It is really about boundless love everyday as far as I am concerned, despite the sad or bitter news mixed in with the joy in our lives. Last week we heard about the senseless attack on bees at the Hayes Valley Farm, a seemingly small tragedy when considering the tragedies happening all around the planet these days, but it really hits home when  you consider that we are living in the city of St. Francis, a city of love for all species, and a certain tolerance and acceptance for those creatures in our midst who may be different or who may even sting once in a while. I balance out this unfortunate digression from peace and harmony by thinking about our friend, comrade, and fellow farmer Pancho who is in Arizona helping lead a battle against racism and unjust immigration law. Courage grows everywhere like the wild poppies that come up in our gardens. Yesterday our own Pastor Megan whom we work with at the Free Farm got welcomed back into her church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, along with six other openly gay pastors, at a ceremony down the street from the Free Farm at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/us/26lutheran.html?_r=3). I was inspired by the words of one of the reinstated pastors “all people are loved unconditionally by God”.

The harvest was small from the Free Farm this week and a lot of it was given away there to neighbors. Fortunately we had a good harvest of zucchini from 18^th and Rhode Island and a number of people dropped by with produce.  A woman from Bernal Heights dropped off plums from her tree to share and another woman came by with a few apples (the rest are not ready to harvest yet). Pam sent by some folks with 17 lbs of favas from City College. We also had some surplus produce from Treat Commons Community Garden. Produce to the People and Lauren showed up with her high school summer students to help out and they also brought a lot of plums they gleaned the day before. I brought by two gallons of organic fruit compote I made to share and to teach people about how to use soft and very ripe fruit. Clara brought some apricot jam to share. Mike has become a star at the bread table. He brought some homemade hummus and then at the end of the stand put on a fabulous cooking demonstration of how to use bitter melon. For some reason we have been getting a lot of bitter melon left over from the Farmer’s Market and I think we only have a small percentage of our crowd that is familiar with cooking and eating it.

Mike brought a wok and also some cooked rice and showed us all how to prepare the melons by scraping out the inside and the seeds and stir frying it with onions, garlic, and ginger and his secret ingredient preserved black beans. He brought ornamental ginger leaves from his garden and made these beautiful wraps of rice and vegetables (later he made some with other vegetables like carrots and the yard long beans we had gotten from the market too). It was so elegant and simple, and I must admit though I haven’t been converted to bitter melon love, I overcame my fear of that vegetable. Though it tasted bitter it was ok. Knowing it must have healing properties made me feel even better eating it.

The Free Farm keeps on growing. We are still learning to be urban farmers and are trying to figure out how to have a continuous harvest every week. We just got a couple of loads of manure and some rock minerals, so the best thing we are doing now is making soil. out of barren land.  Also, Griff  is making some great compost and with the new signs that Hannah made,  our composting area looks terrific. Whenever I think we are almost finished creating the infrastructure I see new areas that can be worked on. It really helps having three summer interns not only for the Farm but the Stand and I have been thinking we should be lining up some replacements for them when they leave sometime in August. We also are continuing to explore the idea of making the farm not only a place that grows food for the poor and hungry, but a place to connect with the divine and the power of creation.

The Free Farm Stand got in the news several times last week. I posted the links on our right hand sidebar under Free Farm Stand in the Media. I haven’t included a link to Edible San Francisco magazine just because that publication somewhat turns me off with their focus on beautiful food that is priced so high that some people can’t afford it (http://ediblecommunities.com/sanfrancisco/index.php?/Issue-21/urban-agtivist-cultivating-an-urban-agroecology.html). In this recent issue they write about our friends Produce to the People and the Free Farm Stand gets mentioned as a “free food program”. I would only like to be known as that by a foundation that would want to give me money. We are a simple start-up group promoting the business of love and transformation through community sharing and caring. Or something hippy dippy and unpractical like that.

We have already distributed over half a ton of produce that was grown or gleaned hecka locally and this doesn’t include the hundreds of pounds of leftover produce we collect and distribute from the high end farmer’s markets. And now we have a farm which is a lot of fun and it is growing a lot of food for our project. I must admit I am feeling good about all this, but at the same time it is a lot of work and I wonder how sustainable it is, especially for me. Sometimes I am feeling like I am running on empty or running on low. It really takes a community to run a free project like this that is all volunteer run. That is why I am always so grateful for the great team of helpers we have, especially this summer. The dream is that some of us will eventually pool our incomes and resources and start living communally together. I think that is the best way to run service projects, modeled in part on Catholic Worker Communities or kibbutzes or just old fashion karma yoga communes or ashrams. I see the question of sustainability as a big one, especially in projects like gardens run by volunteers.  Right now the Permaculture project at  18^th and Rhode Island is a good example of a garden that could use a lot more attention, but it seems to lack a stable group of people keeping it going at its full potential.

We had a pretty good summer spread this week. It always seems to be the story that we often get in the hundreds of pounds from the farmer’s markets of the same thing we get in the handfuls from some of our gardens. This week it was peaches. One of the peach trees growing at 18^th and Rhode Island was loaded with peaches (this is the second year in the ground for the tree) and I picked some that were a little hard on Friday and by Sunday a few of them were already soft. It so happened that we had boxes and boxes of organic peaches and nectarines that we collected. While I am talking about fruit I must give a shout out that we need some people we can call last minute who can come and pick up left over fruit that is soft and that needs processing (cooking into compote or jam or juice or blended and made into frozen fruit Popsicle or sorbet). We also need canning jars and lids. This is no joke , some of us have maxed out the capacity of our freezers and refrigerators processing some of the leftover soft and mushy fruit from the stand, plus it is a bit of work. Though the work is worth the delicious reward and good fruit is not wasted.

