View from the Free Farm

There is planing going on to combine the Free Farm web site with the Free Farm Stand. Right now I am trying to keep both sites up-to-date and sometimes I am more inspired to write about what is going on at the Farm than at the Farm Stand and vice versa. So having just one place where people can go to find out about either of our projects I hope will be better

Today, for example,  I am thinking about our last workday at the Free Farm where we had a number of guests and Urban Ag celebrities visit us.  Our first visitors were  a group of about 8 or more Methodist pastors visit us from different churches in Georgia. They were on a tour of different groups doing various service projects in the city and had just come from visiting  the food pantry at St. Gregory’s Church on Potrero Hill on Friday.  It is run by my friend Sara Miles and has always inspired me as far as food pantries go. They put the food they distribute around their altar and above the food on the ceiling are beautiful murals of dancing Saints (see an online version here though to really be inspired and feel their power you must see them in person). Sara writes on their web site “on Fridays, our sanctuary is a vision of God’s ridiculous, over-the-top abundance.” Sara suggested that the group come and visit us and help us out. I enjoyed meeting and working with them  and they seemed very interested in what we do.  One pastor was telling me he was going to send me seeds from his grandmother who grows some mustard greens that have been in his family for generations.

Our two Urban Ag celebrities that dropped in were Novella Carpenter and her beautiful 10 month old daughter Francis and Willow Rosenthal.  Novella I have never met though she spoke at the Free Farm for some event that Welcome Ministries put on when we first started.  She wrote a very popular book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. I have to admit I tried reading the book but was turned off by the what seemed her glee or at least her comfortableness in killing animals to eat.   She wrote on her blog here in an essay on why she eats meat:  “These meat-avoiders don’t want to kill animals. They love animals. Thing is, so do I: I love animals and I love to eat them.” I know I am in the minority here  in always bringing up my vegan views on things, and I know everyone has to figure out which choices to make in life, but I just don’t enjoy reading books promoting meat eating…also I am more into promoting community self-reliance than the idea of everyone having their own urban homestead and doing it for themselves.

I know Willow Rosenthal from City Slicker Farms (she started it though she has moved on from the organization).  I visited City Slicker Farms when I was first  looking for inspiration to start a new project, and that is partly why the Free Farm Stand was born.

Both the women were giving a talk at the main library which is nearby our farm and I told Cristina who was going to the talk to invite them over to join us for lunch. I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with both of them, it is great when gardeners can get together and talk compost or plants. Plus at lunch Willow and I shared our ideas for community farms. Both Willow and Novella just got back from a trip to Venezuela where they visited community farms that got their inspiration from Cuba (they showed slides at the library). I love the model of having a community farm in every neighborhood that grows food for the neighbors.

The only thing that was a drag at the farm that day was there were too many people I wanted to talk with that I didn’t have the chance to.

One other highlight of the day was giving Novella’s baby a fresh picked strawberry still warm from the sun.  Francis really did more than just eat it, but totally got into the whole experience of eating it, smearing it and feeling it on her skin and face, sucking it, and spitting it out. I thought if only adults could enjoy a strawberry so much and really enjoy each moment of life like that! I know I have a long way to go in that regard, though I  try to remind myself all the time how grateful I am for the abundance of blessings in my life.

I finally got a chance to meet the woman Janet who has been dropping off pounds of rocoto peppers on my doorsteps for  the past month. She and her husband Ian came by the stand this time with her bag of peppers and she said there was more. From talking to her, I learned that her plant is really big, it sounds like it takes up a lot of their backyard, but she does grow other things, including other perennials like Walking Stick Kale (we both got our plants from the same source Annie’s Annuals) and annual vegetables.

On Friday I went to Esperanza Garden and from a space about 2 feet by 3 feet I harvested 35 pounds of Sunchokes that I brought to the Stand. Alemany Farm supplied us with some of it’s surplus and I will be helping them harvest some more for the Stand this coming Friday if anyone wants to help (just let me know for details). They are also having their 8th annual harvest festival on Saturday October27. Beware if you are sensitive about meat eating at events, there will be a pig on a spit (though they are offering vegetarian burgers).lemons gleaned from a tree in Berkeley

We  had good luck with the few Brussels sprouts we grew at the farm

our new sign

parsnips and celery root from Alemany Farm

one big round zuchinni and pineapple guavas from Alemany Farm

Cottage Gardens

I recently read this inspiring article online about Russian’s small scale organic gardening model for producing food for the country here.  “In 1999, 35 million small family plots produced 90% of Russia’s potatoes, 77% of vegetables, 87% of fruits, 59% of meat, 49% of milk — way to go, people!” There is an article here too.  “According to The Bovine, Russia’s Private Garden Plot Act, which was signed into law back in 2003, entitles every Russian citizen to a private plot of land, free of charge, ranging in size from 2.2 acres to 6.8 acres. Each plot can be used for growing food, or for simply vacationing or relaxing, and the government has agreed not to tax this land. And the result of this effort has been phenomenal, as Russian families collectively grow practically all the food they need.” Here is another great quote:  “Today, however, the area taken up by lawns in the US is two times greater than that of Russia’s gardens – and it produces nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.”

