Wyckoff House & Association

WYCKOFF FARMHOUSE COMMUNITY DEMONSTRATION GARDEN

The Community Demonstration Garden occupies a central portion of M.Fidler-Wyckoff House Park in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. The Garden appears to visitors as the crop fields of the Wyckoff Farm and is integral to the restored historic landscape of the Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House (c. 1652-1820). The Garden brings to life the site's agrarian history and actively engages the local community in the Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum through its weekly farmers market, youth internship program, and garden workshop series. These programs have been developed in collaboration with Just Food, a non-profit organization that supports and connects urban agriculture projects throughout New York City. The programs are supported by grants from the J.M. Kaplan Fund and Brooklyn’s Delegation to the State Senate.

The second season of the Wyckoff Farmhouse Community Demonstration Garden (WFCDG) was highly successful and showed marked improvement in most aspects. The Garden itself was quite productive, demonstrating over 30 locally viable vegetable crops and 15 herb and flower crops. Three local high school students were employed as Garden Interns and educated in marketing and organic production methods. The weekly farmer’s market was open from June through October and blossomed into a genuinely vibrant, viable community market; sales increased nearly nine fold from the initial year. This expansion was made possible by the addition of two new farm vendors to the market and the introduction of a new part-time Market and Outreach Coordinator. A total of 625 pounds of additional unsold produce was donated to City Harvest for distribution. The 11 workshops in the 2005 Garden Workshop Series drew an average of almost 15 participants per workshop and participant evaluations were overwhelmingly positive. We are looking forward to the 2006 season, including the introduction of new vendors and food stamp access at the market, earlier and more targeted community outreach, and developing capacity as a model site through a new Brooklyn farmers market network.

MISSION: A COMMUNITY CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVING

The 19th-century Kings County market farm is the historical precedent for the Wyckoff Farmhouse Community Demonstration Garden. The same need and demand for fresh vegetables and fruit that the farmers of the past responded to in defining their production is even greater in New York City today. The residents of southeastern Brooklyn live in a densely populated and highly polluted urban environment, yet this land was once some of the most fertile farmland in the nation. They have been entirely divorced from the places and processes that produce the food that they eat; a majority of the population is unaware of the environmental issues involved.

The Community Demonstration Garden is not intended as a historical recreation but as a dynamic community center for sustainable living.The Museum wishes to provide for the real needs of its community by fostering sustainable local food systems in the long-term. This can be accomplished by incorporating sustainable agriculture and the agrarian history of Kings County into the Wyckoff Farmhouse educational programs. During World War II urban "Victory Gardens" supplied 40% of produce in the United States; we should aspire to no less a goal for urban agriculture today.

WYCKOFF FARMHOUSE FARMERS’ MARKET

Fresh, organic vegetables and herbs grown in the Community Demonstration Garden are sold at a weekly farmers’ market on site. Additional fresh fruit and vegetables from a pair of upstate farmers are also sold at the market. The farmers market is open every Sunday afternoon from June to October. Look for the bright orange tents on Clarendon Road near Ralph Avenue. The market is operated by the Wyckoff Farmhouse Gardener, Market and Outreach Coordinator, and the Garden Interns. Produce varieties are available seasonally and all of the produce is harvested fresh and is local in origin.

In the 2005 season, the market quickly developed into a vital, vibrant community market. The best-selling products were tomatoes, plums, watermelon, fresh-cut herbs, and Wyckoff Farmhouse blackberry jam. 625 pounds of additional produce were donated to City Harvest for distribution to local soup kitchens and food pantries. We hope to expand the market in 2006 by recruiting local vendors and more area farmers. The market program also has plans to join Brooklyn’s Bounty, a newly proposed network of community-based farmers markets in Brooklyn.

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND ORGANIC PRODUCTION

The Community Demonstration Garden serves as a model for successful urban agriculture and demonstrates the latest in sustainable, organic gardening techniques. The Garden is full of ideas and inspiration for visitors to bring home to their own gardens drawing on such sources as Lasagna Gardening, Synergistic Agriculture, and Permaculture, as well as traditional organic production. Techniques employed include crop rotation, natural pest management, cover cropping, sheet mulching, companion planting, composting, and heirloom variety production. The Garden is planned and cultivated under the full-time supervision of the Wyckoff Farmhouse Gardener. Local high school students are employed and educated as garden interns to help with the garden and market stand. Other community groups and individuals are welcome as volunteers.

