Waste Watching

This week we broke new records with over a thousand pounds of hecka local produce harvested and gleaned and distributed for free. What made up most of that weight were prune plums or sugar plums. On Thursday me and three friends drove to Vacaville (about an hour and 20 minutes away) where we “picked” 780 pounds of plums. I say picked when what we really did is shake trees and the plums fell into a tarp we held.

My friend Lauren with Produce to the People got an email from a woman who bought a 5 acre property up there that came with an old prune orchard. The trees were rather old and in poor shape, but  still producing a lot of fruit. The woman said she called around and couldn’t find anyone to pick the trees and she couldn’t even  get someone who would pick them and sell the fruit (apparently there weren’t enough trees to make it profitable). We picked for about four hours and filled all the 37 boxes we brought. I was told by our new friend Cathy with the orchard that there are a lot of fruit trees in the area that don’t get picked, that  many people buy property with orchards on them and people don’t know what to do with all the fruit. It is a lot of work to deal with the fruit and the trees. We only picked maybe 10—15 trees at the most and there were maybe 50 or more trees there that could be picked. A number of people have told me that they want to help glean if other opportunities come up. I would be happy to keep a list of possible gleaners with their contact information and what times they are available or not, if they drive or not or have a vehicle. There might even be another trip being planned to these trees, though I probably won’t go up again.

It starts getting hot early in Vacaville

our friend the French Prune Tree

It turned out that others brought more gleaned fruit to the stand. Bilkis brought apples and pears from trees in Marin and a neighbor dropped off two shopping bags of apples. Plus there were apples that I got from Produce to the People and Alen brought apples that she gleaned from Bernal Heights (word is out there that the Free Farm Stand is a place that is always looking for local fruit to give away because I got two emails about a craigslist ad for free pears and I was able to connect Alen, one of our faithful and eager gleaners, with the pear tree.)

I was just reminded again this week how abundant California is with fruit and vegetables and how much of it goes to waste. I feel grateful that I can help channel some of this abundant waste to people who are on tight budgets and could use it. It is a real dilemma in our world how to not only deal with the all the waste that is out there, but how we can all cut down on our own waste. Like in our backyard there are walnuts falling as I speak that I should be picking up and taking off the green husk.

This week besides the record amount of produce we had, both hecka local and farmer’s market local, we also had a record amount of people, with the line now going down Treat Ave and around the corner on 23rd Street. It was quite the scene. At the end of the day there was nothing left except some compost.

I think because of the large crowd there was unfortunately some tension that built up. Perhaps we have grown too large I don’t know. Despite the fact  that a few weeks ago I passed out fliers in English, Spanish, and Chinese trying to explain that we are all about loving our neighbors and we were not just your usual food give-away, there was still up tightness and people fighting with each other. When the second shift  of food came around some people that didn’t get food yet were rightly upset that some people who already gotten food had somehow gotten in front of them. I tried to explain that people in the end had to monitor themselves and not what the others were doing, but I get the feeling that the peace was disturbed. At least one woman who was asked to get in line when she came up to the table to get food got upset and said she was never coming back. While I was thinking about waste  yesterday also I thought what a waste it is for us to be harvesting negative thoughts and emotions, anger, and upsetness, especially over something like food, when there is so much. Though I realized, perhaps in our eagerness to get rid of all the food we collected, we might have given each person a bit too much, so at the end I noticed some people came up short. Or will that always be the case? Anyway, I need to think more about our program and to see if there is a way to make it less crazy. One beautiful thing I noticed that being such a nice sunny day, a lot of people were sitting on the grass chatting and eating the snacks from the bread table. On the whole the Stand had a real festive feeling.

handing out plums to people in line

Cristina handed out fall seedlings and flowers…everything except a few mustard seedling were given away

At the beginning we had a lot of soft fruit and tomatoes that we separated and many people picked through it to make sauce for themselves. The night before I canned a lot of fruit that was too soft to even transport to the stand and made more tomato sauce (thanks for the people who read last week’s blog and brought me some quart mason jars,  I put them to good use!).