I harvested the first trombone squash from Esperanza garden and a lot of runner beans from 18^th and Rhode Island and Treat Commons.  We also had a lot of zucchini from the Free Farm (and other gardens as well), plus the last of the collards for now, green beans, a handful of the most beautiful carrots, and more potatoes. We had boxes of cherry plums gleaned locally by Produce to the People and their two summer high school kids.  Griff brought by a grab bag of produce grown at Holy Innocents Church, including a most handsome cauliflower, Elizabeth brought peas and herbs from her garden,  Kevin brought some surplus garlic from a garden on Russian Hill (he said he got the original bulbs from our stand), and a neighbor brought a bag of lemons from Bernal Heights.

Our peaches

Susannah wearing bitter melon vine (I am actually not sure what this vegetable is)

The Free Farm is progressing and more and more of the infrastructure is getting finished. We can really use more manure and continue to look for a large truck that can pick up a load or two for us. The free compost we got from Recology I think is less desirable than the manure which seems to be more alive with microbial activity. We may have a slowdown in our next harvest while the new seedlings continue to grow.

I of course feel grateful that I had a lot of wonderful help running the stand while I was gone. We now have three summer interns and they are super helpful, especially dealing with all the summer produce that is coming in.

Our farm stand seems to have taken on a new incarnation. First we set up at noon and give out produce at 1pm. We have both a hecka local table and also a table with left-over from the fancy farmer’s markets. Yesterday we had 15lbs of green beans, kale, collards, onions, and lettuce from the farm. We harvested zucchini, runner beans, and ground cherries from the 18^th and Rhode Island garden and my backyard yielded a pound of baby lettuce mix from my lettuce lawn.  Produce to the People supplied us with about 93lbs of fruit, mostly small cherry plums. We also got a donation of cured olives that we put out the bread table (it looked like an olive bar with all the samples of olives), Susannah brought a pot full of homemade fruit compote that we put in small cups for people to sample, and Cynthia who works in the garden brought some of her homemade Kombucha drink (she has a business I think called Mission Culture). From 1pm until 2pm there was a continuous line for produce and then a lot of the produce was gone and there were few people left. Around 2:15pm the second load of produce arrived and it was like bringing the farmer’s market from Stonestown Mall to the Mission.  The quality of the produce is outstanding and there has been a lot of organic summer fruit. We tell people to line up as we put all the produce we can on the two tables (and this week I put boxes of things on the lawn because we ran out of table space).  At the end of the day the produce was mostly gone except for soft fruit  which Susannah took home to cook down for more compote. If there are any folks out there that want to make compote, jam, or pies to give away please keep in touch either by coming by at the end of the stand or contacting me.

While I was away most things at the farm went smoothly, though the bees swarmed and there seemed to be some emotions that were stirred up as well. I have been thinking about the work we do a lot and realize that we are more than just trying to make sure everyone has access to healthy local organic produce.More than trying to promote a local gardening movement, more than addressing the issue of global warming, or peak oil. More than educating people about making healthy food choices. More than encouraging people to share rather than buy, sell, or barter. We are working on our relationships and connections with people and our community. We are also working on our relationship or connection to the spirit within and without. In his Restorative Justice work Dominic Barter talks about what Restorative Justice is restoring. He says that what is restored “are connections within people, between people, and in community.”  So our work is similar. We are doing preventive maintenance work in a sense, learning to work and worship together to keep our connections going strong and deep.

Some of the beautiful harvest our volunteers picked went to the stand we set up at the farm.

Some new produce was on the Hecka local table this week. We started harvesting the potatoes at the farm and brought 42 pounds of the spuds. They looked beautiful. We also had green beans and some radishes from the farm. Of course we are still harvesting collards and the last of the lettuce lawn was cut and harvested. I brought garlic from the Secret Garden and some kale from Esperanza. I had about 2lbs of yellow zucchini from 18^th and Rhode Island garden. The Secret Garden and the Permaculture Garden are to me sad places to visit these days. The Secret Garden has been put on hold until Robert teaches his summer class there that lasts I think 6 weeks. Then I don’t know who will garden in the space. The 18^th and Rhode Island garden I have stopped working in and just go there to harvest, when there is something.

I don’t think I can repeat myself too much in this weekly blog how grateful I feel for all the people that make this project so great. We now have two new summer interns Jacob and Susannah and a third one will be coming on board soon at the Free Farm, and their help and positive spirit elevates me so much.

Someone recently sent me an email with a quote at the bottom. I liked it and thought I would share it:

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.
Rabindranath Tagore

This really sums it up where I am at these day.  I am happy just quietly working with those fellow karma yogis, feeding all serving all. At the end of my work day though usually exhausted I feel joyful. Like yesterday there was a ton of left-over soft and squished fruit. With two friends who were visiting from out of town and had just come back from the Gay Pride march, we cut up all the fruit for making jam. I was really running on empty, but I had such a great day at the stand, meeting all these great people, and giving a lot of food away to people in need, it gave me the energy to do a little more later in the evening.

I am going away to the Midwest for a week, but thankfully the stand will be open next Sunday July 4th. Also, the regular workdays at the farm will continue.

I love giving out fresh organic fruit and picking it is just as much fun.  Right now we are just entering fruit season big time around here. One of my favorite “fruits” is the avocado. There will always be a shortage of free avocados in this city until we plant more avocado trees, and they grow here pretty well, at least in the Mission (and I suspect other warm neighborhoods too).  That is true of other fruits as well, we just need more fruit trees in the city. We need to choose trees carefully and try to plant varieties of fruit that will grow here and choose cultivars that might be the best growing and tasting. Like the Haas avocado is a fantastic kind that I have grown in the Mission.

