Great Brooklyn Thing: Added Value in Red Hook

Added Value is the non-profit that runs the Red Hook Community Farm among a great many other activities. While their existence is not new news, it's still worth pointing out in the hope that a few more people might learn about them. The program works with Red Hook teens, and it has trained more than 85 of them, brought educational programs into local classrooms and recruited volunteers to work on local parks, create urban farms and improve access to healthy and affordable food.

Notably, the group sells produce raised at the Red Hook Community Farm, which is near both the Red Hook soccer fields and the demolished Todd Shipyards, at a Saturday Farmer's Market. The market runs from 9am-3pm and is stocked with Red Hook-grown nectarines, plums, tomatoes, eggplants, collard greens, zucchini, cucumbers and other produce. It also sells brownies and carrot cake made by the young women of the Lower East Side Girls’ Club.

(The market appears to be surviving the Fairway onslaught, although it has cut a midweek selling day.)

If you feel the urge to seriously garden in Brooklyn, volunteers are invited help out weeding, seeding, building plant beds and caring for the crops.

All the info is at the Added Value website.