Behind the Scenes

It turns out that a number of the few photos taken this week were a behind the scenes look at the Free Farm Stand.  Here is a photo of our hallway right after we loaded it  with boxes of produce from Food Runners direct from the Ferry Building Farmers market.

 

Actually, part of our crazy routine is that we pick up the produce that is usually in bags and banana boxes and when we get home and we transfer it all into wax boxes that I store during the week. That is so we can fit it all in the van. We have to load the van at Martin de Porres soup kitchen where the food is dropped off and then unload it and repack it and then later, after picking up bread in the evening from Acme Bakery, we reload it into the van. I say we because sometimes I am lucky and have help shelpping the boxes. Notice how some of the boxes fell over, a common occurence becaue I stack them too high and they crush and fall. Also in this stack of boxes are a few boxes of produce from our Free Farm. Here I was admiring the boxes of potatoes we harvested this week, 59 lbs! They were so beautiful!

Yesterday I wa so bummed because I forgot to put a sample away to taste them, they looked so yummy. I also didn’t save any for replanting, double bummer!

When I was repacking my van Sunday morning I had to go to my backyard and grab the zucchini I harvested and weigh it and throw it in with the hecka local box. Here is a  4 pounder.

It is funny later in the morning Margaret gave me another 4 pounder from one of Page’s gardens that looked and weighed about the same. Stuffed bake big  zucchini is delicious.

Before going to the Free Farm Stand at noon, I went with Margaret to a SF Refresh event held at the Free Farm. It was called the Open Cathedral and it was a service put on by  St. Paulus Church who owns the land the farm is on. I didn’t know what to expect and I was really blown away by the scene. It was one of the most beautiful and sweet, funky church services I have ever attended. I learned that Pastor Dan and St. Paulus serves the street crowd it seems. Right off the bat Margaret and I met an older guy named Wesley who was parking his bike and told me he had been connected to St Paulus for 26 years. When I asked him where he lives he said the street is his home by choice and that he lives in a camp nearby with 7 older adults total. He had some great stories to tell about the church and the fire and he also pointed out another man as someone he was partners with for years. The service was a pretty standard Christian church service, but it started out with Pastor Dan saying this was probably the first time in ten years that they have held a service here and many references were made to the spot still being a church though without walls. There was talk about the parable of the mustard seed to explain what the kingdom of heaven is like.Pastor Dan asked the congregants what would be the equivalent parable for the kingdom of heaven today. A number of rambling ideas came from the crowd, not really on target, until at one point someone talked about how he was sitting on the sidewalk and someone came by and offered him some food (maybe it was a pastry) and that act of kindness was like the kindom of heaven. Pator Dan seemed joyous that this person who was probably homeless got the idea right. Pastor Dan said his parable would be the church that got burnt down and then out of the ashes a garden grows up in it. Another touching moment was when an obivious crazy person got up and interrupted the service talking about planets he has created and everyone dealt with him in such a loving manner and got him to quiet down. I was also amazed at Pastor Dans patience and acceptance of everyone. The voices in the choir were sweet also, especially a man who looked a bit like Jack Nicholson (maybe in The Shining) who could really sing a tune. I left for the Free Farm Stand definetly feeling refreshed and inspired by this church who seem to have so much heart for the disinfranchised.

 

Here are some picures from the Free Farm itself. It was pretty crazy how much food we had and most of it was given away. What we had left over were many boxes of radicchio. Friends from Food Not Bombs dropped offf without asking me probably forty cases of radicchio and forty boxes of mushrooms, neither of which were organic.  I knew there was no way I could give out that much radicchio and I am thinking now the extra will wind up being composted at the Free Farm.

By the way the mushrooms were totally appreciated by everyone.  However, I had organic shitake mushroom that I felt good about, but was unsure about giving away non-organic mushrooms. [Correction: the mushroom boxes were labeled Organic Baby Bellas, so they can be eaten without fear. ] The mushroom info below is still useful.

Looking now at the website What’s on My Food, the link is on the sidebar under links, it shows indeed that mushrooms  are one of the worst foods to eat non-organic.

