals.  We’ll jot that down for next time.

Michael Leung:  HK Honey.  Came to NYC from Hong Kong for 2 months just to get the low down on the urban AG and beekeeping scene.  He created the amazing signs we had at the Fest.  Designer, brander, artist, and HK urban beekeeper.  Amazing guy!  Check out this super pro video that Nokia did on him:  Video

Karen Russo:  ABC News, then to NBC, somehow decided she liked hanging with this eclectic bunch, helped us get some good press going.  Yeah, she bailed on some of our meetings due to silly “field assignments” in supposedly “foreign lands” with possible “combat zones” and stuff.  Totally unacceptable to forgo Honey Fest duties for such trivialities.  She can count herself as under review and Grade Pending.

Then the lunacy began.  First meeting was in the yard at Roberta’s in Bushwick.  Chris and Brandon, owners, were super cool and hooked us with a private table, on movie night.  It was insane.  We’re eating, drinking, the yard is full, they’re showing Evil Dead, me and Tim are quoting Ash,people are wondering who the “special” people are that got a table out there, and we’re trying to get something on paper.  All sorts of crazy ideas, the more the better.  Throw them all out there, then let them sink in and start to triage.  Create the block of marble before removing the extra bits.  Bee costume break dance competition, sure!  Bee costume parade with marching band on the boardwalk, of course!  And it went on like that.

Over the next few weeks we got a bit more rational.  Nixing lots of stuff, begrudgingly so.  Coming up with new and more reasonable stuff.  Getting sponsors and participants.  It was a coup to get 6 Point involved from the start.  Ian was totally into it, immediately saw the opportunity to do some local honey brews, and really was the anchor sponsor. Pickles, Hot Honey, Honeydrop, shirt screening, they all started signing up.  Then the press started noticing.  Started small but was steady.  I had a feeling that everyone was hedging their bets to get close enough to see the weather report.  Understandable, it being at the beach and all.  Then, the week before, the flood gates opened.  Weather report was super solid, participants were signing up, big press was interested, it all came together.  Since this wasn’t about any one person, the press time was spread amongst several of us.  Yeah, I got the Daily News with the pic that makes me look 50, yippee.  But when I sent Tim into the studio at WNYC in my place, it was amazing.  More groupies for him, and God Bless ‘em for it.  Emily gets to write a piece for Grist which was her dream.  And looks like some of the other cast members will do some post-game press, too.

Friday, Sept 16, 2011.  Got all the loaner chairs and tables from Build It Green (what I call the Post Apocalyptic Home Depot) out there in advance, the PA system too.  Turns out that there will also be a super cool art exhibit in the basement of the building the night of the Fest.  Several of the concessions partners have put together a honey themed prix fixe dinner for the evening.  Everyone is psyched, weather is gonna be perfect, it’s wonderful when a plan comes together.  Or not…  that afternoon we find out that both subways that most people would take to get to Rockaway were shut down for Saturday.  Shuttle bus from one point, but added a good hour to travel time.  Yippee!  Looks like we’ll be sitting around with a small crew, drinking 6 Point from about Noon on, and napping under the boardwalk until dinner.  The Boardwalk gamble seemed to get the best of us.  Whaddya gonna do?

Saturday, Sept 17, 2011.  Got there at 8am just because.  Told everyone to get there at 9am for setup, and a start time of 10am.  Had a schedule of speakers and a few demos.  A couple participants got there at 9am.  Set stuff up.  A few more by 9:30.  10am, an ok showing and some actual visitors starting to take notice.  Feeling ever so slightly better.  Clearly the scheduled of speakers was not going to happen as planned, but we figured we’d play it by ear.  Seemed like the speakers were having a good time talking to the visitors directly, more like schmoozing and networking, not so bad.  Then it was like all of a sudden there were a bunch more participants, vendors, and visitors!  The Rockaway Arts Alliance and Sophia Skeans got the kids art mural project kicking, George Schramm from the Long Island Beekeeper Club had a big crowd around his observation hive, Horman’s Best Pickles had a line, and everything was clicking!  Then, basically everyone selling honey had sold out.  Yeah, 2 hours, no more honey.  At around 4 someone brought some more supers to extract from and was selling it as fast as they could fill jars, then they ran out of jars.  They ran down to the Dollar Store and bought every last jar.  Came back, sold them all in literally 5 minutes.  Would have sold quicker if they could have taken the money quicker.  If that’s not a direct sign of how many people and how successful this was, I don’t know what is.

