Jon Olinto, co-owner of the B. Good restaurant at 455 Harvard St., has started a roof-top garden at the location, and hopes to incorporate the yield on the menu.
By Neal Simpson / Staff writer
Wicked Local Brookline
Posted May 07, 2009 @ 06:51 PM
Last update May 08, 2009 @ 02:04 PM
When you think of fresh, local farming, you probably don’t imagine plastic kiddie pools and gas station roofs.
But that’s exactly what you’ll find at Brookline’s newest farm.
“It shows that we do want to make fast food that’s natural, that’s real,” said Jon Olinto, owner of b.good burgers, who recently hired a group of urban farmers to start the farm. “It doesn’t get more real than serving vegetables you grow yourself.”
The so-called micro farm rests inside three blue plastic tubs on the roof of the converted gas station that now houses b.good’s Harvard Street store. Right now, it’s just a bunch of green sprouts in a bed of dirt, but within months, urban farmer Gabriel Erde-Cohen is expecting a crop of field greens, peppers, tomatoes and, eventually, watermelon.
Olinto is planning to start offering roof-grown vegetables on his burgers at least once a month.
“That’s the dream,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”
The b.good farm, Brookline’s first and only known roof farm, is the work of Gabriel Erde-Cohen, a Brookline native and self-proclaimed “urban farmer” who founded Green City Growers in Jamaica Plain two years ago. The company, which now serves 32 clients in the Boston area, specializes in building small farms in small, awkward and oddly shaped backyards. And, of course, on roofs.
“Part of our job as urban farmers is to grow food where we can,” Erde-Cohen said.
The project has the tentative blessing of the Brookline Health Department, which oversees any handling of food in the town, including anything grown or sold here. Environmental Health Director Pat Maloney said b.good’s farm is the first he’s heard of in town, though he expects to start seeing more soon.
“At first it seems a little unusual, but it does make sense in terms of the new concepts in the dining industry,” he said. “I expect we’ll see more of these soon.”
Olinto said the Brookline b.good, which he opened in a long-abandoned Texaco station in 2007, made the most sense for experimental farming because, unlike the other locations, it has roof access. But even before he started growing his own produce, Olinto has had a commitment to fresh food. The restaurant has always served hand-cut French fries and fresh-ground beef, and he recently started sending buyers to the docks in Chelsea to seek out seasonal and local vegetables.
But when it comes to roof farming, Olinto said he’s trying to start small.
“We want to make sure that we don’t go overboard, fill the entire roof up and create a lot of work,” he said. “We make burgers; we’re not farmers.”
On the b.good farm, Erde-Cohen and his crew are literally working for burgers, but the company typically charges about $450 to get a micro farm started, and a $35 monthly fee to cover everything else, from planting and watering to harvesting.
Erde-Cohen’s crew of five farmers usually begins by building an above-ground bed out of fir so the produce isn’t exposed to any toxins or contaminants in the soil or ground water. In Brookline alone, Erde-Cohen’s crews are maintaining five backyard farms this summer, including one around the corner from b.good.
In the case of b.good, the farmers dragged several plastic kiddie pools up onto the roof to get the farm started. Erde-Cohen said the heat from the black roof of the former garage will actually allow the farmers to start some produce, like watermelons, earlier than they would otherwise.
The b.good farm is Cohen’s first experiment with a commercial farm, but he hopes to finish up a second project, with a Somerville café, soon.
“This is exactly what restaurants need: local, seasonal food,” he said. “It has an enormous ecological impact, in terms of doing the right thing.”
Local farming enthusiasts argue that locally grown produce has less of an impact on the environment than massive farming operations that ship fruits and vegetables to consumers across the country. Extreme followers of the movement have come to be called “locavores” and refuse to eat anything outside a given radius from their home.
Mary Dewart of Climate Change Action Brookline said b.good is heading in the right direction by trying to offer locally grown produce, at least on a small scale. But she pointed out that you lose a lot of that carbon-cutting benefit when you put your local vegetables on a patty of carbon-heavy beef.
“Beef is the highest form of carbon emission in the food chain by a lot,” she said. “So it’s a little bit of mixed message.”
What do you think? Add your comments to this article at wickedlocalbrookline.com
Neal Simpson can be reached at nsimpson@cnc.com.