Planting fruit trees is not as easy as you would think. I have been working for over two years to get some fruit trees planted in the park where we set up the stand on Sundays. It is an underused blighted part of the park that gets full southern exposure and would be ideal to grow a row of fruit trees. We have a line of fruit trees in the garden adjacent to this land and five years after we planted them the trees look happy and healthy and are in their 3^rd season of producing fruit (though the two avocado trees we planted aren’t producing yet). What is stopping me from planting the trees is about $3,000 I need to raise to build a fence around the neglected land because Recreation and Park doesn’t want fruit trees in the parks. By putting the trees behind a fence we would be expanding the garden into the park, something that the bureaucracy can handle.

Almost as good as growing your own fruit is to pick fruit from a tree that really needs it and no one is doing it. This Sunday Produce to the People brought us pounds of oranges that were gleaned from a tree nearby and lemons.  Then a Steve a nearby neighbor brought us 20lbs of lemons that he got from his father who lives in Sonoma County.

Short of growing or gleaning fruit, being on the receiving end of left over organic fruit from the farmers market is the bomb. Our new connection to the Sunday’s Farmers Market behind Stonestown Mall, collected and delivered by 3 saintly sisters, is totally unbelievable. The selection and quality of the fruits and vegetables were fantastic; I think we all were blown away.

Actually the stand this week was amazing for the quality and quantity of produce, that included 11 boxes of hecka local produce grown and distributed. Right now most of the produce is coming from the Free Farm. I am a little sad that two of the gardens that have been supplying the stand with produce are in a funky state.  The Secret Garden won’t supply much produce until the youth summer program there gets underway and 18^th and Rhode Island has some things planted but we will just have to wait and see what we get.

There is often something new at the stand. This week we gave away t-shirts from a rescued activist t-shirt archives.

For those who haven’t gotten enough wood chip moving fun in their lives, like at Hayes Valley Farm, there are more opportunities to get involved in this activity. Both at the Free Farm and Treat Commons Community Garden will be getting chips to move (this Wednesday and Saturday at the Free Farm and this Friday at Treat Commons at 10am).

The Free Farm Stand and the Free Farm has a new summer volunteer/intern from the Metta Center for Non-violence in Berkeley named Jacob. I asked him if he would write for this blog to share his perspective with everyone. He wrote the last post and below are is his second report with my added comments in the comment section:

The natural ‘high’ and sense of amazement slowly began to subside throughout my second time volunteering at the free farm stand. Although the feelings of community and abundance remain core motivating factors for me, yesterday brought up some more questions about ‘free’ that I would like to explore here. I welcome any comments on my questions and dilemmas.

As I move through what is soon to become a routine, I seemed to notice (and Tree later confirmed) that we had even more food than the week before. Yet, significantly fewer people came by. I couldn’t help but feel mildly disappointed.

Why wasn’t there a line wrapping around the block this week? Did people not know that we were giving out fresh, semi-local, healthy fruit, veggies, herbs, and bread? Do the people who are most hungry feel comfortable coming to receive our gift to the community?

Over the past two weeks I have had a number of conversations, which have spoken to, but have come short of answering these questions…

Last week, a man was walking through the park and stopped at the table to ask a couple of what I am coming to notice as the standard questions about the farm stand—“So you are giving this food away for free?” and “where were these strawberries grown? And after he got his answers and was about to walk away. Before he did I asked if he wanted any of the food. He stopped and replied that he has a job and buys his own food. This comment seemed to contradict the aims of the stand. The word, or rather his concept of ‘free’ appeared colored his attitude towards the stand and viewed this food as a handout or charity.

This week a volunteer mentioned to me that some of her low-income neighbors told her that they knew about the stand, but won’t come for fear that their friends and neighbors would see them getting free food.  Hearing this saddened me.

After the stand was closed and packed up I sat down to briefly talk with a veteran volunteer at the stand. As we talked we recounted how our mutual friend and free farming regular, Pancho believes the Free Farm Stand is not about giving away free food—contrary to its name. Instead the giving and receiving of ‘gifts’ is the stand’s central practice.

Mid-week a bright friend of mine reminded me that it is easier to decline an offer than to accept a gift and to receive it. Like when I am offered some tea at someone else’s home. It brought to mind how I have grown up in a society which has installed within me a social calculator whose job it is to keep track of worth—receiving something without ‘payment’ produces a feeling of debt. (This is what corporations bank on when they give away ‘freebees’). And on the other side the social calculator is supposed to calculate the ‘profit’ when I give to make sure it is ‘worth’ my time.

Although, I know Free Farming is about giving the gift of food to everyone, I also understand that it is a project of social justice in which feeding the hungry is fundamental. Each of these stories offered thought-provoking and differing perspectives on what Free Farming means for our community. Yet in contrast to the theoretical paradoxes of the classroom, these perspectives actually serve to motivate me to continue to serve the free farm stand.

As an academic for the past three years studying peace and conflict, I have spent most hours of my day learning and writing about the roots of the problems of our day. So I would have no trouble writing an analytic essay about the free farm stand. But I won’t. I won’t and can’t because the five hours I spent with Tree and the free farm stand on Sunday wasn’t that kind of experience—it touched at something lectures, books, papers, or even blogs can’t.\

The first surprise of the day was that before the food had even arrived a line of community members had already started. Not just any line but a line of people who for the most part knew each other and Tree, and were ready to help us with getting the stand ready. As the tent was raised and the tables were set, the regular volunteers arrived and did everything that needed to be done. No boss, no bossing; just smiles and helping one another. Each volunteer made me feel like I belonged here. Then it began to occur to be that this stand at Parque Niños Unidos was indeed the meaning of community, manifested in the flesh (and earth).