If this is all true it is amazing and makes one wonder if we can  in this country move in that direction? There is definitely some youthful energy here wanting to garden. Before I left for the farm stand yesterday, I saw a  group of men and women cleaning up the weeds and garbage from the empty parking lot across the street. Then when I got back much later they were still at it, with a huge pile of weeds, making a space to plant trees along a south facing fence, so ideal for growing fruit!

Access to free land is the issue at least in the bay area and I don’t see this as happening in the near future.

The Free Farm Stand though is a way for us to imagine a movement like this. Can we  see in our dreams more and more people coming to the stand with small surplus gifts from their gardens? I met a man who goes to our church who this week brought me a small bag of radishes and arugula from his backyard garden. This is exactly how we can make our dreams come true even on the tiniest scale and it is the movement forward towards our goal of feeding our neighborhood one garden at a time which is important.

we still get Trombone squash from the garden this late inthe year and you can feed a family with each one

wearable  squash as ornament

I wanted to give a shout out to Rainbow Grocery Cooperative who has given the No Penny Opera who runs the Free Farm Stand and the Free Farm a generous grant of $1,000.   We will use this money to keep our workhorse van maintained and  buy seeds and supplies for the Free Farm and  the small amount of supplies we use at the Stand. We really appreciate the great work they do supporting  small grass root projects like ours.

Abundant Joy

I am thinking of the sweetness of the Free Farm Stand and all the wonderful people who show up every week to either help or get food.  I was sent this poem that I am reprinting that sums up my mood right now:

When I add a spoon of honey to my tea, I give thanks to a dozen bees for the work of their whole lives. When my finger sweeps the final drop of sweetness from the jar, I know we’ve enjoyed the nectar from over a million flowers. This is what honey is: the souls of flowers, a good to please the gods. Honeyeaters know that to have a joyful heart one must live life like the bees, sipping the sweet nectar from each moment as it blooms. And Life, like the world of honey, has its enchantments and its stings.
– Ingrid Goff-Maidoff, The Honey Sutras

This week a mom of five named Katie was in town from Kalamazoo, Michigan, bringing her sweetness and was helping out with her youngest child on her chest. Unlike San Francisco, home prices in Kalamazoo  apparently are very cheap and  Katie not only bought a home there, but was able to purchase a number of empty lots surrounding her home and she now farms on 2 1/2 acres. She said the mortgage on her home was cheaper than paying rent in section 8 housing that she used to live in.  There is some group, maybe a government agency, that will help you buy vacant property that is adjacent to your home, and she got one parcel for I think she said for $170. But you can’t grow avocados in Kalamazoo.

On the topic of housing, here is an event happening Wednesday that I can relate to:  ”

HOMES NOT JAILS TAKES OVER VACANT BUILDING FOR WORLD HOMELESS ACTION DAY

Wednesday October 10, 2012 on World Homeless Action Day, Homes Not Jails will hold an open building occupation to provide housing and to fight against the criminalization of homelessness. In solidarity with squatters across the world and allies for human rights, there will be a rally beginning at 5pm in Dolores Park, followed by a march to take the message to the streets, culminating in a public takeover of a vacant space.

Currently in the US, there are 18.5 million vacant homes and 3.5 million homeless people; in San Francisco the figures are 31,000 vacant housing units to an estimated 8,000 homeless folks.

“This is greed – not an issue of scarcity or supply and demand,” says a Homes Not Jails collective member. “These resources are being wasted.” Another collective member who has participated in similar actions in the past describes public housing takeovers as “incredible and exciting, something you’ve got to take part in to believe.”

So one thing that is happening is that people are moving out of San Francisco to Oakland where it is a little cheaper to live.  My dear friends from Casa de Paz are bringing the love to Fruitvale  and have been running a Free Farm Stand in front of their house on Sundays. I am so inspired by their work and that they are working in a low income neighborhood where I am sure good free produce is appreciated. The photos I got tonight remind me of the very earliest days of the Free Farm Stand. They collected some produce from the farmer’s market there at the end of the day and have been gleaning the abundant fruit trees over there. A friend of mine who lives in El Cerrito  had more oranges than she could possibly use. I told her about this project that I wrote about in the post No Moola about a month ago.  A guy name Doug collects surplus produce from local neighbors in El Cerrito and then gives them to local restaurants. So my friend called him and he came over and picked a handful of oranges and that was it…he never came back. I contacted Pancho and Casa de Paz and they and their neighbors picked the tree and drove away with a car full of oranges to give away at their stand.

the gleaners from Fruitvale