Tooting Our Horn of Plenty

Summer is here and we are starting to see more fruit at the Free Farm Stand. The most exciting thing to happen yesterday at the Free Farm Stand was when at the beginning we were just about set up and ready to open when the kids from Produce to the People came walking through the gate with boxes of plums and a big bag of loquats. It was like the reinforcement troops arrived to feed the neighborhood masses with fresh locally picked fruit.

Before they came, the super local table was already loaded with fresh produce and so we had to improvise a table to put all the plums and loquats on. I brought a scale and throughout the day I weighed all the food that kept coming in so we can keep track of the amount of food we are growing and sharing at the Farm Stand. To start the day we had 13lbs. of produce from Rhode Island (11lbs of potatoes, 1lbs of greens, 1lb basil), 4lbs of produce from Eperanza (1.5lbs zucchini, 2lbs kale, 1/2lb of beans), 20lbs of produce gleaned from my friend in Oakland (11.5lbs. of lemons and 9lbs. of concord grapes), and 7.7lbs of produce I just picked from Treat Commons, including over one pound of strawberries and two huge trombone squashes. Throughout the day other people brought 118.6lbs of produce, including 73lbs. of plums, 20lbs of loquats, 5.9lbs of grapefruit, and 7lbs of zucchini. What excites me the most are not the numbers of pounds of produce on the table, but the spirit of sharing that is happening. We are up to 1,423.6 pounds of super local food sharing going on for this year.

Another highlight is that a number of people brought some jam to share that we put on the table with bread, one person brought some yummy tomato sauce, and Lyn brought sprouts that she grew in jars (she really wanted to grow some food to share and she doesn’t have a garden). These things made my day. Oh and I didn’t mention the great people who came by and helped out. A new friend Bill has been documenting the stand for Mission Local online news and he took these most wonderful photos that accurately capture not only the glorious looking produce, but some of the beautiful faces of our helpers. I am happy that we are getting some of the locals involved, like Raphael who gave out bread and helped set up and Abdullah a young boy who also enthusiastically helped set up and gave out produce.

This does not include the excess produce from the farmers further away from the city (nor the rescued industrial organic produce we are getting now). This week we had a summer bounty including watermelons, peaches and nectarines, cauliflower, zucchini, and red peppers.

18th and Rhode Island

On Friday a small number of us turned out to continue harvest and weeding and we also planted more kale. We harvested three potato towers that never grew that well but we managed to get 11lbs of spuds, mostly small ones. Here is a slideshow of the harvest:

Kevin turned in a proposal for funding to a local foundation focused on improving the eastern neighborhood of San Francisco and the chances are high that we will get some money. The funds will go towards funding the water at the garden, seeds and plant materials, infrastructure, and a possible startup budget for planting another site nearby. There has been talk about seeing if we can plant fruit trees on some vacant Caltrans land overlooking the freeway at 18th and San Bruno.

Growing the local garden network

I am trying to find time to spend more of my time in the garden and keeping my hands in the dirt, but also am continuing to promote the local garden/food sharing movement in the Mission. Now that we have non-profit status I am working on trying to find funding for some great projects we have dreamed up. One is that we have a tentative ok to more plant fruit trees in the park where we do the Free Farm Stand. I say tentative because after I get the money needed the project has to go in front of the Park and Recreation Commission to get their approval to change the land use from park to community garden for the area we want to expand into. It sounds like it is pretty likely they will ok the project, so I am going ahead trying to get money to have a chain link fence constructed around the area where the “food forest” will go. It may take as much as $5000 to get the fence built.

I am also working with Lauren of Produce to the People to try to get a greenhouse and free garden center built at Mission High.

If anyone knows of any people out there that have a lot of money or some foundation I should look into please let me know.

Here is a recent article from the Chronicle about Alemany Farm and the mayor’s new healthy food policy: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/19/BASR18Q5UK.DTL. Yes we need more farms in the city!