It was so simple yet very revolutionary.

As the produce and bread found its way on to baskets on the tables and was ready to be given away, I looked up from my place behind the five varieties of lettuce and saw the line of human beings had grown to wrap half way around the block. In my mind this stand was no longer just a small operation for a few locals to get some good free food—this was a weekly ritual, a staple bringing together San Franciscans from all backgrounds to participate in the authenticity of giving and receiving food. And about an hour later a shipment of ripe and colorful fruit showed up. It was then, that the discourse of scarcity that seemed to govern the world my life decisions outside of the gates of the park, simply dissolved into nothingness. There was enough food for everyone there. Not to mention healthy food. And, if you can excuse the cliché, the food was for the soul. As I’m sure you already know, soul food can’t be bought or sold, it must be prepared and given.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand well that this stand in itself won’t solve the big problems of our time. But in fairness to the stand it doesn’t claim to. In any event, on my walk back to the 24^th Street BART station, I was reminded of the larger context of our local task at had. As I approached Mission, a woman looked me in the eye with sadness on her face and asked me for a couple dollars in order for a meal from McDonalds (which we stood in front of. My experience at the free farm stand just hours ago compelled me to stop and respond differently. I stopped, took a breath, opened my bag, and offered her the strawberries and cherries I took from the stand. To me, this seemed like what I needed to do. Yet she declined, insisting on a dollar hamburger.

No matter how much food we give or how many neighbors come to get some, at the end of the day the success of the stand is not measured inside the park, but on the sidewalk and in front of McDonalds. The task of the stand extends through the intersecting issues of the globalized industrial food system, health, local hunger, and the environment, not in solving but in trying out something different. A social interaction of giving not dominated by finance but by human beings caring for one another.

But we need more local grown flowers in our lives. We need the colors and the aroma of flowers in our home, on our tables, in our shelters, soup kitchens, and sacred spaces. Supporting sustainability of our smiles.  Food for the soul.  I was imagining what it would be like to show up at the Free Farm Stand with van full of hecka locally grown cut flowers to give away. The bees would love them too. And we can teach kids and adults flower arranging. At a MAPP event last Saturday at Treat Commons it seems the kids that attended are already skilled at that art and made there own flower arrangements.
Last week I began working with Jacob an intern or Mentee from the Metta Center for non-violence in Berkeley. He will be working with the Free Farm and the Free Farm Stand until August. On Wednesday Jacob came with about 12 other Mentees to help us on the farm. Fortunately we had plenty of work to do and I think all of us got really dirty. With 12 extra hands plus our regular helpers, we got so much done! A large pumpkin bed was created and planted, 20 cubic yards of compost was moved, and a lot of rubble was moved too. My friend Craig who runs a vegan taco truck business at Dolores Park took a number of hours off from his business to come to the Free Farm to feed us all. He got a donation of vegan cheese from Follow Your Heart and made grilled cheese sandwiches which were a big hit!  On Saturday we had a wonderful and hot workday.  We harvested 62.5lbs of produce and gave away some there (about 10-20lbs). Also, Christy brought some surplus vegetables from her garden (in the spirit of the Free Farm Stand).

The Free Farm Stand was another beautiful event. We had a lot of local grown produce and a number of neighbors and others brought surplus produce from their gardens. Talking about flowers, Pam brought by a bouquet of edible flowers from her garden and they looked fabulous. The flowers were a great addition to the lettuce she brought. Around 2pm or so another truck full of produce arrived from the farmer’s market behind the Stonestown Mall. We got everyone that was there to line up while we put the new produce on the table. It was really amazing all the wonderful fresh fruit we had including red raspberries, strawberries, cherries, and apricots. We also had an abundant plant table with many seedlings and mature plants to give away.

I sense the Free Farm Stand is a kind of spiritual ceremony and has a community of people who attend every Sunday. It seems like a joyous event that everyone gets into. This week we had mostly produce from the Free Farm (we picked about 84lbs of lettuce and greens and about 20lbs went to the farm stand at the farm). I did pick some garlic from the Permaculture Guild garden but I decided to let it dry before giving it out. A couple of neighbors came by with extra fava beans,  one neighbor brought a bag of very beautiful Meyer lemons, Pam came by with an assortment of things including lettuce and a bouquet of edible flowers. One woman dropped off some homemade hummus and a big jar of double fermented kombucha drink. We sort of run low on produce after an hour because of the line of people trailing down the block. Now, like I mentioned last week, a friend (and this time with her three sisters accompanying her) came by around 2pm with a truck load of leftover organic produce from the Stonestown Mall farmer’s market (which is about 25 farmers from Marin). She also picked up produce up from Trader Joe’s which I felt like I should take, including things that I think are far from local or organic or fresh.  So it seemed crazy to have all these packages of challenged green beans in plastic and Styrofoam sitting near fresh organic green beans from the market. At the end of the day though, everything was given away. Two other things happened at the stand that made me happy A friend named Jen came by and set up a table and  talked to people about getting a free soil test in their garden (she got a grant to test 100  gardens in several neighborhoods). also Antonio came by and talked to a handful of folks about gardening, mostly answering garden questionsThe Free Farm keeps evolving. Last week we seemed to have slightly smaller numbers of volunteers though we have been getting a lot done. We are still working on infrastructure, planting, harvesting, and working on special projects like building a house for the composting toilet (see our calendar for the June 19^th free workshop on building a composting toilet at the Free Farm). We are also trying to finish up the labyrinth and this Wednesday we will have twelve more volunteers from the Metta Center in Berkeley. We are getting a 20 yard load of compost and can use all hands to move the stuff. We are also still tinkering with setting up a small table with vegetables on it to give to people in the neighborhood and to volunteers. Last week we gave out about 20lbs of greens and lettuce. Last Sunday was the first week that Temple Emanu-El opened the farm for two hours and they got 14 volunteers. They plan to be there the first Sunday of the month (though they are skipping July 4^th).