14 Pesticide Residues Found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program 8 Known or Probable Carcinogens

10 Suspected Hormone Disruptors

2 Neurotoxins

6 Developmental or Reproductive Toxins

Environmental Effects:

6 Honeybee Toxins

I feel bad aboutserving something so toxic and have contacted Food Not Bombs that in the future I want only organic produce or to at least contact me first. There was also a new woman that dropped off the produce from Stonestown Mall Farmer’s Market who talked to me about bringing us eggs. I had met her before and she asked me then if we wanted to give out eggs. I said no and she got a little upset because she knew people would really like them. She brought up the subject yesterday and again I said no and it was probably hard for her to understand why I wouldn’t want to give them out if people would love them. Besides a high value item like eggs causing riots among people who will all want them, I just want to stick with my principles as much as I can.

The good news was there was a lot of really fresh organic produce on the table, including a great deal of fresh kale and collards and zuchinni from the Free Farm.  The bread  table has become a regular snack  hangout with Mike’s hummus getting better each week. This week a brought a couple of jars of honey from last year from my backyard bees. It was really yummy too. A couple of highlights were a man who brought some surplus produce from his garden including some bouquets of herbs and flowers that he bunched up and tied.

Also, Kim showed up with more fabulous produce  and flowers from the Secret Garden:

At the end of the day  as we were leaving, one of my favorite friends Lina and her mom came by the park I hadn’t seen them in a while. Kids grow up so fast.

Friends at the end of the stand pose for a self-timer photo. The girl with the baskeball was just playing in the park and helped us clean up and scored some tomatoes  for her grandmother that were somehow left in a bag  undistributed.

Here’s a self-timer photo of our great cleanup crew in our kitchen. I love our community of friends and helpers and contantly feel grateful for everything. I forgot to mention that before we started handing out produce we formed a circle with volunteers and took time out to share our selves with each other and to be thankful.

Here is a short description of Root to Fruits that happened on Saturday by my friend Jonathan. Unfortuanately I was unable to attend.

I attended the 1st ever Roots to Fruits event at School of the Arts.  I arrived at 12pm to enjoy tasting the fruiture which cost $4 for an assortment of peaches, figs, plums, berries, and more.  I then got chocolate and vanilla  ice cream topped with strawberries.
Great demonstrations of sf permaculture, fruit tree pruning, planting fruit trees, cooking demos, and the keynote speaker Pam Pierce speaking about micro climates in San Francisco.  It was a FREE event and was very well attended.  I enjoyed getting broccoli painted on my face with the kids.
There were farm animals on site like goats and chickens for children to pet.

I left wanting more, looking forward to the fall event.

Farmer not Foodie

I could have titled this week’s blog with a bad pun like “the beet goes on”.  It is true though that it feels like we are on auto-pilot and each Sunday’s Free Farm Stand follows the next and the produce comes and goes. It is another summer and what is truly a miracle each week seems like the ordinary.   Boxes and boxes of fresh mostly organic vegetables collected from the local farmer’s markets.  This week  our free farm contributed one box of vegetables,  there was a box of locally harvested plums, and some really beautiful kale grown by one of our regular volunteers. I also harvested kale from the Esperanza Garden.  Later at the end of the day a friend brought by some surplus artichokes and fava beans that he grew in the outer Mission. We also had a lot of seedlings including some odd things like magenta lamb quarters and sunberry seedlings. Not only is the produce truly a gift, but we are blessed with so many helpful hands and sweet “customers”.

hecka local rules!

local plums

magenta lambs quarters

So in our lives we can be up to our knees in blessings and yet not recognize it, because our days become routine.  I personally have to take time out and step back and be thankful.

This Saturday there is an event that is all the buzz of the local food growing people and is attracts my interest (I will be at our farm that day with some guests): Roots to Fruits: Tasting our Shared Fruiture. It is on Saturday, July 23 · 10:00am – 4:00pm and is 555 Portola Drive at School of the Arts (SOTA) Enter via O’Shaughnessy Drive. Pam Pierce my favorite garden teacher  who often contributes produce to our stand will be speaking  about our microclimates here and there will be a fruit tasting (it costs $4) and other activities. Also Dr. John Preece, of the Wolfskill Germplasm Repository, Discusses ‘Why A Germ Bank for Fruit and Nut Crops are Important in Our Food System. More buzz heere http://www.facebook.com/rootstofruitsSF?sk=events#!/event.php?eid=110183875738805

One thing that I can’t help commenting on is that the idea of sharing something is becoming synonymous with selling something. In reading something posted on the permaculture listserve recently about this event it said: “Got plums? Come and celebrate our inspiring web of community resiliency by selling what you grow. Growing it locally, producing it locally, sharing it locally. We will collectively lower our carbon footprint and offer a place where supply meets demand, by providing a new kind of marketplace for farmers and foodies.”