Now I’ll start using “I” again since everyone else was doing their thing and I was running around making sure everything was under control.  I knew I wasn’t going to get to enjoy the Fest itself, kind of like a movie director doesn’t get to enjoy seeing the film for the first time.  But that’s what I signed up for, and making sure things were happening and people were happy was my sole concern.  It was like, who’s that guy in the hoodie climbing up the poles onto the roof and running wires?  That was my experience, stopping every once in a while to snag some chips or fries off a friend’s plate.  No beer for me, gotta stay frosty.  Press people?  Here let me introduce you to one of my team…  OK, I spent a few minutes with the woman from the Japanese paper, it was the least I could do.  But otherwise I knew it had a life of its own and all I had to do was make sure there were no actual fires.  But then there was something that I, and apparently a few others, did notice…

We set up the honey extractor in a back room because we knew that open honey would end up attracting the local bee population.  Giving out soda, you get people.  Giving out honey, you get people and bees.  But still, even with the extractor indoors, we knew that vendors would have stuff out for tasting and sooner or later a scout was gonna report back the bounty she had discovered.  By mid day there were a lot of bees around.  Lots of bees, lots of people, you’d think this was going to end badly.  But something totally unexpected and wonderful happened.  Nobody cared.  Well, the kids seemed to care since they started petting the bees that would land on their honey coated finger.  But otherwise, we had human and bee attendees, all enjoying the fest and totally accepting of each other.  The coolest thing was watching the honey tasting contest.  We set it up to be crowd source judged.  People would come up, take a stick, dip/taste, and go down the line of submissions.  Then they would put a mark on the sign for the sample they liked the best.  But when they would dip the stick, many times a bee would land on the stick and start sampling too, and people had no problem putting the stick in their mouth, carefully not to disturb the fellow sampler.  It was something out of a Disney movie, totally unbelievable.  Not one attendee got stung.  This will be the big takeaway memory for me of this entire event.

OK, from the sublime to the absurd.  When it came time to announce and MC the raffle, we had no megaphone.  So Tim stood up on a table and began to holler.  It was fantastic.  His voice would gradually disintegrate as the announcing went on while his jokes became even more unintelligible.  Frakking brilliant, couldn’t have scripted something like this.  People won nice gift certificates to various eateries around the city and books on beekeeping.  Afterwards I took half the proceeds and gave it to the Rockaway Arts Alliance crew.  With all the work they put in making the kids mural come to life, they deserved it.  The other half will go towards a thank you dinner for the team.  I think Roberta’s again.  After the raffle it was time to announce the winners from the honey tasting contest.

First prize was serious: a fully assembled English Garden 8-Frame hive with copper top from Brushy Mountain Bee Supply.  Winner was Kathy Rohde from Schoharie Valley Apiaries, 646-734-5026 rkrgc@optonline.net

Second prize was serious: an Ultimate Hive Stand from Bee Smart Designs.  Winner was Ralph Gaeta from Ralph & Billie’s Honey, 646-234-1944.  

Tim croaked that out too, and it was hilarious.  After that, things began to wind down.  I asked a few of the eateries in the concessions how the day was, they said it was one of the best days of the season.  6-Point sold out completely and Honeydrop almost emptied their truck. Later, I got a pretty reliable estimate from a guy who knows how to do it, that we easily saw 1000 active visitors roll through.  Seems likely enough, since from 11am to 5pm there were easily 75 people around the various tables at any given moment.  I’m sure that there were a lot of people just visiting the boardwalk who then found the event, but when you actually attract walk-ins, you know you got something going on.  In retrospect, the subway issue was a blessing in disguise.  If they had been running, it might have been a bit unmanageable. 

