About Me

My name is Mike Lieberman, but go by CanarsieBK across the web. Why CanarsieBK? Canarsie is the neighborhood that I was born and raised in Brooklyn.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize that the choices that I make on a daily basis effects the world beyond me. We live in the information age, so there is a lot of information out there concerning our impact on the environment, but what can an individual do?

Instead of sitting back and feeling helpless, I decided that I wanted to do something. I started to think about another passion of mine, food, since I eat so much of it. I’m talking about real food and not the crap that’s become identified and accepted as food these days.

There are lots of factors that goes into getting food to our plates.

• On the average food travels about 1,500 to get to our plates, which uses a lot of gas and resources.
• Sprays and chemicals are used to “protect” the food from insects. Forget about the studies that talk about how good or bad sprays are for you are, I just don’t want that stuff in my body. I find it hard to believe that the chemicals used are good for our bodies and for the planet.
• What about the workers that are harvesting the produce and how they are treated. Are they treated fairly? Getting a decent wage? I don’t want to support a supplier that mistreats their employees.

These are reasons why I started to grow my own organic produce.

When I started to grow on my fire escape garden in NYC during the Spring of 2009, I had no gardening experience and read about a half of a book on gardening because let’s be honest – most gardening books are mad boring. In April of 2010, I moved to LA where I started a balcony garden and have continued to grow even more food.

My methodology is pretty simple, I use trial and error. What did people do hundreds of years ago? They certainly didn’t go to school, take a course to get a fancy certificate or Google “how to plant seeds.” They just did it, which is what I’m still doing.

I am not a gardener though. I might have a vegetable garden, but I grow food.