Karen Washington of the Farm School New York City

Karen Washington poses for a portrait at La Finca del Sur, a community farm, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2010 in the Bronx borough of New York. Photo by Associated Press.

School Brings Farming To Big Apple

By The Associated Press
NPR
Nov 5, 2010

Excerpt:

One of Farm School’s instructors will be Karen Washington, a longtime urban farmer and a founder of La Finca del Sur, which sells its produce at a farmer’s market.

Washington said she hopes Farm School will serve as a prototype for other urban centers by providing “the incentive to say, you know what? We can do the same thing.”

On a crisp fall afternoon, Washington stopped by La Finca on her way to pick up chickens for a community garden in another Bronx neighborhood. It is legal to keep hens in New York City but not roosters — too noisy. Beekeeping was legalized this year.

She grabbed a handful of soil and said, “This is life here. This is what we call black gold because it’s compost. Smell it.”

Washington said she hopes to train students for jobs like working in the school system to oversee school gardens or canning and selling local produce.

A lifelong New Yorker who has grown food for 20 years, Washington also works as a physical therapist.

Her routine of rising early to farm before heading off to her day job is not so different from the lives of many small farmers in rural America, even if they till 300 acres instead of three.

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