I believe sharing is sharing not selling. I would like to believe that sharing is gift giving. I also feel strongly that since the earth is a common treasury, fruit is a gift and should be shared with all. It just seems so backwards to encourage people to sell what they grow, as if capitalism is so groovy and that the system we got going right now is great, if only it could be friendlier and home grown. Also, I really hope I am not a foodie and that the Free Farm Stand is not a Foodies Paradise.

Here is a public event not related to anything doing with the Free Farm Stand, except that I met Josh a long while back when he came from Aprovecho to San Francisco: One Million Voices for Shane and Josh: International call-in blitz!! Monday, July 25 at 8:00am – July 29 at 5:00pm One Million Voices for Shane and Josh: International call-in blitz on the Iranian Interest Section in Washington D.C. from July 25th-29th. CALL EVERYDAY!  (202) 965-4990  Using Google voice is free if you get a number. More info here: http://twoyearsistoolong.w​ordpress.com/

Eden now

I took a break last week and alas there was no write up of what went down.  This week I was there for all the glory.  The weekend started out with a bang at the Free Farm where I heard the count was forty volunteers. Among those, my friends from Casa de Paz from Oakland plus some of their sparkling visitors showed up and quite a lot of work got done. Read Pancho’s account below of the  Free Farm workday and also his belated write-up of last week’s Free Farm Stand.  There is also a rather long write-up with fabulous photos at the Free Farm website here.

That night the Casa de Paz crew and visitors (five adults and one baby) spent the night at our place so they could help out in the morning loading the van and setting up and running the stand. The energy was pretty high and though we were a little crowded for my small abode and I enjoyed the community spirit. I have already started trying to manifest a larger place in the Mission to start a  home focused on service.

Recently I have been inspired by a Jewish group in Berkeley called Urban Adamah. A while back a few of the people involved with that group came by and visited us at our farm. They have a three month residential program for young adults that includes a 1 acre organic farm, social justice work, and living and learning together.   I love their curriculum which is Service of the Field, Service to the Community, Service of the Heart, and Study. I think now is the time to launch something like that here and just by putting the word out now I hope is the first step towards making this happen. If Eden is our divine home including it’s lush garden or farm with buy selfless worker bees, we need Eden now.

When people tell me they want to volunteer at the Free Farm Stand there is always work to do there, especially during the summer when more food comes in. For example, early Saturday morning I actually drove down to the Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building to visit Green Gulch Farm who has a stand there. Sarah who has been a regular volunteer at our farm is working there during the summer and she and some other students gleaned five boxes of greens from their fields before they were turned under. It was a beautiful harvest, but the baby lettuces needed to gone through and cleaned up making it easier to give away. Besides the work at the stand on Sunday there is a lot of work beforehand that I hope I can find and teach others to do like driving to Martins to pick up the produce and unload it.

The Sunday Stand was a blast as usual with a lot of food and a lot of people helping and getting food. Our hummus/pickle/jam guy Mike was away so we had to get by with a small jar of jam left over from last year’s bounty of fruit. It is not the same without him. Besides a small amount of Free Farm Produce, Kim brought a beautiful display of vegetables from the Secret Garden. We also had some plums picked by Produce to the People and some more collard green starts grown at the Free Farm .

cleaning up baby lettuce a work of love

beautiful monk

beautiful baby

beautiful mom and baby from

beautiful kids eating beautiful strawberries

beautiful baby collards

beautiful Secret Garden produce with Kim

life without Mike (see small jar of jam?)

Below is the post  by Pancho (with some editing from me, the whole version can be found here):

Belovedhood: Feed all, serve all, love all

We are not growing fruits and veggies. We are facilitating the growth of soil and community. The food is a byproduct. We most give back to Mother Earth and enjoy, in the process, the co-creation of the  Beloved-hood.

This is the revelation I got when I met hermano Tree. From my perspective, this is Gandhi’s constructive program of the 21st century at its best. For the last few years, I’ve been close to him to learn how to facilitate this growth. Now some of us, at Casa de Paz, have been volunteering full days by his side. I have felt very inspired to anchor the Free Farm Stand the first Sunday of the month. The downside, as you can tell, is that I’m a slow writer and the updates of June 5th and July 2nd are coming only until now. But hey! you can talk about the (r)evolution or live the (r)evolution [and write a little bit about it ;-)].

