Zaro Bates operates and lives on a 5,000-square-foot farm on Staten Island, which may make her the city’s only commercial farmer-in-residence. But instead of a shingled farmhouse surrounded by acres of fields, Ms. Bates lives in a second-floor studio in a midrise apartment complex built on the site of a former naval base overlooking New York Bay.
扎罗·贝茨(Zaro Bates)在斯塔滕岛经营着一个面积5000平方英尺（约合465平方米）的农场，并在那里居住，这使她成为也许是这个城市里唯一的商业农场经营者。但贝茨不是生活在被数英亩农田环绕的木瓦农舍，而是在一个中高层住宅小区的一间二楼工作室内，这个俯瞰纽约湾的地方原本是一座海军基地。The farm itself sits in a courtyard between two buildings at Urby, a development with 571 rental apartments that opened in Stapleton last year. Ms. Bates draws a modest salary and gets free housing, which sounds like a good deal until you discover how much work she has to put in.
农场则是尔比(Urby)的两栋建筑之间的庭院，这是斯泰普尔顿去年开盘的地产项目，共有571座出租公寓。贝茨领着一份中等的薪水，有免费住房，这听起来挺划算，但如果你知道她为此付出多少劳动，就不那么想了。The 26-year-old oversees a weekly farmstand on the complex premises from May through November and donates to food banks. In her repertory? Some 50 types of produce — greens, summer vegetables, flowers, herbs and roots. She does this with help from her business partner and husband, Asher Landes, 29.
从5月一直到11月，26岁的贝茨在这个小区里每周举办一次农贸市集，同时也给食物慈善机构捐赠食物。她的产出？大约有50种农产品——绿叶蔬菜、夏季蔬菜、花、草本香料和根茎蔬菜。她在自己的丈夫兼生意伙伴、29岁的阿舍·兰德斯(Asher Landes)的帮助下完成这些工作。
Let the doubters doubt.
信不信由你。“A lot of people instinctively call it a garden, but we really try to manage it for a commercial market,” Ms. Bates said. “It’s funny that people have different kinds of notions of what a farm is. Some people think it needs to have animals, that it needs to have acreage. We intensively crop this space so that we can produce for market, and that’s why we call it a farm.”
“很多人习惯性地把它称作花园，但我们的确是在为满足一个商业市场的需求来管理它，”贝茨说。“人们对一个农场应该是什么样有不同看法，这挺有意思。有些人觉得应该有动物，应该有数英亩的土地。我们在这片空间里密集地种植，以便能满足市场所需，这是我们称它为农场的原因。”Farming, of course, is a New York tradition. In the late 1800s, loam and livestock were predominant north of Central Park and in what is now the East 50s. In “Win-Win Ecology,” Michael L. Rosenzweig argues that ecological science has rooted itself in the common ground of development and conservation: the use of rich natural resources in places where we work and live.
当然，种植是纽约的一项传统。在19世纪末，中央公园北部和现在被称为“东50s”的地方主要是农田和家畜。在《双赢生态》(Win-Win Ecology)一书中，迈克尔·L·罗森茨魏格(Michael L. Rosenzweig)指出，生态科学植根于共同的开发与保护：把我们工作和生活的地方的丰富自然资源利用起来。Farms like Ms. Bates’s, in addition to more traditional farmland, have been around for quite some time. Thomas Whitlow, an associate professor of horticulture who specializes in urban plants at Cornell University, Ms. Bates’s alma mater, said that in the 1940s some 40 percent of fresh market produce in New York was grown in victory gardens.
除了较传统的农田之外，像贝茨经营的这种农场早就已经有了。在贝茨的母校康奈尔大学(Cornell University)专门研究都市植物的园艺学副教授汤马斯·惠特洛(Thomas Whitlow)表示，在1940年代，纽约生鲜市场上有大约40%的农产品来自“胜利园”（战争期间在私人宅院和公园里开辟的蔬菜种植地。——译注）。“Certainly, urban populations in general are very adaptable as conditions change,” Dr. Whitlow said. “They can change within the space of a year. Just a hundred years ago we were almost a hunter-gatherer society and did indeed have farming in major metropolitan areas.”
“当然，城市人口整体上十分适应环境变化，”惠特洛说。“在不到一年的时间里，他们就可以实现改变。仅仅100年前，我们几乎还称得上一个狩猎采集社会，而且的确在大都会地区进行农业种植。”Ms. Bates had hardly seen farmland as a child. Her parents, who moved to Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, in the early 1990s, rarely took the family upstate. They had the backyard of their home, but no green thumbs between them. The yard was a play space.
贝茨小时候基本没看见过农田。她的父母在1990年代初移居布鲁克林的卡罗尔花园，很少带家人到纽约州北部去。家有个后院，但没人懂农业种植。那个院子就是个玩耍的地方。After graduating from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell, where she studied developmental sociology, Ms. Bates volunteered as a groundskeeper at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, Mass.
贝茨在康奈尔大学农业和生命科学学院(College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell)学发展社会学。毕业后，她自告奋勇地到马萨诸塞州斯托克布里奇市的克里帕鲁瑜伽及健康中心(Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health)当了一名园地管理员。“That was the first time that I drove a tractor, did wood chipping, shoveled heaps of snow in the Berkshires winter, then planted in the springtime and just worked outside with a team of people through the seasons,” she said. “That was my first experience with that type of work and really falling in love with that.”
“那是我第一次用拖拉机、碎木机，第一次在斯托克布里奇的冬天铲成堆的雪，然后在春季种植，跟一群人一年四季在户外忙活，”她说。“那是我第一次做这类工作，并真正爱上了它。”Afterward she intended to travel, maybe visit South America. Her plans were postponed by an apprenticeship at Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop and urban farming consultancy group, where Ms. Bates farmed under the tutelage of the chief operating officer, Gwen Schantz.
她原本打算之后出去旅行，或许到南美看看。因为接到屋顶和都市农业咨询机构布鲁克林农庄(Brooklyn Grange)的学徒工作，那项计划推迟了。在农庄里，贝茨在首席运营官格温·尚茨(Gwen Schantz)的指导下进行种植。
“We love designing and installing green spaces for clients, but it’s equally exciting to see others taking this work up, especially young, savvy farmers like Zaro,” Ms. Schantz said.
“我们喜欢为客户设计和布置绿色空间，但看到其他人开始从事这项工作也同样让人兴奋，尤其是像扎罗这样年轻能干的农场主，”尚茨说。“What we did was similar to other farmers’ markets in the city,” Ms. Bates said. “But because it was enclosed in a space that invites hanging out for a while, we really invited people to make it more of a Saturday afternoon activity. That was not just for Urby residents, but also anyone from the general public.”
“我们所做的和市里其他农贸市场是差不多的，”贝茨说。“但因为它是设在一个让人想在里面闲逛的封闭空间里，我们就真的邀请人们过来，让它变得更像一个周六下午的活动。它不仅仅针对尔比的住户，也向公众开放。”Ms. Bates and Mr. Landes try to plant according to requests from local residents. The proceeds go to the couple’s company, supplementing the annual salary they each receive from Urby. (Urby and Ms. Bates declined to disclose the amount.) They also host workshops and a book club.
贝茨和兰德斯尽力按照当地居民的要求种植。农场的收益归这对夫妇的公司，此外还有他们从尔比获得的年薪。（尔比和贝茨拒绝透露薪资的数额。）他们还会举办工作坊和读书俱乐部活动。“The priority is to residents,” Ms. Bates said, “but also to build community.”
“最重要的不仅是满足居民的需求，”贝茨说，“还有营造一个社区。”