By Joe Maniscalco
For years, Willie Nelson’s FarmAid has been helping struggling American farmers from the “heartland” keep one step ahead of bank foreclosure. But what about Mr. and Mrs. Green Jeans right here in the heart of Brooklyn? Who’s helping them out? Well, it turns out that it could be you. On January 14 and again on January 21, the Brooklyn Brewery – one of the borough’s finest and fastest growing microbreweries at 79 North 11th Street – will be hosting a sudsy beer bust benefiting East New York Farms Located on a Parks Department lot between New Lots and Schenck avenues, East New York Farms is a seasonal sensation of leafy green goodness which comes to life for six months out of the year from June to November. As many as 25 urban gardeners and three New York State family farmers contribute a bumper crop of pears, plumbs, apricots, peaches, peppers, carrots, corn, pumpkins, squash and callaloo – a leafy Caribbean favorite hard to find across the city. East New York Farms also provides an outlet for some 20 different and unique craftspeople and food preparers. All together it’s a 10,000-pound harvest that not only guarantees fresh and nutritious food for those who need it most – the young and the elderly — it also provides an economic boost for micro-gardeners as well as educational opportunities for neighborhood youth. All you have to do to help is knock back as many Brooklyn Brewery favorites like Black Chocolate Stout, East India Pale Ale and Brooklyn Pennant Ale ’55 that you can in five hours. “We held the event last year during a snow storm and we still had a sold out event,” said Brooklyn Brewery’s Kraig Beaudoin. Snow is the key theme of this year’s fundraiser as well. For the ticket price of $25 you not only get to indulge in unlimited amounts of award winning local brews – including the freshly capped Spice Winter Ale – you’ll also be among the very first to check out Warren Miller’s breathtaking new gonzo ski epic Higher Ground. “It’s just like going to the movies, expect that you can get drunk,” Beaudoin laughs. You’ll want to be sober enough, however, to score a sled-full of freebies that’ll be raffled off throughout the evening. Prizes will run the gamut from cases of beer to free lift tickets at Hunter Mountain. You could even score yourself a cool T-shirt. All the fun starts at 6 p.m. and runs to 11 p.m. Showtime for Warren Miller’s Higher Ground will be between 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. If you get to Brooklyn Brewery early enough, you might want to take an expert tour of the facilities which opened back in 1996. The last tour goes out at 4 p.m. At one time Brooklyn was home to a whole host of family-owned breweries – each with their own line of distinctive beers. That all changed in the late 1970’s however, when the last of the great Brooklyn breweries shut down when Rheingold and Schafer shut its doors in 1976. Former Associated Press correspondent Steve Hindy and a few partners revived the time honored tradition of Brooklyn beer making eight years later when they pitched in and founded Brooklyn Brewery. Since then Brooklyn Brewery beers have made their mark throughout the borough. East New York Farms has made its own mark on the borough as well. This year East New York Farms is expected to begin offering fresh meat and eggs to its expanding selection of homegrown farm products, according to Projects Coordinator Sarita Daftary. “The ultimate goal is for the market to be able to completely sustain itself,” she said. Presently, the non-profit East New York Farms subsists through a combination of grants and private contributions. One of the most interesting features of East New York Farms is its youth training program. Each year since 2000, East New York Farms has trained middle school students from the neighborhood in all aspects of farming on a half acre plot of land just a block away from the market. In addition to the 500 hours of training they get growing their own vegetables, neighborhood kids from the hard-scrabbled streets of East New York are also manufacture their very own fresh honey on location. “It’s a great way of preserving open spaces in East New York,” says Daftary. This year, East New York Farms will also have the ability to accept Food Stamps, enabling even more low-income families and senior citizens to afford nutritious food in their diets. “Along with our community gardens, East New York Farms, the East New York Farmers Market, and the development of the soon-to-come East New York Food Co-op, deserve much credit for the renaissance in our neighborhood,” said Paul Zulkowitz, a local activist and a member of the East New York Green Tea House Collective on Logan Street. A portion of the money raised at the Brooklyn Brewery fundraiser will help assist East New York Farms defray its ongoing insurance costs. Tickets to both the January 14 and January 21 fundraiser and showing of Warren Miller’s Higher Ground can be purchased online at BrooklynBrewery.com. Brooklyn Brewery can also be reached at 718-486-7422.