I also discovered a fast way to deal with soft fruit by making a crisp by just putting the sliced or mushed fruit in a baking pan or dish and add a small amount of cornstarch and sweetener if you want. You can then make a quick topping made with oil or non-hydrogenated vegan margarine and flour or oil and quick cooking oats and sweetener, vanilla, some cinnamon if you want. I was thinking you don’t even need to make a topping, as Mike and Brittany were serving the crisp on bread (instead of creating more waste by using a paper cup and plastic spoon).  Kind of like a baked jam.

here is the Free Farm Special this week bread with humus, tomato, basil, and fruit crisp

Alen picked some berries from Bernal Hill  (I was up there today and it looks like many are ripe) and I had all this soft fruit so I made a crisp that was served at the stand.

beautiful lettuce from the Free Farm

our table was beautiful with squash

trombone squash a five pounder

My friend Varsha sent me this fascinating read, an article called “Toward the new garden of Eden:…” http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_7_119/ai_n58009359/. It is about this university professor who started a career as a scientist who became an expert in parasites. Due to funding cuts he wound up teaching Ecology 101 and Medical Ecology, “walking his class through the ways in which the world is collapsing.”  Long story short is he became an expert in rooftop gardens and vertical farming when he challenged his students to come up with solutions for the mess we are in. He and his student came up with statistics that the only way cities can really feed all it’s people is to build massive vertical farms on and in sky scrappers and buildings. Here is a quote I that thought was really interesting:

We are the only animals that farm far from where we live (I didn’t know that other animals farm, but apparently there are leaf -cutter ants and fungus-farming termites). In doing so, we have divided our world into the places that produce and, separately (in our cities), the places where we consume food and make waste. No other animals have ever chosen to live beside their waste rather than beside their food. If there were ever any ants, beetles, or termites that ran their cities in the way we do, they became extinct.

 

 

Saucy Summer

I am sitting here typing as 2 more gallons of tomato sauce that I canned are boiling away on our stove, plus 6 more quarts of fruit compote. On Saturday night I canned 3 gallons of tomato sauce all with organic tomatoes that were soft and had been squished, all left-overs from the farmer’s market. There is so much fruit and vegetables here in the bay area during the summer it can be overwhelming just thinking about it. I took the day off yesterday from the stand and instead went to the Free Farm where SFCare was holding a sock drive for the homeless and a picnic with vegan hotdogs. When I came back to the stand to help clean up the second delivery of produce came a bit late and there was still a line of people getting food. I wound up bringing home a box of soft peaches and nectarines and a lot of ripe tomatoes. There are orchards of fruit I hear about that need picking and gardens I haven’t had time to harvest from, including more potatoes in my backyard. (I harvested 16 pounds of  beautiful spuds from a somewhat shady 28 sq ft spot or about 1 3/4lb potato per square foot). I would say we could definitely use some help with canning. We need a phone tree that has people on it to call who  can glean or can on short notice. Having a vehicle or way to pick up surplus produce would be helpful and having the equipment on hand and jars would be useful too. If anyone has extra canning jars around that they would want to part with that would be helpful as I see more soft fruit and tomatoes in our future. While I am at it we can also use wide mouth jars for sprout kits.Mike ran the stand plus our regular crews of fabulous volunteers made it all happen. Brittany and I collaborated on making a sprout making kit and she assembled, attaching a small cartoon booklet  how to grow sprouts to jars with screen rubber banded on top and red clover seed inside. I also made 4 pounds of sprouts and they were handed out at the bread table (the sprouts I think were put on the hummus, tomato, and bread Mike was handing out). The kits we given out to people that like eating the sprouts and wanted to grow some themselves. I love growing sprouts and giving them away, but I also feel like anyone can grow sprouts and I wanted to encourage people to try growing some of their own food even if they don’t have a backyard.

5 gallon bucket sprouting method

booklet

Brittany assembling kits

hummus creation

baby eats hummus creation


2nd loadDid I mention we had a record amount of tomatoes and eggplant that we got left over from the farmer’s market?

When I got to the stand Mike gave me a taste of a delicious Armenian cucumber and he said some people from a farm in David came by with a lot of them to share (apparently they were pretty big). Also, I noticed a friend of mine named Wendy came by with a giant overgrown zucchini. It probably could feed quite a few people.

The Free Farm Stand now has a face painter. It has become a real children’s event!

