Anastasia Cole Plakias

An interesting book written by the director of communication of the Brooklyn Grange about the formation of their hipster rooftop farming and events business. Full of interesting stories of how the Brooklyn Grange got off the ground and developed from the idea of a rooftop farm to a diversified business farming, installing green roofs, hosting events, promoting rooftop farming and educational efforts this is more of a small green business book than a book about rooftop farming. The information about the selection of space for a productive rooftop garden and the installation process along with the grants available for green roofs in NYC was also fascinating. The book gets a little rambly toward the end but overall a good read. I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads Giveaways.
… (mais)

Interesting, yet also annoying. I would describe the feeling of this book, overall, as "kum-ba-yah". It's kind of like, "look you can be as awesome as us, if you have people as awesome as us working for you"....not a direct quote just a feeling I came out of this with. I expected the book to be along the lines of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle but it was more of a how-to business book. The how-to wouldn't apply to lots of people though, in my opinion, so I wish it had more about the actual farm. The author is also having a flagrant love affair with the word "nascent". I've never seen it so much before, and I hope I don't see it again for a while.

Overall, a good reference for how to search out diverse streams of revenue for a business, but not incredibly compelling.… (mais)

Won as an ARC in a Goodreads Giveaway.
The imagination and work that went into the Brooklyn Grange project is simply staggering. I am familiar with pot gardening and similar ventures, but to grow enough produce to serve as an income source is a totally different kind of looney. And yet, it worked for them. I found it to be an excellent resource to free up the imagination to implement a dream of starting a new and exotic business as well as a lot of good old *how to*. It made for good reading, and fascinating.… (mais)