Celebrating urban agriculture - It's harvest season!

Brooklyn, Schmooklyn. I'm a little tired of hearing about all the amazing things going on there, quite honestly. It's not that I've got borough envy, either. My heart is firmly planted in Queens. It's just that there are only so many artisanal pizza joints, upscale-old-timey-comfort food restaurants, and taxidermy-decorated cocktail bars that you can read about without rolling your eyes just a bit. But this weekend, I'm putting aside my borough-bias to check out Farm City, a county fair-styled event at the Invisible Dog Art Center, part of the Crossing the Line festival. Yes, technically the event is "a day-long celebration of art and food grown in Brooklyn" - there's that persistent too-cool-for-school borough again - but hey, I'm willing to celebrate any food grown within a few miles of my home. I won't be snobby about that. The event looks awesome. Here's a pdf of the schedule.

Details from the event website:

Farm City Fair
Sunday, September 12, 2010, 11am–5pm
The Invisible Dog Art Center, Brooklyn
Free and open to the public!

Festivities engage all the senses: hear live music performed by local Bang on a Can marching band Asphalt Orchestra; taste delicacies prepared by local chefs inspired by ingredients from Brooklyn farms; view specially commissioned work exploring the culture of agriculture by local artists; get a feel for materials needed to produce your own food in workshops by Brooklyn Food Coalition; participate in a Blue Ribbon Competition hosted by GreenThumb; and browse a marketplace with some of Brooklyn’s small-batch artisanal food purveyors curated by Greenpoint Food Market. Cap it off with The Food Experiments’ live cooking competition—Brooklyn Roots—featuring savory samples and refreshing drinks from Brooklyn Brewery, Six Points Brewery, Brooklyn Oenology, and others.

Read and Eat Series at Eagle Street Rooftop Farm

Your friendly neighborhood rooftop farm (didn't know you had one, did you?) wants you to improve your brain AND your diet! In addition to operating a CSA, farmers' market, and education programs, Eagle Street Rooftop Farm will be hosting a Read and Eat series at 2 pm Saturdays this fall, featuring food-related authors reading from their work, as well as sharing recipes and snacks. This Saturday kicks off the series with Cathy Erway, who writes the blog Not Eating Out in New York, and recently published The Art of Eating In (which I just finished and found thoroughly charming). If city life has you jonesing to get your hands dirty in a real live garden, get there early for Open Farm Day from 9 am to 2 pm, when they welcome volunteers.

Saturday 9/5, 2 pm: Cathy Erway, author of The Art of Eating In
Saturday, 9/19, 2 pm: Anna Lappé, author of Diet for a Hot Planet
Saturday, 9/26, 2 pm: Annie Hauck-Lawson, co-editor of Gastropolis

The Farm is also open to the public on Sundays from 10am-4pm (check their calendar to confirm). They are located on Eagle Street between Franklin and West in Greenpoint, North Brooklyn.