How an Urban Farmer Gets It Done
Anastasia Cole Plakias, the co-founder and chief impact officer of Brooklyn Grange, did not have her sights set on a career cultivating urban green spaces. The born-and-raised New Yorker graduated from college with a dream of writing for magazines. “I basically entered the job market just in time to see the collapse of the industry I’d so wanted to enter,” she says. “It was absolutely devastating. So I did what so many disillusioned people do: I hit the restaurant industry.” She spent the next few years in the executive offices of a restaurateur whom she declines to name, citing the fact that it was “not a healthy culture.” Thankfully, there was a silver lining: She began to spend time in New York’s green markets and cultivating an appreciation for urban agriculture.
Still drawn to journalism, Plakias was freelance writing when she went to profile the owners of Brooklyn pizza spot Roberta’s in 2009. Once she arrived, Plakias put down her recorder and started helping to build the restaurant’s gardens. “I had never done anything like that before and I absolutely loved it,” she says. Through that project, she met her co-founder, Gwen Schantz, who had the green thumb that Plakias needed. “I realized I didn’t actually know how to grow anything,” she says. Soon, rooftop-farming pro Ben Flanner joined the pair, and the three of them created the business model for what became the country’s top rooftop farming and green roofing business.
In addition to building rooftop green spaces on buildings across the city, Brooklyn Grange now operates two rooftop farms in Sunset Park and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. “We are working to create more climate-resilient and livable cities, and connect urbanites with the natural world through food and education, programming, and events,” Plakias says of the company’s mission. Fifteen years into the job, she now lives in Ditmas Park with her husband and two children. Here’s how she gets it done.
On her morning routine:
I have a 6-month-old infant and a toddler, so my morning routine is chaos. There’s no lemon water or meditation for me. I nurse the baby while replying to the 1,000 Slack messages that I missed and fending off Magna-Tile projectiles from my 3-year-old from 6 to 8 a.m.
My lovely husband is in charge of breakfast, while I am breakfast for my baby. He makes oatmeal with coconut milk, and I eat it out of a plastic pint container while driving my beat-up Prius V. We were not able to find a day-care spot for my infant in our neighborhood, so he comes to Sunset Park with me, where I drop him off at a day care and then make my way to work.
On a typical workday:
My days start and end with driving to and from work with my infant in the back. Everything that happens in between can be a real hodgepodge. Sometimes, I’m out on the farm. Mostly, I’m sitting at a desk. I’m on calls, and I try to build in some deep-focus hours to actually execute work instead of just talking about executing work. But I have this commute window at the top and the bottom of the day, and it never feels like it’s enough time to get everything done. So what I ended up doing was scheduling calls while I’m driving me and my baby to and from Sunset Park.
I usually get a little bit more work done when I get home. Then I go into the dinner, bath time, bedtime routine. Then I frequently hop back online for an hour or so, or just use that focused quiet time to crank out a deliverable. There’s something to be said about diminishing returns. There’s a point at which you’re just not doing quality work, and you do need to step away and rest and recharge your eyes. It’s not so much that I’m always available, as I try to make sure that I’m never holding up somebody else’s ability to move their work forward because of my lack of availability.
On unsolicited advice:
I find people love giving me advice. I think part of that is because of my personality. I tend to telegraph my eagerness to learn and grow, maybe because I am a woman and because I started this business when I was 26 years old. But I also think Brooklyn Grange really invites participation. Nobody would sit next to their CPA at a dinner party and say, like, “Oh, you know what you should do?”
It just feels like everyone is an armchair expert in urban farming. A lot of the advice I get completely misses the point, which I have to wonder, like, is that a failure on my part to effectively communicate the real value proposition of Brooklyn Grange as an organization that expands urban green space? It’s this human connector between urban populations and green space and nature. Everybody just wants to talk about food and farming, which is such a small part of what we do.
On managing stress:
I try not to get wound up about small things, but the bigger challenge is managing existential stress like threats to our continued existence on this planet. The tragedies unfolding daily, you know, that’s not stress, that’s grief. We need to make space for the grief. The stress is one thing, but the grief can feel unbearably heavy. I had my second baby at 40 and faced a fairly heartbreaking road to becoming a mom. Now holding my sweet kids, there’s a certain amount of, maybe, survivor’s guilt? It is really difficult to look at our world without feeling crushed by the weight of grief.
On support from other moms:
I have a neighbor who has two boys who are a little bit older than my kids. One day, I posted on Buy/Sell Nothing that I needed shoes — I desperately needed shoes for my kid; all of a sudden he’s outgrown all of his shoes — and I opened my door and there was a reusable grocery bag on my doorknob with all these shoes in my son’s size. I actually may have burst into tears. It was the most supported and seen that I had felt, just knowing that another mom was nearby. Rather than responding to my message and coordinating it … the shoes just appeared.
On ambition:
I think my ambition used to revolve around what I wanted to do and accomplish. Time has given me the perspective that we have so little control over the conditions that govern what we can achieve. But we have a lot more control over the person who we want to be. So these days, my ambitions are almost entirely centered around that — who I want to be and how I want to affect the people around me.
On celebrating wins at work with pizza:
We’re extremely food motivated at Brooklyn Grange. We often celebrate, even small wins, just by having lunch together. We’re big fans of the farm pizza. It’s pizza that we then throw entire harvest bins’ worth of vegetables on top. We’ll slice up an heirloom tomato, a handful of arugula, a bunch of fresh basil, and then depending on who it is and how cute they want to get, there’s always some weird thing somebody’s trying to put on farm pizza.
On unwinding:
The reality of my life right now is I just don’t have the ability to dedicate time to the act of unwinding. I approach the work that needs to be done at the end of each day with the intention of using it to decelerate. I might put the kids to bed, do a little work on the laptop, and then put on some music and prep out the following night’s meal. It can be a very meditative process to feel that you are setting your future self up for ease and success. Then, when you do put all of your prep bowls in the fridge at the end of the night, you’re going to sleep knowing that you can come home, throw everything in the roasting pan, and go feed the baby without a chaotic scramble. It’s a gift for your future self. Too often we forget to celebrate our ability to meet our own needs. I try and spend the last moment of my day doing exactly that: celebrating and enjoying my ability to meet my needs and the needs of my family.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.