Here is our new bulletin board that Page built and Case is standing in front of.We could really use some free paint, like primary colors that are bright

Also check out our calendar for the HomoHomestead Bike Tour including the Free Farm this Sunday at 3:30pm. They say they are planning on getting their hands dirty  so it should be a fun way to start a bike tour.

And here is a last minute news item. Check out the latest post by Case on our Free Farm website: http://tinyurl.com/24yscg5. I think it is really wonderful and is a great plug for Free.

The handsome blue/purple cabbages that we grew on the Free Farm were really the Carnival stars of the Free Farm Stand. Besides being a total miracle, everyone that saw them immediately sensed that something special was going on, and that somehow this impressed on folks that we were really farmers after all. I am utterly speechless as to how we grew such perfect things and I am looking forward to learn how they taste.  The fava beans too played a major role on the Free Farm Stand table/stage. I had picked about fifty pounds  of them (it took me hours) and a man came by with 10 more pounds of favas that he grew in his backyard (he said he had eaten about 20 pounds already).  We also had 58lbs of oranges from Stanford Glean and collards and lettuce from the farm. Cristina also brought by some onions and other things from some garden (the Secret Garden?). I brought some Meyer lemons from our backyard tree. At some point in the day Danny from Sour Flour showed up with about 18 loaves of warm whole wheat sour dough bread that he just baked to give out at the stand. What a beautiful treat! It was sort of crazy with all the Acme bread we had, but this bread was not only whole grain, fresh from the oven, and baked on 24th Street with love (how can you get more  local?). Plus the more Danny comes around people can find out that he teaches people how to bake their own bread and that is what we like the most…when the oil runs out, we will be growing our own grains and baking our own bread in cob solar ovens and breaking bread at the communal table.

We also had one of the most full plant  tables of all times. I have so many seedlings right now to give away and if anyone needs some starts they can contact me or come to the Free Farm on our workdays.

Here is the part I talk not about kings nor queens (though some may be) but saints in our midst. As I reported I had been contacted about the Stonestown Mall Farmer’s Market needing someone to pick up the leftover produce on Sundays. It turns out Angie knew another nurse at Tom Waddell public health clinic that lived near there and was already picking up the unsold food from Trader Joes on Sundays and offered to pick up the left over produce for us. She has been making treats for the patients in the women’s clinic she works in which everyone really appreciates. She’ll go through cases of challenged strawberries and make fruit cups with yogurt or make crouton snacks with the stale bread. She does this on her own time on top of her regular job.

So this week she made the first trip there and picked up a truck full of mostly local organic produce. She gave us some of her excess Trader Joe produce that included bananas that were neither local nor organic, but were very popular and more bread. She showed up around 2pm or so after we had run pretty low. Maybe it was because of Carnival that we had a steady stream of people coming throughout the day and we really had no produce left around 3pm. I have to confess that as much as I want to support growing our own produce I am still obsessed with giving away beautiful  organic produce from our local farmers at the end of their market day. When she showed up she told me they said “where have you been we have been waiting for someone to pick up our surplus”.

I see people like her or Danny as saints or angels that are everywhere working quietly, doing their special goodness in the world.  Not that all of us can’t become saints in our own way, it just takes being really passionate about something and supporting our passions by translating them into action.

It is wonderful to note that the Free Farm Stand and the Free Farm are generating a lot of excitement and that we are getting a lot of great volunteers.  A day doesn’t go by when I don’t feel appreciation for our volunteers that are keeping these projects growing and going. In a world that today is drowning in negative news at least we can make our own news positive and upbeat and hopeful. I am currently reading a inspiring library book called Jesus Freak by Sara Miles (who runs St. Gregory’s Food Pantry among other things). I picked it up because I was told by a friend that I was mentioned in the book. It turns out she is quite a story teller and though her facts are not quite correct, the spirit of what she says is right on.  She and I have had similar experiences in the world of food programs and I liked  reading her experiences of how to deal with problem people, be they volunteers or guests. What inspires me most about the book though is understanding her take on institutional religion, specifically Christianity and Jesus, something I have been distant from in my own life. The message of all religions and great teachers is pretty much the same and simple, and includes feeding, healing, forgiving (and the part I haven’t read yet raising the dead).

On Saturday at the Free Farm we started a small produce stand and gave away some of the produce grown there. About 16 pounds of cabbage, collards, and lettuce  were distributed, as well as oranges from Stanford Glean. One of the sweetest things that happened while I happen to be there is that old woman who lived in the building next door came by with a cabbage dish she had made. She said in broken English that she loved cabbage and that whenever she got more cabbage she could make more of this dish because it was quick and easy to make. She took the cabbage and collards we had given her and some carrots and cut them up and then poured boiling water of them to make them wilt. Then she added I think a little vinegar, sugar, and salt. It was pretty tasty.

Like I said above I really harvested the fava beans this week. One box came from 18th and Rhode Island and the other came from Esperanza Garden. It was great working in Esperanza again, a garden I stopped working in because I am just too spread out. Alana told me they could use some more regular volunteers to keep it open more often.