But wait, there’s more!  At 7pm the honey themed prix fixe dinner began, honey themed cocktails, the art show was kicking in the basement, the band showed up, and things got started all over again.  I sat and ate and drank like someone who had been lost at sea, but then I looked up and started to notice the festivities.  They got a quarter pipe from some guy down the street who’s kid didn’t use it anymore and were doing hits, the band ended up in the basement with the art show and got a full mosh scene going, total mayhem!  I had to finally take off as I was in that weird lucid state you get when sleep deprivation has fully set in.  I slept well into the morning on Sunday, but then had to drive back out to pick up some stuff.  Good thing, as me and Selig got talking and might have a really cool and low key event to announce in the next couple weeks.  Yeah, it has something to do with honey.

Slumlord better add a floor!

One of our hives has gone off the hook, in a good way.

Bit of background: I setup 4 brand new hives, from packages, this spring. I started each on a single deep of mostly drawn comb, so they had a bit of a jump start. But the spring was abnormally wet and cool, which does not help with colony growth at all, so that was a big negative. In addition, the Grange is a somewhat extreme environment for bees: super windy and cooler than the rest of the city most of the time, but also subject to blazing sun without much shade. Of course there is also the cell tower and other antennas/repeaters up there with us, that some people claim negatively effects bees (I totally don’t buy it and will explain in a moment).

With all that you’d figure that the bees have some serious stressors to deal with, especially new starts. At least that’s what I thought.

Less than 2 weeks after I started them I had to add another deep of just foundation, they were totally trying to draw comb anywhere they could: bottom and top of frames, sides of deep, etc. Something I learned was that even if you have lots of frames of drawn comb, start packages with a few empty frames interspersed so they have somewhere to relieve that need to draw.

2 weeks after that they had drawn more than half of the second deeps so I added medium supers with just foundation. Yes, all 4 hives were basically building at the same rate.

On 6/22 I came back after only a few days to discover one of the hives had a massive beard. Like all the way up both deeps and the super, and totally covering and hanging below the entrance. The other 3 hives had what I would consider to be normal beards. I cracked open Epic Beard Man and found the super was fully drawn, mostly filled with honey, and just needed to be capped. Also, even with all the bees on the outside, the interior was totally full as well.

Next day I did a full hive check. No obvious swarm indicators, so I decided to get another super on there pronto. Meg Paska saved my useless butt by hooking me up with a medium super and 10 frames that afternoon which I put up right then. Probably a good idea to have some on hand from here on. Some extra bottoms and lids for splits are on the list too, I’d love to split this hive in particular.

All this, as well as the nice performance from the other 3 hives, definitely shows that the Grange is far less hostile than first thought. It also calls into question any claims that cell phone towers/signals or EM radiation interfere with bees or are deleterious to their health in any way. It’s certainly not a scientific study by any means, but it’s some pretty strong anecdotal evidence to the contrary. I guess I always questioned that claim since urban beehives tend to do really well all around the world, and most urban centers are saturated with cell signals and all sorts of EM radiation. Ours just happen to be setup directly below a tower as well. But if our honey ends up glowing in the dark, I’ll gladly admit I was wrong and then sell the stuff in glow sticks

If you’re interested in getting involved in the farm this spring or summer, please sign up for our mailing list and we’ll get in contact with you as soon as the season gets rolling.

Let’s just hope that New York and other American cities aren’t far behind…

To learn more, check out Good Magazine’s article about the new law.

In its first year our farm has flourished in part because of the hard work that our team put into it, but mainly because of the enormous outpouring of support that we’ve received.

Thanks to all of you who volunteered on the farm and bought our vegetables. Thank you to the chefs and restaurants that ordered from us and turned our produce into culinary masterpieces. Thanks to the individuals and small businesses that had faith in us last winter and supported our fundraising efforts. Thanks to our landlords who let us install a farm on their roof and thanks to the engineers, architects, and green roof and soil companies that gave us the tools to do so.  Thanks to the farmers and neighbors in Queens and beyond for the encouraging words, the useful advice and the enthusiasm that you’ve shown for what we’re doing.

As we sit down to dinner with our families tomorrow we’ll be thinking about all of you and thanking you for this incredible year. Happy winter, and we’ll see you next spring!

Most of the tomatoes that you find in NYC are picked while they’re still green, and they ripen while they’re trucked about 3,000 miles from California or Mexico. Not so fresh!

But our heirlooms are picked the same day we sell them, which means they’re as ripe and nutritious in your kitchen as they are on our vines.

Mmmm… tomatoes. Swing by one of our markets this week and we’ll slice one up for you to try!