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Brooklyn Farms Devastated by Monday’s Hail Storm
Posted by: Nona Brooklyn on October 14, 2010 at 1:27PM EST
"On Monday night, as a line of powerful thunderstorms moved across Brooklyn, something that rarely happens in these parts began to unfold.
"Updrafts in the storm front’s giant cumulonimbus clouds pushed massive amounts of rain thousands of feet up into the atmosphere, where the raindrops began to freeze and coagulate into marble-sized balls of ice which quickly grew heavy enough to fall back onto our streets as hail. Millions of Brooklynites gawked in disbelief as close to an inch of ice pellets coated many neighborhoods in a matter of minutes, creating a fleeting (if unsettling) wintery fantasy. For most, it was all over in a matter of minutes. But for some of our urban farmers, it was a living nightmare and it was just beginning.
"BK Farmyards and the Added Value Community Farm in Red Hook suffered devastating losses, with 90% or more of their harvest-season crops destroyed, and countless hours of hard work lost. These projects will need the support of the community to recover and move forward. They’re looking for volunteers to help clean up the farms, and for donations to help recoup the revenue they were counting on from produce sales over the next six weeks.
"Here are BK Farmyards and Added Value’s stories, in their own words:
Stacey Murphy and Bee Ayers of BK Farmyards write:
“Last night we watched the rain turn to hail with 2 other urban farmers. We watched amazed and delighted by wondrous things Mother Nature can do. Then as we saw the hail grow bigger and louder and continue to grow our faces turned to looks of worry. Our thoughts quickly moved to our crops, spread across Brooklyn, from Red Hook to Ditmas Park, Crown Heights and East New York. We shared our looks of fear for what we would find in the morning.
"It is amazing how an hour of weather can ruin months and months of work. The crops that we have nurtured and looked forward to sharing were ripped to shreds. The hundreds of pounds of vegetables we were counting on turned into confetti and were thrown around the farm. Kristen from Added Value said it best: “it’s as if someone threw a bucket full of rocks at the lettuce and then one thousand bunnies were let loose on them”.
"I walked around the farm this morning wide eyed and in a state of disbelief. We lost almost all of our crops, 95%. Every eggplant is bruised and split, the okra is broken and torn, the lettuce shredded and powdered and the greens look like Swiss cheese. We have whole beds of the farm where I couldn’t even find the vegetables that were growing the day before. How does one literally loose 200 square feet of lettuce mix? It is sad to see so much so many people helped to create and nurture destroyed.
"And all this is even before thinking about the loss of income..."