The Free Farm Stand is definitively a great experiment in the joy of serving our diverse families in the Earth Community. We were thrilled to see that now there are entire families from the Mission who are coming to the Stand. Families from the part of the Planet we call China, Mexico, Guatemala, Yemen, India; people who speak Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Farsi, Arabic, Hindi, English; and lots of children, plenty of children. It is a wonderful experience to foster this intercultural interaction and get nourished by their smiles and laughter. Some of our fliers are now in Spanish and Chinese.

Last Sunday (July 3rd), the stand was overwhelmed by the abundance of food provided by  additional sources of food donations. Plums, peaches, apricots, squashes, aloe plants, and greens flooded the stand’s table’s, to the extent that we were hardly able to give it all away over the three hour period (1:00pm-3:00pm) that the stand operates.

So too is the Free Farm an experiment.

As Britney and I write this piece from the Free Farm, there are people: harvesting for the free farm stand; building a terrace; beautifying the labyrinth; watering the beds and isolated pots; preparing the table for the vegan lunch at noon; planting seeds in the greenhouse; washing the produce for the 1pm farm stand; guiding visitors to show some of the magic of the farm; carrying wheelbarrows –or taking a nap in one of them– full of mulch to nourish the paths; turning the compost; taking pictures for the blog and writing a post to celebrate all of this work and the work that can’t be described with metrics.

The diversity of the people volunteering honors and matches the rich diversity of life in the farm. On the one hand, the farm is filled with people of brown, black, white skin; a 1 yearold whose mom joined the yoga and meditation sessions in the morning; young people from both Stanford and  UC Berkeley; teens from all backgrounds sharing their wisdom; enthusiastic elders from the neighborhood; people without houses and without money giving away all they have: their time, love and energy; Christians, a Buddhist monk, secular people, anarchists, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans all united in this church without walls. With this diversity, we come together, work together, learn together, and share. On the other hand, the farm is inhabited by a red tail hawk who has made the farm her source of mice and rats; by ravens, hummingbirds, pigeons, worms, snails, ants; bees that live in hives and bees that live buried in the soil, who knows what fascinating interactions are happening beneath the surface of the beds. We learn from this animal world too, just as we learn from the diverse human worldviews that the farm draws together.

Many of us enjoy our volunteer work at the Free Farm because we believe that healthy, local food is the foundation of social justice. While 93 percent of the varieties of crops have gone extinct in the part of the Planet we call the U.S. –and all over the World– city kids, like many of us, are learning how to facilitate the growth of food and how to let crops go to seed. The concepts of both regeneration (not sustainability) and community are being shared and practiced. We are planting seeds of generosity and harvesting kindness to and from the community.

With this growth of soil and community, local neighbors are getting more and more involved. As these neighbors volunteer at the farm and receive its produce, a circle of giving and receiving is emerging. In this gift economy, we are able to provide for one another and cultivate compassion and care. As we shared before, the effects of the farm do not end within the Western Addition neighborhood here in San Francisco.  They carry over to the Mission, where the surplus food produced by the stand is given away as an act of unconditional love.  We don’t believe that in a pollution-violence based economy only people with financial resources can consume healthy local organic food. We believe and practice that everybody can and must be nourished with healthy local food and healthy entertainment. We are doing our best to treat each other as family. And our family is widening, indeed. There is a palpable love and acknowledgement to take care of our elders and our children.

Through the act of freely giving away healthy and local produce, unjust food systems–like the one in this part of the Planet, where kale is often not affordable for many, yet unhealthy hot dogs cost less than a dollar–are challenged and a community is built.  It is the love and dedication of volunteers that makes this possible.  And it is this same love and dedication which has an infectious tendency on others, keeping the farm and the stand energized and thriving.

In other words: feed all, serve all, love all.

These were our two seeds as Free Farmers, ;-)

May all become compassionate, courageous and wise.

Britney, Pancho and Adelaja.

Here is a link for a movie that is being worked on called Growing Cities. These young men came out and filmed us at the Free Farm and the Free farm Stand (at the end of the day) and some of the other farms they have visited across the United States seem pretty interesting.