Who would know that this is November by the weather? Here are some of the fall crops that filled up our table this week:
We had lots of persimmons left over from the market (these are Fuyu that you eat hard ), plus we had about 80lbs of Haichiya persimmons (you eat when they are soft) picked by Stanford Glean on Stanford Campus. They visited the Free Farm on Saturday to help put in an orchard at a nearby senior apartment complex where our beautiful greeter Joyce lives.
Pomegranates (here is how to de-seed one from our favorite gardening guy John http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbreHluo6yk&feature=plcp). There are other methods to de-seed a pomegranate, just look on YouTube, but I like this method, it seems easy to me.
Apples and lemons from neighbors and friends
John and I harvested pineapple guavas from Alemany Farm (we also picked a lot of kale, collards, Brussles sprouts, lettuce and some green beans). There are ground cherrys in the photo that came from I think the Free Farm
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Here is a photo of the fruit on the bush.
Brussles sprouts from Alemany Farm (they were pretty holy from snails)
Our favorite twin gardeners helping water the kale plants at the garden next to the Stand.
another gardener (Sara) and her newborn gardener to be
I keep forgetting to share this article that I found very interesting about the Central Valley, called Everyone Eats There. I learned that one third of all food grown in the United States is grown there and about 230 different kinds of crops are grown there and the biggest supplier of canned tomatoes in the world. It is truly fascinating how we grow massive amounts of food in such an industrial way and how it has totally fucked up this once real jewel of land. It seems like we can hardly go backwards and undo all the damage that has been done. We can stay hopeful if we create the world we want now and that means doing our minuscule part to do the right thing.
Recently I filled out an application for a grant from Seeds of Change who are offering 12 grants of $10,000 “We want to share the good with you and your community. So, join us in enhancing the well being of your gardens, farms, and the people who bring them together. ” I filled out the application for the Free Farm and the Free Farm Stand with the idea of using the money to start a free course in Urban Food Production at the Free Farm. Currently we have a need for more skilled urban farmers that can help run our farm and other gardens that provide food for the Free Farm Stand. The idea behind this course would be that apprentices would learn sustainable urban agriculture skills and techniques. There would also be a component of the program that would teach volunteers how to be crew leaders. After submitting this grant application from reading the FAQ’s I learned that “The number of unique nominations an organization receives will be considered by the judges during the review process.” This means we get points for being nominated (though there are other factors that give us points too). So this is a real long shot, but if anyone wants to help us out they can go here and nominate us one time (you have to give them an email address). Go here. The project to nominate is the Free Farm/Free Farm Stand and the proprietor is Tree. The zip where the project is 94109. The deadline for nominating is 11:59 ET November 30th.