Science & Health

Where Good Food Is Less Abundant, Farm Project Delivers a Harvest

Chef Louise Noel had just finished stir-frying kale, cabbage, chick peas and garlic scapes, sprinkled with assorted spices, when Leslie Daly and Paul Daly approached.

“What’s in this?” the husband said, holding his head back, then dumping the paper cup containing a spoonful of Noel’s dish into his mouth.

The Dalys sampled Noel’s cooking. But mainly they had arrived at The New School’s Sheila C. Johnson Design Center to pick up the weekly allotment of produce they receive as members of the Corbin Hill Farm Project.

The project was founded in 2009 by a group of East Harlem residents wanting to provide low-income families of East Harlem and the Bronx with affordable quality fruits and vegetables that are grown in New York.

The New School is one of 22 sites in the Bronx, Harlem and the West Village where Corbin Hill members, or shareholders, get their produce every Tuesday.

Merceda Young, 35, a mother of two, is a Corbin Hill member.

“It helps out a lot. Right now I’m unemployed, so I’m getting government subsidies, and [Corbin Hill] really stretches my dollar,” she said.

Carey King, Corbin Hill’s director of communications and education, said the project was formed to help meet that kind of need.

“Traditionally, the people who participated in the [so-called] good food movement—trying to source from local farms—had money, had means,” King said. “If you come to one of the Corbin Hill pick-up sites you see every race, every nationality, every age, coming through each week to eat vegetables.”

The food is harvested from Corbin Hill’s 95-acre farm in Schoharie County, near Albany, about 150 miles from New York City. The largest weekly package of produce from Corbin Hill, which contains nine to eleven types of produce, costs $27 and feeds up to four people. For an additional $3.50 per week, a family can buy a dozen eggs.

This summer, 100 of Corbin Hill’s 900 member families pay with food stamps. Unlike other CSAs–CSA stands for community supported agriculture–Corbin Hills lets member families pay on a week-to-week basis. Only about 200 are able to pay for a whole season’s worth of produce in advance, King said. Most CSAs require the entire payment ahead of time.

In addition to selling food, Corbin Hill also teaches about food preparation, collaborating with food-savvy members such as Noel, the chef.

“This brings everyone to the table,” King said. “We’re creating communities, and people get to know each other and they can strengthen the food movement as they grow.”