As for the organic orientation of the garden, the self-sufficiency and sustainability of colonial farm life is one of the powerful themes of our educational programs at the Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum. Given that most of the techniques of chemical agriculture did not develop until after World War II, it is certain that the Wyckoff family farmed their land using more traditional and sustainable means. Thus, besides being a positive political choice, the organic emphasis of the garden is also a reflection of the history of the site.

GARDEN WORKSHOP SERIES AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

The governing concept behind the reconstruction of the M. Fidler-Wyckoff House Park as an active farmstead is the extension of the Museum out into the landscape. In this sense, the Community Demonstration Garden is intended to be a center for historical and horticultural education, with an emphasis on sustainable, organic production. We host a series of ten free garden training events throughout the growing season, including workshops on cooking, composting, medicinal herbs, and natural pest control (see our event schedule page for workshop info, dates, and times). These events are held in cooperation with Just Food, the Cornell Cooperative Extension, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's GreenBridge program, and other organizations involved with community gardening. Both interns and volunteers from the local community are given hands-on training in all aspects of garden production. Additionally, flyers on a variety of gardening topics are available at the weekly market stand. The hope is that the Garden's most enduring product will be an educated community.

WYCKOFF FARMHOUSE HISTORIC LANDSCAPE FEATURES

The first phase of the landscape reconstruction of M. Fidler Wyckoff House Park was completed in November of 2004. This restoration of the original working farmstead includes several features that will supplement and enhance the Community Demonstration Garden. A berry garden including raspberries, blackberries, currants, blueberries, and strawberries was planted along the wall to the east of the house. Besides providing berries for consumption and jam-making, the berry garden is intended to function as a hedgerow, an essential feature for maintaining ecological balance in a traditional organic garden. A new kitchen garden is planted with historic herbs and heirloom vegetables in the recently constructed raised beds on the south side of the house. The herb garden will play an important part of the museum's educational programs on Colonial cooking, medicine, and self-sufficiency. It is also documented that the Wyckoff farm included a fairly extensive orchard to the west of the house. An apple orchard consisting of antique apple varieties will be planted in the northwest corner of the park upon completion of the Museum’s Wyckoff-Durling Barn Education Center. We hope to provide all our own apples for cider-making demonstrations throughout the fall season.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

A principal purpose of the Wyckoff Farmhouse Community Demonstration Garden is to reconnect Brooklyn with its proud history as some of the most fertile and productive farmland in the United States. Although it is difficult to imagine in present-day, urban Brooklyn, Kings County was primarily farmland through most of its history. Pieter Claesen Wyckoff and his descendents farmed their property, mostly southeast of the House, from 1652 until 1901. For much of its early history, the Dutch farmers of the area produced mostly grain crops for sale: wheat, corn, oats, rye, and hay. For their personal use, they also would have grown a wide variety of vegetables in their kitchen garden. The kitchen garden was also the home of many household herbs used for cooking and medicine. Kings County farmers frequently had orchards with multiple species of fruit trees.

The 19th century saw a great change in the character and production of Kings County farms. As New York City and Brooklyn rapidly expanded, the outlying farmland became progressively more oriented towards providing for the needs of the urban market. By the later half of the century, most of the land in Kings County had been converted to market farm production. Vegetables and fruit were grown at high profit to supply demand in the adjacent cities, while less perishable grain crops were increasingly supplied by farms of the Midwest. Records show that Brooklyn farms produced a wide variety of vegetables, including: cabbage, potatoes, sweet corn, carrots, cucumbers, beans, peas, onions, tomatoes, celery, beets, rhubarb, squash, asparagus, cauliflower, and turnips. They also grew fruit for market, including apples, cherries, raspberries, and pears. As late as the 1880's, Kings County ranked second in the United States in terms of agricultural production; Queens County ranked first.

Despite the dramatic expansion of urban Brooklyn, the Flatlands survived as a farm community into the 20th century. The Wyckoffs on Canarsie Lane were among the first families in the area to sell their land to developers, perhaps motivated by the incursion of the Long Island Rail Road across their lands in 1897. By 1940, urban Brooklyn had essentially enveloped all of Kings County and its agrarian past was no more than a memory.