The Tuesday, February 7th Bowling Green Greenmarket will be rescheduled for Wednesday, February 8th due to the scheduled ticker-tape parade through downtown Manhattan. Congrats, Giants!

You know us best. You see us in your neighborhood leading recycling workshops, operating farmers markets, collecting textiles and food scraps for recycling and compost, and engaging NYC school kids in restoration projects. We are your resource for making New York City a greener, healthier City. Come up with a short, action-oriented tagline or even 4 or 5 words you associate us with. Tell us how you and GrowNYC work together to improve our city. If we pick your tagline, we’ll give you a shout-out on our blog and on Facebook and will give you a great prize! Email your submissions to ideas@grownyc.org.

Deadline: Feb. 29

In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee and the destruction caused by flooding throughout our farming region, GrowNYC and Greenmarket reached out to our community of support with the goal of raising funds to support assist the most impacted Greenmarket Farmers.

Immediately upon launching this campaign the public responded in such force that we were completely blown away: financial donations, offers of in-kind support to assist with on-farm clean up, as well as professional services, ranging from legal work to marketing support started pouring in. We are thrilled to have raised a total of $85,000 to date (January 2012); Thank you.

On November 22, 2011 our first round of Greenmarket Relief Fund Awardees were announced. $63,000 was distributed to 29 farmers. In February 2012 all remaining funds will be distributed among this group. The following list of farmers and we at GrowNYC and Greenmarket are incredibly grateful for your incredible generosity and will be, in part, continuing farming, in part, because of it. Your contributions will allow farmers such as Alex Paffenroth to pay contractors to remove debris from ditches, Kira Kinney to purchase seeds for the 2012 growing season, John Gorzynski to pay for tractor repairs, and Gary Glowaczewski’s fuel bills. The list goes on: fence repairs, greenhouse supplies, animal feed, new chickens, and much much more.

GrowNYC and Greenmarket staff are truly heartened by your support, and we thank you for supporting our farmers not only during times of crisis, but every week at your neighborhood market.

Greenmarket Relief Fund Awardees:

Greenmarket is very sad to announce that, effective immediately, Milk Thistle Dairy Farm will no longer be producing dairy or dairy products, and will not be attending any Greenmarket farmers markets. This is one of the unfortunate and harsh realities of being a small scale grower competing against industrial agriculture. The margins on farming, particularly dairy farming, are incredibly thin and sometimes are not enough to allow for a financially viable business.

For more information, email Dante Hesse at dante@milkthistlefarm.com or call the Greenmarket office at 212.341.2321.

Order your beautiful, colorful and informative 2012 Endangered Species calendar, designed by high school students from the South Bronx today.

10 talented Morrisania-based teens and Learn it, Grow It, Eat It program interns designed a calendar featuring endangered species. As part of our year-round program, 200 teens get outside for hands-on gardening, learn about healthy eating and make the connection between health, nutrition and environment.

You will receive a calendar for your donation of $25 dollars. Make sure you designate “Environmental Education” and type “2012 Calendar” in the Dedication box when you make your gift and we’ll send you a calendar.

Donate here and receive your calendar!

Looking for a fun activity for kids, ages 8-17 in the classroom or at home? Want to reinforce key concepts in the Earth Science syllabus?

Our Environmental Education program is happy to provide “Solar Ovens and Earth Science,” a hands-on curriculum unit free of charge. Email mzamm@grownyc.org and provide your mailing address to get your copy.

Winter wheat coming up at Hawthorne Valley Farm

2011 was an incredible year for local grains. There were significant gains in production as more farmers planted grains, new processing facilities were built and more bakers are incorporating regional flour into their breads and pastries. Warthog, a variety of winter wheat came into commercial production, Valley Malt, a small scale malting facility opened in Western Massachusetts lifting the last barrier to the production of local beer, which we saw come to Greenmarket this past spring. New distilleries are opening providing an essential market for grain growers.

However, it was a tough year on the ground for farmers as Mother Nature managed to give us one of the worst years on record. Heavy rains, followed by a dry summer which was then followed by more heavy rains in the fall.

In Pennsylvania , crop fungus threatened grain quality. New York farmers, on the other hand, faced reduced protein content – an important characteristic for bread flour. Fledgling crops of barley slated for more local beer production were lost to floods.

Farmers and millers found a variety of ways to cope with the season’s difficulties such as blending lower protein grains into all purpose flours, and remain optimistic that 2012 will prove a better year for local grains.