*Copyright 2009 Brookline TAB. Some rights reserved
--
Joshua Timothy Estes
General Manager, B. Good Restaurant
Brookline, MA
http://www.bgood.com/
For Free Internet Marketing Tips and Tons of Christian Resources,
Please Visit: http://freeinternetmarketingtipz.blogspot.com/
By Neal Simpson / Staff writer
Wicked Local Brookline
Posted May 07, 2009 @ 06:51 PM
Last update May 08, 2009 @ 02:04 PM
When you think of fresh, local farming, you probably don’t imagine plastic kiddie pools and gas station roofs.
But that’s exactly what you’ll find at Brookline’s newest farm.
“It shows that we do want to make fast food that’s natural, that’s real,” said Jon Olinto, owner of b.good burgers, who recently hired a group of urban farmers to start the farm. “It doesn’t get more real than serving vegetables you grow yourself.”
The so-called micro farm rests inside three blue plastic tubs on the roof of the converted gas station that now houses b.good’s Harvard Street store. Right now, it’s just a bunch of green sprouts in a bed of dirt, but within months, urban farmer Gabriel Erde-Cohen is expecting a crop of field greens, peppers, tomatoes and, eventually, watermelon.
Olinto is planning to start offering roof-grown vegetables on his burgers at least once a month.
“That’s the dream,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”
The b.good farm, Brookline’s first and only known roof farm, is the work of Gabriel Erde-Cohen, a Brookline native and self-proclaimed “urban farmer” who founded Green City Growers in Jamaica Plain two years ago. The company, which now serves 32 clients in the Boston area, specializes in building small farms in small, awkward and oddly shaped backyards. And, of course, on roofs.
“Part of our job as urban farmers is to grow food where we can,” Erde-Cohen said.
The project has the tentative blessing of the Brookline Health Department, which oversees any handling of food in the town, including anything grown or sold here. Environmental Health Director Pat Maloney said b.good’s farm is the first he’s heard of in town, though he expects to start seeing more soon.
“At first it seems a little unusual, but it does make sense in terms of the new concepts in the dining industry,” he said. “I expect we’ll see more of these soon.”
Olinto said the Brookline b.good, which he opened in a long-abandoned Texaco station in 2007, made the most sense for experimental farming because, unlike the other locations, it has roof access. But even before he started growing his own produce, Olinto has had a commitment to fresh food. The restaurant has always served hand-cut French fries and fresh-ground beef, and he recently started sending buyers to the docks in Chelsea to seek out seasonal and local vegetables.
But when it comes to roof farming, Olinto said he’s trying to start small.
“We want to make sure that we don’t go overboard, fill the entire roof up and create a lot of work,” he said. “We make burgers; we’re not farmers.”
On the b.good farm, Erde-Cohen and his crew are literally working for burgers, but the company typically charges about $450 to get a micro farm started, and a $35 monthly fee to cover everything else, from planting and watering to harvesting.
Erde-Cohen’s crew of five farmers usually begins by building an above-ground bed out of fir so the produce isn’t exposed to any toxins or contaminants in the soil or ground water. In Brookline alone, Erde-Cohen’s crews are maintaining five backyard farms this summer, including one around the corner from b.good.
In the case of b.good, the farmers dragged several plastic kiddie pools up onto the roof to get the farm started. Erde-Cohen said the heat from the black roof of the former garage will actually allow the farmers to start some produce, like watermelons, earlier than they would otherwise.
The b.good farm is Cohen’s first experiment with a commercial farm, but he hopes to finish up a second project, with a Somerville café, soon.
“This is exactly what restaurants need: local, seasonal food,” he said. “It has an enormous ecological impact, in terms of doing the right thing.”
Local farming enthusiasts argue that locally grown produce has less of an impact on the environment than massive farming operations that ship fruits and vegetables to consumers across the country. Extreme followers of the movement have come to be called “locavores” and refuse to eat anything outside a given radius from their home.
Mary Dewart of Climate Change Action Brookline said b.good is heading in the right direction by trying to offer locally grown produce, at least on a small scale. But she pointed out that you lose a lot of that carbon-cutting benefit when you put your local vegetables on a patty of carbon-heavy beef.
“Beef is the highest form of carbon emission in the food chain by a lot,” she said. “So it’s a little bit of mixed message.”
What do you think? Add your comments to this article at wickedlocalbrookline.com
Neal Simpson can be reached at nsimpson@cnc.com.
*Copyright 2009 Brookline TAB. Some rights reserved
--
Joshua Timothy Estes
General Manager, B. Good Restaurant
Brookline, MA
http://www.bgood.com/
For Free Internet Marketing Tips and Tons of Christian Resources,
Please Visit: http://freeinternetmarketingtipz.blogspot.com/
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