Next Saturday we are shortening the work day that will go until lunch and then we will close. A number of us want to attend Griff’s ordination to the Transitional Diaconate at Grace Cathedral at 2pm.  Griff has been missing from action the last two weeks or so because of his church work. We also miss Poncho who got invited to care take of a friend’s farm in Arizona for a month. He will also be doing some civil disobedience work there in protest of the horrible anti-immigrant  law they passed there. I am keeping him in my prayers.

It was also a dramatic Friday because the bees there had swarmed and it is truly a wonder to see the bees forming a ball around a queen hanging on a branch of a tree. What a magnificent thing.

After two hours on Potrero Hill I made it over to Treat Commons Community Garden. What a difference between the two sites in terms of physical design. A lot of food is grown in the boxes at the community garden and this year we are starting to pull together a good team of gardeners there to work in the common beds.

On Saturday the work day at the Free Farm was great, though I was pretty busy trying to make sure everyone had work to do. Three or four women harvested 80 lbs of collards, stir fry mix, baby gem lettuces, and lettuce lawn mix. The labyrinth is getting filled in with herbs and beans and our seedling operation is going full blast. We have grown a lot of seedlings, we also got a lot of seedlings by working with Jonathan and his Feel the Earth non-profit that held the Seeds on the Streets event last month, and Justin who teaches gardening at USF gave us some beautiful kale seedlings. Karla and Zach came by to pick up some of the seedlings for Zach’s backyard. Karla is helping organize a group of people that help people put gardens in their backyards. I think it is a terrific project because that is where a lot of great land is in the city to grow produce to feed ourselves and neighbors. If anyone needs seedlings come by our  farm on Saturdays and Wednesdays. Saturdays 10am-2pm or Wednesdays 10am-6:30pm (we for now have some volunteers who are keeping the farm open longer on Wednesdays during the summer). Talking about expanding hours, we are going to start working with Temple Emanu-El who ran Pea’h Garden for fifteen years in Home of Peace Cemetery in Colma, and they will be opening the farm one Sunday a month from 10am-noon starting June 6^th.

Pancho and Mike and Sara picked up some donated soil and then went out and picked up a load of manure, one of our greatest needs, since we are growing soil as much as food. They dropped off the manure after the fundraiser for Welcome that was held at the farm after the workday. I was busy picking up produce so missed the event, but heard that it went well.

Sunday was another beautiful sunny but windy day at the Free Farm Stand. With eight boxes of hecka local produce I was very pleased and as always I meet a lot of nice people and neighbors. One of the eight boxes of hecka local produce was filled with gigantic lemons that the beautiful Stanford Glean crew dropped off at the farm on Saturday.  One neighbor came by with 5lbs of produce from their garden. Antonio taught his last garden workshop in the series that have been happening at the stand and we look forward to another series in the future.

our one artichoke with a halo from 18th and Rhode Island garden…I don’t know who got it

As much as I am trying to promote food growing as a way to deal with hunger and food insecurity in our neighborhoods, I like the idea of rescuing local organic produce from the dumpster or compost. I also like giving away food to people that can use it.  Recently I was contacted about the year old farmers market in the Stonetown mall on Sundays that doesn’t have anyone picking up their produce at the end of the day.  I have been trying to find someone that can pick it up on a regular basis and bring it to the stand on Sundays (I think pick up time would be at 12:30pm). I think they have 25-35 vendors.  If there are any reliable people out there that could pick up this produce on Sundays please let me know. Also, I may be able to come up with a truck or vehicle if someone can pick up but doesn’t have a vehicle.

I have been keeping up with a lot of the free projects that are popping up everywhere. A lot of things are the pay what you can model or the gift economy style of free. Though I remain a hard core free person, it is inspiring to see more of these attempts at moving away form our current model of economics. Here is one example that is familiar to me because I have visited one of these stores in the midwest: http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=4125. I just this morning heard about a woman in the East Bay who is going to start a “gift economy tiffen service” delivering free vegetarian or vegan meals to people.  Are we back in the sixties?

This leads me to my latest manifesting efforts. I get restless with projects I start and often my mind starts to wander into daydreaming activities. I remember a song by Neil Young who sang ”if you follow every dream you may get lost”.  I do think about that, but still I dream and then I try to follow my dreams, like trying to catch up to a friend you haven’t seen for a while that is walking down the street ahead of you. My dreams are usually familiar to me. I am back to day dreaming about community and living with people communally. It is really the next step in sustainability and keeping our work going in the long haul. People need to learn to live together in community, share income, share common dreams and visions, share common service work, meditate and do yoga together. I imagine a day of hard work together with friends like we did on Saturday and instead of at the end of the day going off in different directions, going home together and sharing dinner with each other , sharing the great experiences we had together in the communal home setting. And maybe bringing home a stranger or a person that is in need of a meal or a place to crash for the night.  I am sensing this  dream of communal households rising up next to our city farms may be the next thing coming around the corner. Maybe as soon as the economy collapses further. Someone suggested to me that while we are building a greenhouse at the farm (another dream I am trying to manifest), we build a house connected to it to shelter the farmers who would live together communally and prayerfully and no-till the soil together.

Since I wasn’t at the stand on Sunday I don’t have a firsthand account, though I heard it went well. I do know we had a large amount of Hecka Local produce thanks mostly to the Free Farm (41lbs. of collards) and 18^th and Rhode Island (25lbs of fava beans, 6lbs of chard). We also had one pound of very beautiful purple green broccoli from the same garden.