The Free Farm Share

It was another Sunday Streets day and I was bicycling down Valencia to go home to set up the Free Farm Stand. It was a blast riding down Valencia and seeing the whole street cut off from car traffic, though it was a bit chaotic and it wasn’t a casual ride as I had to constantly avoid pedestrians and other bicycles coming from the other direction. When I got to the park the neighborhood seemed deserted because of the event and I decided to do some gardening until some help arrived. At some point volunteers started showing up and we got the van unloaded and food put on the different tables. Gone are the days (at least right now) of walking over with the wagon (not only because we have more produce, but because the van is used to pick up the bread that we leave in the van overnight). Suddenly out of nowhere people start flocking in like birds and before we know it there is a line of people anxious to get produce.

We filled the very local table with 37 pounds of produce this week. Right as we were setting up a neighbor showed up with a bag of small cherry plums that I think came from her tree. It made me happy that people are starting to understand what we are all about. I like to use the word food sharing as one way to describe what we are doing. We are learning to share (we hear that all the time if we hang out with kids and parents). It does seem like a food giveaway most of the time, but the message is really that we have the power to grow some of our food and to feed ourselves, just as we have the power to change our neighborhoods and get to know our neighbors. Some people think all they are doing is getting some free food and that is one way to look at it, but they might not know they are involved in a grand social experiment/scheme to make the world better by people getting to know each other, sharing food and some community time together. It is funny that now there is a Nolo press book out about sharing (The Sharing Solution) and talk about Sharing Law and the Sharing revolution. There is a blog too at http://www.sharingsolution.com/ . I must admit this really overwhelms me and I don’t know what to think about it. I come from the old school where sharing seemed a lot simpler and we didn’t need all the laws or contracts or technologies to share something with another person. We just get out in the world and do it. And some of us believe that the “Earth is a Common Treasury for All”. Yo, just share the love! But it is all cool sharing any way you have to do it (I may even need some legal contract to get some landowner to share their vacant land with me). I wish I could do more sharing in my own life.

Anyway a number of people brought by produce to give away or share (depending on how you look at it) throughout the day. Margaret brought by some beautiful red potatoes from Holy Innocents from the tater towers that Page and I planted. She also dropped off some huge zucchinis from the Stanford garden, some green beans, and grapefruit. Later in the day Sam came by with some ripe plums and then another friend showed up with grapefruit from down the street on Treat. Nanda whom I have been corresponding with by email, brought by dragon beans that she grew, some lemons, and a number of plants to give away and some seeds. We also had produce from four gardens that we are working in, Treat Commons, Esperanza, 18th and Rhode Island, and the Secret Garden. Of course the left over farmers market table was loaded with summer vegetables and I also had some “industrial organic” gleaned from Veritable Vegetable. I must admit I was offered a box of non-organic tortillas both flour and corn that I gave away that seemed very popular among our crowd.

At the very end of the Free Farm Stand while cleaning up a bicycle caravan with reggae musicians came riding down the street. I asked them if they wanted some bread that we had left over and they all came in the park and we had an impromptu reggae concert that was great. This is what I have been wanting for a while, some culture mixed with the stand. And I loved that it was sound system was powered by a bicycle.

We also had over two gallons of fresh plum jam that Eli made for the Free Farms Stand that we gave out in baby food jars and we had some on the table for people to taste. He actually thought it needed some improvement and gave me some in sealed mason jars that he added more sugar and ginger to and offered to do the same to the rest he gave me, but I thought it was delicious as is (and everyone else seemed to agree). Now I have some plum jam and apricot jam to give away around the holidays when fresh fruit is harder to come by.

I just heard that the possible new owner of the vacant lot that Esperanza Gardens is now located on has two months or more to grow food, because the he hasn’t been able to secure the loans yet to build on it. So that will give us time to plant another crop of greens and other things there. I am getting a lot of volunteers at all the gardens and that is great. We just have to keep planting as much as possible. I would like to see someone help coordinate a seedling program where we give seeds, soil, and trays to people to grow seedlings to give away. That way we would have seedlings to put in the ground when we have “vacancies” and I think then more people could grow food and share the surplus. Here are some pictures of our last workday at 18th and Rhode Island. Like I think I mentioned in a previous posting, more people have time on their hands because they are out of work, so lucky us getting all these great helpers.