Boswyck Farms

More photos: Boswyck Farm on Bushwick Starr rooftop and in Mandell’s loft.

Outside the limits of “East Williamsburg”– in the true neighborhood of Bushwick– on Dekalb Avenue lie office spaces, warehouses and emptier streets. One loft houses a man named Lee Mandell and his work, a hydroponic farm.

Near the kitchen rests Mandell’s living room area decorated with a flat screen television and a heavy selection of vinyl ranging from Peter Gabriel to Tom Waits. Mandell sits on a cream couch without shoes on but wearing a shirt that shows a couple dressed in black attire holding a pitchfork with a skull set on top of it. The real American Gothic.

Mandell is holding a stuffed animal, Boswyck the sheep. Boswyck is the only animal on Mandell’s hydroponic farm and thus serves as the farm’s mascot.

A large window stretches along the length of the loft and along it grows tomatoes, cucumbers, artichoke, salad greens and other fresh vegetables. These plants, however, do not sit in a bed of soil.

Boswyck Farms is a hydroponic farm founded by Mandell in 2008. The farm is located in Mandell’s 1,000 square foot loft and is used as a research center for constructing food sustainability systems in New York, along with advocating for locally grown food.

Hydroponics is a method of growing plants in water. In lieu of soil, a nutrient solution is mixed in with the water for the roots of the plant to absorb.

Along the window sill, Mandell’s crops flourish in separate containers that occupy various pots each, which are filled with coconut husks for the plants’ physical support. Each pot has a hole in it for the plants’ roots to extend further down into the container. The roots dangle in a running water system that connects each container by a tube leading to a main reservoir, which harbors the water and nutrient solution mix. The tube leads back to the first plant container as a circulating water system.

In another corner of the house Mendel’s tomato and pepper plants use a flood and drain method. The plants sit in their own containers and four times a day a pump kicks on to flood the container with the water-nutrient solution. After 15 minutes the pump turns off and the solution drains back into the reservoir.

“Once I bring people through the systems they get demystified. They are not really that complicated and it’s not some really bizarre, foreign way of growing food. There is a little bit of difference but you’re still growing food,” says Mandell.

It all began when Mandell moved to Brooklyn two years ago from Boston and read an article about vertical farming. Shortly after he visited the Science Barge, an urban farm in Yonkers with a hydroponic greenhouse.

“I walked off from that and realize that my life had just changed and I was going to leave the world of computer programming and start a farm,” says Mandell.

“It just caught me. I thought what the hell? Lets do it!”

Two years later Boswyck Farms has 5 employees and a studio flourishing with produce and knowledge to be consumed by Mandell and students at the Francis-Perkins Academy in Williamsburg.

Two high school interns come twice a week for six hours to learn hydroponics and carpentry skills through constructing these systems — ultimately math applied to science, but unlike in a sterile class room, hands-on.

“I know some of the kids come to me expecting to learn how to grow pot. If thats what got them in the door, great. I really don’t care what got them in the door. If they can leave here with more knowledge and more skills, I’ve done my job,” says Mandell.

One day Mandell took his two interns to Fountain House, a residency day center for adults with mental illness. They went to help build a growing room as a form of therapy for the patients. Mandell noticed a transformation in his interns. Students who sought only school credits became apprentices, expressing great empathy with the project.

“It’s difficult. The kids I’m working with here, I might be their last chance. If they fail here they will probably drop out of school and that is tough, but those are the kids i want to work with,” says Mandell.

Hydroponics is not only seen as a tool for education by Mandell, but also as a way for urban areas to sustain itself. Brooklyn is known to have toxic soil and hydroponic farming defeats the need for clean soil by urban farmers when growing food.

The advantages of hydroponics in comparison to cultivating with soil are that 70-90% of fresh water is saved and there is higher production per square foot.

“We are turning lettuce from seed to harvest in eight weeks. I know I can get it down to seven if we really push and keep on top of the nutrients and maybe get it down to six,” says Mandell. “The more we produce, the more healthy food we can provide to people who really need it.”

Boswyck Farms also works with the Child Development Support Corporation in Brooklyn for their emergency food pantry. The farm helped build a hydroponic system to feed the financially disadvantaged with fresh, locally grown produce.

“Right now the childhood obesity problem, the poor nutrition of children and adults is finally becoming a focus and that’s good because that means we are all doing this at a very good time, where there’s people and places that are very receptive,” says Mandell.

According to the Centers for Disease Control Protection, childhood obesity affects an estimated 17% of the population, 12.5 million children. The obesity rate for adults is double that with 34% or 73 million men and women affected.

In response, urban farms are springing up through out Brooklyn advocating for the consumption of nutritional food.

“It’s really just about continuing to look for every opportunity to grow food in the city, and equipping more people with the skills to do it, even on a very small or personal scale,” says Anne Pope of Sustainable Flatbush, a grassroots organization advocating for accessible, locally grown food.

“If you think.. 100 years ago people knew their farmer. These days kids think of produce coming from aisle nine. I honestly believe that is part of the reason why we’ve got such an obesity problem,” says Mandell.

Added Value in Redhook converted a parking lot into a farm. BK Farmyards in Crown Heights converts backyards into farms. Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Greenpoint converted a rooftop into a farm.

“It is mind boggling the amount of urban farming that is going on in Brooklyn,” says Mandel, his eyes lighting up behind round-shaped glasses.

“It just blows my mind; all of these people. We have some very common goals which is to bring people closer to their food.”