Other produce arrived at the table including fresh picked greens from Treat Commons and a man named Howard brought by 45lbs of lemons from a neighbor’s tree and 5lbs of kale, chard, cilantro, and Asian greens grown at 27^th and Church. Stanford Glean brought leeks and cabbages. I also heard that Autumn, one of our regulars who often brings open containers of olives from the Farmer’s Market and who plays beautifully on the violin, brought by a massage chair and gave people massages! Also, Eduardo whom I met briefly at the Free Farm ran the plant table and this week we had a lot of plants and starts to give away.

Another historic event took place on Saturday at the Free Farm. A mini-free farm stand was set up on the sidewalk and approximately 40 pounds of lettuce and greens were given away to neighbors and volunteers. Also there were lemons from Stanford Glean. At this point we are still working out the details of the stand and how it works and whether it will be a weekly thing. I heard that about 20 people came by.

I missed the entire morning of the workday at the Free Farm because I was invited months ago to speak at AAscend (Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, Coalition for Education, Networking and Development). I enjoyed meeting that community of people and felt really comfortable sharing not only the work I am involved with, but some personal details of my life and my own uniqueness.

When I got to the Free Farm I met Sandy from Temple Emanu-el and some of the crew who used to work at the Pea’h Garden in the cemetery that grew food and gave it to the Food Bank. They are planning on opening the farm the first Sunday of the month from 10-noon.

Sandy brought with her Michael who is the executive director of the San Francisco Interfaith Council. Some of our farm crew had a wonderful conversation with them about how we can work together and not only feed those in need, but create a farm that also is a sanctuary without walls. I think we all believe that what makes our farm unique is that we are interested in not only making our cities more sustainable environmentally, but we emphasize making sure no one goes hungry and that all people have access to healthy, local, organic produce. We also want to build on the idea that the garden/farm is a place where people can go to heal and nurture themselves and be close to the power of creation, coming with whatever faith they carry with them. I was thinking that the Free Farm is a faith based operation. That we seem to run more on faith these days than anything else, like money for example. Faith that things will grow in this sandy soil, faith that volunteers will help us farm, faith that we can get the material things we need to make this farm work, like hoses,  drip pipe, dump trucks full of manure, sheds, or greenhouses, faith that we can all learn to work with each other, faith that we can all treat each other with compassion and love.

Molly a student who interviewed me on the phone a while back for her school project at Tufts just sent me her final report. It is titled is “From Factories to Fresh Food. Planning for Urban Agriculture in Somerville” ( http://ase.tufts.edu/UEP/Degrees/field_project_reports/2010/Team_5_Final_Report.pdf). It is rather long and well researched (137 pages) and if you can get to page 87 there is a “case study” of the Free Farm Stand. There are some errors, but it certainly does give one the idea that there is another ship our project is traveling on rather than the entrepreneurship of local organic produce. 

Here are two vegan recipes that Molly sent me:

Fava Beans, Lemon and Potato Soup.

I peel the beans to get the beans only. There are two shells.  You can probably eat the inner shell, too, but I just use the shelled beans – about 1 cup to 1.5 cups of beans. Here is a very detailed article on how to shell fava beans including the inner shell with good pictures: http://localfoods.about.com/od/preparationtips/ss/ShellingFavas_3.htm Put them in a large saucepan with three scallions, chopped; or one largish leek, chopped. Dice up one tablespoon of curly parsley or cilantro and add. Add about 2 tbs of olive oil and 1 tsp of mashed crushedgarlic. On a low heat, sauté these items stirring lightly and consistently, so as not to damage the beans. Sautee until the leek/onions have turned clear and the spices are thoroughly blended with the vegetables. Turn off heat. Add juice of one lemon. Cover and let stand. Wash and peel, if desired, 2 or 3 medium sized Yukon potatoes (these are my favorite and most flavorful small potato). Cut into one inch bite sized pieces. Add enough water or vegetable broth to cover the beans well. Add potatoes. Add a bit more liquid as needed. Heat again on a medium heat until simmering. Simmer soup for about 30 to 40 minutes, turn down and cook a bit longer, stirring occasionally to mix all the elements. Correct seasoning with salt and pepper. Remove from heat. Serve hot. You can add plain soy to hot soup for a ‘creamy’ version. Or yogurt or soy yogurt. Good with crackers or homemade bread or croutons.

Makes about 4 large servings.

*****

 Fava Bean Spread

1 cup or less of cooked fava beans, salted
One tablespoon of olive oil.
Lemon juice
Parsely chopped, fine.
Mash together. Add more of your favorite oil and more lemon to taste.
Eat on bread or crackers with diced onion or tomato, or fresh basil.
You could also put a bit of tahini in instead of oil, for a creamier result.

 Makes a bit more than one cup.

She also sent me some photos she had taken a while back. I like this one especially

Antonio led another fabulous garden workshop, this time about growing plants in the Brassica family, which included a hands-on demonstration of potting up broccoli. I relearned the importance of not handling the seedling that is being potted up by the stem which is very delicate and can be damaged. A friend of a friend of Pancho’s named Carlo came all the way up from Santa Cruz where he is finishing a Phd in agro ecology. He helped give out bread and translated the workshop into Spanish. I feel really happy that we are making the effort to reach out to all our neighbors especially the Hispanic community.  Having more people speaking Spanish to those who come by helps deepen the connection that people have with what is going on every week.

So it is funny, in some ways I feel I have achieved my goal that I set out upon when I started the Free Farm Stand two years ago: I wanted to be a real urban farmer and to see how much food that I could grow and give away in the city. I suppose before I retire (ha ha) and move unto some new fabulous project, I should figure out how to keep the production going (which involves better crop planning as farmers call it I think). And training others to carry others to carry on this work. I still dream of a community of like minded spiritual folks living together and running cool service projects together like this.  I do think it is the next step in this project of food justice and making cities sustainable.

