Big Reuse partners with many community groups, supporting projects ranging from street tree cares to compost bin builds. This week we are excited to highlight one of our partners, Sky Farm LIC.
To join one of Big Reuse’s volunteer days with Sky Farm sign up on our Eventbrite! Please consider donating to our Give Big for the Planet fundraiser so we can continue to support incredible community organizations like Sky Farm LIC!
Sky Farm LIC is a rooftop educational farm program run by the nonprofit Variety Boys and Girls Club of Queens. The farm was originally a for-profit venture run by Brooklyn Grange. About a decade ago Big Reuse built a 4-bin compost system, which has since started to fall apart due to natural decay (biology comes for us all eventually). We are using the bay system as is for now, but have plans to overhaul it. Running a vegetable farm is A LOT of work, and it is often hard for farmers to find the time to properly compost all the organic waste that a farm produces. Big Reuse has been able to come in and provide knowledge and labor to make more and higher quality compost than a farm staff can reasonably expected to do so.
With the season winding down we are most excited about the opportunity to build new bins and a screening table for Sky Farm LIC.These changes will make the site more accessible for hosting and educating compost volunteers as well as participants in the Variety Boys and Girls Club of Queens. Sky Farm LIC's current programming with the kids hasn’t included composting but these infrastructure improvements will enable the kids to get more involved with (and excited about) compost!
We’ve been able to improve composting systems so that more of the farm’s waste can be composted under ideal conditions. This means producing less methane by maintaining proper aeration of piles. We’re also producing useful compost that can be used on the farm and given to local gardeners which will lessen the need for industrial soil amendments. A local mushroom farm, Mushroom Queens, has also been able to drop off some of their organic waste at Sky Farm LIC. This has helped us to make better compost and reduce the distances they need to travel to dispose of their waste. It’s all part of building a closed loop system for our waste.