We are coming up on my favorite holiday, a special day of the year for us all to be Thankful. Yet it seems difficult to talk about my feelings of gratefulness and thanks when the world is filled with war and the suffering it brings to everyone caught up in that violence. I am particularly thinking about the Mid East right now and the multiple conflicts going on in that part of the planet.
One has to believe in peace and the power of acting out of love and kindness towards each other. That is my prayer as we move into the holiday season of Peace and Joy.
At the Free Farm Stand we are so blessed with abundance, not only a wealth of good produce but good people. A place where neighbors meet neighbors and talk. In an article I read recently about the anti-GMO initiative that lost at the ballot, Michael Pollan wrote “Confirming the obvious, one social scientist found that people have 10 times as many conversations at the farmers’ market as they do at the supermarket….City meets country. Kids discover what food is. Activists circulate petitions. The farmers’ market has become the country’s liveliest new public square, an outlet for our communitarian impulses and a means of escaping, or at least complicating, the narrow role that capitalism usually assigns to us as “consumers.” At Free Farm Stand (which could be thought of as a Free Farmer’s Market), fruit and vegetables are free and we promote sharing of surplus and helping those in need. There is an opportunity for neighbors to not just be consumers, but to participate in the show being put on, either by bringing something to share that they grew or by volunteering. I believe this is what rejuvenates our society and specifically our neighborhoods, promotes local food growing and eating healthy, and is an opportunity to balance the negative in the world with something positive.
This week we had a parade of giant vegetables:
giant beet
Beets not Bombs…yes
giant kohlrabi that we cut in half
our “Hecka Local” produce including the one sweet potato grown at the Free Farm
we also had a lot of lettuce both from the Free Farm, Alemany Farm, and left over from the Ferry Building farmer’s market (and we gave away a lot of lettuce starts too)
Tree,
I roasted a hunk of the beet not bomb, and some of the giant pumpkin, and served it with peaceful olive oil. The beets were earthy and sweet. The pumpkin turned to jelly, and with salt, pepper, and chipotle, it was better than pie. The free farm salad was so tasty. The farm stand is a gift to the table and spirit of the community. The magic of real sharing gives us a bond, and makes us a community. We meet friends, neighbors, visitors in line, and there’s a general delight. What an antidote to the hollow commercial culture which defines “sharing” as a file transfer. Our real need is for community. Thanks to you and to all the Volunteers, and to the web of contributors for grace in action.Freddi