 

100% Free

I was reading on a website called Practical Permaculture http://www.practicalpermaculture.com/about.htm, that had this great quote about what permaculture is about:” The idea is to be able to look out your backdoor and see your friends gathering food.” I would expand this idea and say that this revolution is about looing out our back or front doors and seeing  friends growing, harvesting, and sharing surplus produce at a neighborhood Free Farm Stand.
Being summer we seem to be at a peak of produce. I brought supposedly 186lbs of vegetables (greens and squash) from the Free Farm this week (I actually wasn’t at the farm this Saturday and that is the amount of food I was told that  was harvested this week, and also I am not sure how much was given away at the farm stand there before it was shipped across town to me). A neighbor dropped off 12 pounds of lemons and my friend Antonio brought a sample of Portuguese cabbage that he grew (Brassica oleracea Tronchuda Portuguesa or couve tronchuda). Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of these leaves, but they were really huge  and looked like collards and Antonio said they perennialize like tree collards (though they are started by seed).
Mike’s rhubarb something jam
Mike’s pickled green beans
long line all day
Cristina is back!!!
One of the common things I often write about on this blog is that there is a need for more people to be gardening. This reoccurring thought has bubbled up again in my mind as I just found out that the Esperanza garden needs help (all the gardeners I think are gone) and I am not sure what is happening with the Secret Garden. I even visited the Permaculture Garden at 18th and Rhode Island last week and that garden needs attention.  Not to mention Treat Commons  community garden where I am coordinator could use more gardening love.
All these gardens used to grow food for the Free Farm Stand (and still do in small amounts) and they all are such lovely gardens each with their own unique feeling. With all the talk and trendiness of eating local and the focus on urban agriculture, it is still hard to find people to help take care of a garden on a regular basis.  Even our Free Farm could use more help in terms of having experienced people that can lead others in tasks.  The thing is a lot of people come and volunteer, but we seem to lack are people who can help put those volunteers to work or people that can help manage a garden. I understand the challenge since most people are working and trying to pay their rent which is high in San Francisco.  If people lived together and shared income that would help free people up.
There are only so many models out there for us to choose from. My dear friends at Little City Gardens  whom I love a lot (their blog is wonderful to read and the photos so beautiful: http://www.littlecitygardens.com/). It is ironic that they are the most vocal voices right now in San Francisco exploring the issue of how to make healthy food accessible to poor people.  They have adopted a friendly capitalist model and have a sliding scale CSA and argue that until our government stops subsidizing the elite corporations that people will have to pay more for healthy produce because it can’t be cheap. I agree with them on that point, but I continue to suggest that we abandon the model of buy and sell and the inherent problems it brings into our culture. Instead we can stick our necks out and adopt the free “economy” based on gift giving, generosity, and trust.  Just like us vegans, us people into free will always be a small minority. But there is land to cultivate now and we only will live in our present form a short while, so we have a chance to float on faith and plant the seeds.
Here is an event coming up next Sunday at our Free Farm:
SF CARE Kick Off Picnic And Sock Drive Is Coming Soon!
SF CARE is off to a great start and we’d love to have you come celebrate with us on August 21st from noon to three at the Free Farm at Eddy and Gough. We are dreaming big. We have all our collective experience and passion, we have good programs currently in place, and we’ve got the vision and the enthusiasm to move forward.  All we need now is you.   Come join us for our kick off picnic and sock drive starting at noon on August 21st at the Free Farm on Eddy and Gough. Bring some white athletic socks, enjoy a delicious lunch, and learn more about this great new venture.The picnic is free, but it will help us to have enough food if you RSVP here or to sfcare@saintpaulus.org.
We’re looking forward to seeing you there!The Rev. Valerie McEntee The Rev. Daniel SolbergThe Rev. Megan RoherThe Rev. Lyle J. Beckman
By the way the write up of the Free Farm this week was awesome, mostly some fine photos, at  thefreefarm.org.
On Saturday I skipped the workday at the farm and I went to a beautiful ceremony at St Boniface Church for my friend Richard Purcell. One of the highlights of the event was meeting Joe a Native American healer who knew Richard. He is a member of the Tohono O’odham (Desert People) tribe in the Sonoran desert in southern  Arizona where Richard lived for 20 years.  He sang the most beautiful song about light that brought the event into the mystic. At the reception I met this beautiful man and in in his precense I felt a strong feeling of lightness/softness that I have rarely encountered in a person before.
There is also now an obituary about Peter Berg here in the Chronicle:  http://bit.ly/qTB9AM. Also there is this website http://planet-drum.net/2011/08/11/peter-berg/ Rembering Peter Berg. On this website I found this website where I stole my title: http://jaywbabcock.blogspot.com/2011/08/peter-berg-1937-2011.html. There is a great video posted there about the 1% Free poster the diggers put out.
One of the comments made by Ramon Sender is so right on and applies to both my friends: ” As the law of conservation of energy teaches us, nothing is ever lost, but just transformed. Still we yearn for the presence of the beloved as he/she manifested in our lives, although knowing all the time it was just a momentary shell enclosing the sun for an instant.”