Read more.

Sure it’s rewarding to sort eggnog containers and wrapping paper for recycling, chip in at MulchFest, bring obsolete electronics to a recycling collection and drop unwanted textiles and food scraps at a local Greenmarket drop-off site, but nothing beats clearing out post-holiday clutter like a Stop ‘N’ Swap. Since 2007 more than 7,000 New Yorkers have attended GrowNYC’s seasonal gathering to find new homes for unwanted items that are too good to toss. Even those who come to get rid of clutter find it hard to ignore the tables piled with books, music, toys, dishes, handbags, electronics and more. Whether it’s the joy of having more space at home or the fun of finding something great for free, Stop ‘N’ Swap puts a smile on every face and nothing good goes to waste. Learn more at www.GrowNYC.org/swap and check one out this winter!

Upcoming Stop ‘N’ Swaps:
Manhattan – Chinatown/Two Bridges
Saturday, January 28, 2012, 12pm-3pm
PS 126 Manhattan Academy of Technology
80 Catherine St at Cherry St

Staten Island – West Brighton
Sunday, February 5, 2012, 1pm-4pm
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
347 Davis Ave (b/t Castleton Ave & S. St Austin’s Pl)

Last month, New York magazine’s ‘Reasons to Love New York’ issue featured a 14-page spread on this ‘local-floured moment in dough’, an homage to the artisanal loaves that are being baked in the city’s top ovens.

Greenmarket’s efforts to encourage more regional growers to start planting grain began back in 2004, when Greenmarket began to assess how and where its bakers could source local flour. Thanks to those early efforts, chefs and bakers have embraced these less familiar grains incorporating them into seasonal dishes on their menus, and even hiring bakers and building bread ovens for their restaurants (Roman’s and Roberta’s, both in Brooklyn, are two examples). The article’s ‘Bread (Time) Line’, notes 2009’s introduction of Cayuga Pure Organics’ locally grown and milled flour to Greenmarket as one of the most recent milestones in a great history.

No less than 6 of the 13 bakers mentioned in New York’s round-up of the baker’s dozen best attended the landmark tasting of local grains held by Greenmarket and the Northeast Organic Farmers Association (NOFA) nearly two Januarys ago at the French Culinary Institute (covered here by Edible Manhattan). This event helped lay the groundwork for New York’s local grains revolution. And since that tasting, three more bakers that made NY mag’s list have become involved with Greenmarket’s Farm to Bakery pilot, a program which connects bakers directly to regional grain growers.

Due to the increasing demand in the city marketplace, Greenmarket’s grain farmers are expanding their businesses and encouraging the development of infrastructure like mills and malting facilities. And outside the city, on a regional scale, Greenmarket’s work to publicize these farmers, help build demand, and educate shoppers on the varieties of grains that grow well in the Northeast has rippled out to fields in Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine, where yet more growers and bakers are embracing this wave of heritage grain.

Check out a list of where and when to buy local grain and flour at Greenmarket, as well as a list of Greenmarket grain-forward recipes to expand your baking repertoire.

Yesterday, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn stopped by Union Square on the first market day of the New Year to applaud an increase in use of food stamps at GrowNYC Greenmarkets across the city in 2011.

Food stamp purchases at Greenmarkets increased from $505,166 to over $620,000 in 2011, a 23 percent increase from 2010.  Some markets reported nearly $6,000 in food stamp sales in a single day. In 2011, approximately 75% of food stamp dollars at Greenmarkets were spent on fresh fruits and vegetables, while EBT spent on baked goods dropped by nearly 5 percent. Families are choosing nutrition first by spending their limited food dollars on the healthiest options available at the farmers market. At the same time, these dollars are reinvested in our regional economy as increased revenues for farmers.

The Union Square Greenmarket had the highest food stamp sales of any market at $151,813 in 2011. Greenmarket partnered with the NYC Food Bank to offer food stamp screenings for more than 250 New Yorkers at Union Square to determine if they qualify for Food Stamps, providing valuable public education and outreach on the program.

GrowNYC is deeply grateful to Speaker Quinn and the New York City Council for their support of this program. In 2006, the City Council began partnering with GrowNYC to provide funding for EBT scanners, signage, community outreach, merchant account fees and dedicated staff members to operate the machines at the Greenmarkets. The program has been highly successful and this year EBT was accepted at 43 Greenmarkets.

Read more about our EBT program, find a Greenmarket near you that accepts EBT, or read NY1′s coverage of our great 2011.