Private Standard Tour for 2-25 people.Brooklyn Grange is the leading rooftop farming and intensive green roofing business in the US. We operate the world's largest rooftop soil farms, located on three roofs in New York City, and grow over 80,000 lbs of organically-cultivated produce per year. In addition to growing and distributing fresh local vegetables and herbs, Brooklyn Grange also hosts events and educational programming; designs, installs, and often maintains green spaces for clients all over the tri-state area, and provides urban farming and green roof consulting services to clients worldwide. The business also operates an apiary, keeping bees in dozens of naturally-managed hives, on roofs, backyards, and nooks dispersed throughout NYC. Brooklyn Grange provides several key ecosystem services, and partners with numerous non-profit and community service organizations throughout New York to promote healthy and strong local communities. HISTORY One early morning in May of 2010, a ragtag crew appeared on Northern Boulevard, alighting from bicycles and emerging from the subway steps at 36th St, assembling in the dim light outside a sprawling building. They donned hard hats and thick, plastic-coated work gloves and, armed with shovels and rakes, they set out to build the largest soil rooftop farm in the world. The job took six days of craning hundreds of 3,000lb soil sacks seven stories up to the roof. The hardworking crew shoveled in the sun and wind amidst the roar of motorized buggies and the shouted communications of a team single-minded in its goal. As the west end of the urban farm was still being measured and fit with the base layer of a green roof system, the east end was already being shaped into tidy, perfectly-spaced vegetable beds studded with tomato seedlings and chard transplants. And slowly, a farm took shape. When we set out to grow food on the rooftops and unused spaces of New York City, our mission was to create a fiscally sustainable model for urban agriculture and to produce healthy, delicious vegetables for our local community while doing the ecosystem a few favors as well. Currently, spread atop five and a half acres on three rooftops in Brooklyn and Queens, we've sold over 400,000 lbs of vegetables to restaurants, CSA members and directly to the public via weekly farmstands. But we've expanded beyond our mission to grow vegetables: we now design and build green spaces - from mini farms to wild native plant landscapes - for a range of clients. Our educational non-profit partner, City Growers, has hosted 50,000 NYC youth on our farms for educational field trips, after school programs, and summer camp sessions. We've educated countless adults via our workshops on topics ranging from natural fabric dyes to making hot sauce. Our rooftops are constantly abuzz with activity: during the day, we may be harvesting for a restaurant order, or hosting a visiting office group for a corporate retreat; at night we transform into a romantic event space for yoga classes, dinner parties, and wedding ceremonies. But at our core, we are a farm, and growing nutritious, tasty food is our passion. Doing so in New York is our dream. We believe that this city can be more sustainable; that our air can be cooler and waterways can be cleaner. We believe that the 14% of our landfills comprised of food scraps should be converted into organic energy for our plants and plants around the city via active compost programs. We believe that food should be fresh, not sitting on the back of a flatbed for a fifteen hundred mile road trip. We believe that food should taste fresh. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about: sitting down with our farmily, admiring that sunset over the city skyline, snacking on a perfectly ripe, sweet tomato and remembering, this is what real food is.