In the meantime, the Free Farm Stand continues serving lots of people and it is really a blast being part of the group effort growing what we give away. It also seems like soon we will be distributing produce at the farm site, because already people are asking for produce over there and there is a lot of need.  In fact some produce was given away already. I think we will not have another Free Farm Stand, but at our visitor table have produce that is put out when we are there.

On Sunday I talked to a gardener friend that just returned from Illinois and she was telling me how much she missed the soil there: a deep dark fluffy loam. She got me excited just imagining what it is like and sad that mostly the majority of food grown there is feed corn and soybeans. Plus it is sad that that soil is rapidly being lost because of corporate agriculture and mono-cropping.  I can’t say I am feeling  much excitement with our soil yet. It is pure sand with some manure or compost mixed in. It doesn’t seem alive yet and it is far from black and loamy.  Things are growing well so that is encouraging. So if we can all be soil builders in our lifetime what a way to give back to mother earth.

Talking about soil on Tuesday night May 18th at 7:30pm the Hayes Valley Farm is having a fundraiser for their wheelbarrow fund and they are showing a movie called Dirt which I really want to see. It seems we all need wheelbarrows these days to move mulch and manure around, in our case we have a lot of wheelbarrows that have flat tires (we need tires or innertubes).  Unfortunately Hayes Valley doesn’t say no one turned away for lack of funds, how un-progressive, though maybe you aren’t supposed to invite people without money to a benefit to raise money. Here is the info: http://www.hayesvalleyfarm.com/activities/events-and-activities/details/52-farm-film-night-kick-off.html.

Yes I felt like I had achieved the status as a real farmer or more like a farm manager, as the food grown and harvested was really a group effort. I had over ten boxes of produce we had grown, a total of 119 1/4lbs of produce: 57lbs of greens, lettuce, and kohlrabi from the Free Farm and 32 lbs. of produce from 18^th and Rhode Island (chard and fava beans). 16lbs of favas from Treat Commons Community Garden ( those were grown in a space about 4” x 6’ approximately). It just so happened that I didn’t get much left over from the Farmer’s Markets, so the hecka local table saved the day. Though in reality we are getting people lined up down the sidewalk and we ran out of produce quickly. I mean 13 pounds of Red Bok Choy was about 14 heads and 7 pounds of lettuce is really only about 15 heads of lettuce.

We also had a great plant give away table with lots of seedlings. Antonio led another free garden workshop that unfortunately I was too busy to attend. I think he is going to keep leading these workshops all summer at the stand which makes me happy, because he is a great teacher and I want the Free Farm Stand to have an educational component as well as helping poor folks to get fresh organic produce.

It was a Heck Local weekend in general. The Free Farm and the stand is getting so much press recently. The latest thing was we were mentioned of both the Free Farm and Farm Stand on KQED TV. Here is the link: http://www.kqed.org/tv/programs/thisweek/. Stephanie, who has helped at both the stand and the farm, did a good job explaining what both projects are about (you can slide the slider forward if you want to skip most of the TV show).  At the bottom of the page you can click on the link about Food Runners and Urban Gardens to read more.

I hope this publicity inspires others to make some news themselves. Pancho sent me a beautiful blog from a friend of his: http://dosomethingbeautifulthebook.wordpress.com/. I love the name of this blog, “Do Something Beautiful”.  I read about the author’s visit to Neem Karoli Baba’s ashram in Kainchi, India where the teacher’s only teaching was: Love All. Serve All. Feed All.  I second that and would like to adopt it as our message to the world too.

I thought about calling the blog this week Everyone’s Doing It! I went to the Arbor Day celebration at the Growing Home Garden (Project Homeless Connect Garden) on Friday and it was quite the scene. A truck load of trees being given away, some being planted by a lot of teens, and free strawberries and Dryer frozen fruit bars. There was a lot of excitement in the air and that is when it struck me that the whole town has gotten a sort of mass hysteria right now about gardening and growing things like trees and gardens. I think this is great and maybe this “farming in the city revolution” will have some lasting effect on making cities more green and sustainable.

I just uploaded Antonio’s  cartoon about Seed Saving that I like a lot…check it out on the sidebar under cartoons.

Also, the Free Farm is zooming forward. With the weather warming up we may need more help to water things…we do have some drip set up, but we have a lot of seedlings that need a lot of water  and other  areas that need special attention. This Wednesday I think a bunch of kids are coming to help out and there is so much to do.

Right now I am harvesting less produce from 18^th and Rhode Island, but we are now getting some produce from the Free Farm, after only a few months!  It is really challenging farming year round here in the Bay Area and finding volunteers that have the sustaining power to show up over a long period of time. An example is that the Hayes Valley Farm is attracting tons of volunteers right now, but we are haven’t attracted a regular crew at the Permaculture  18^th and Rhode Island site.  So as the chard is pulled up there isn’t anything else ready to harvest there except tons of fava beans…I should be bringing more next week.

On the Hecka Local Table this week: 6lbs of collards and 1½ lbs from the Free Farm, chocolate mint,  fava beans  from 18^th and Rhode Island and from Stanford garden, 39lbs of oranges from Stanford Glean, 8lbs of lemons from a neighbor, 4lbs of surplus herbs and greens (?) from Dearborn Community Garden, and a lot of chard from 18^th and Rhode Island and Treat Commons Community Garden. I unfortunately didn’t meet the person that dropped off the Dearborn Produce, but I really appreciated it. There was also a neighbor who brought by rosemary and mint from their garden.  This is really the core of what the Free Farm Stand is all about, sharing the surplus. I must admit I harvested some unpicked lettuces in a private bed in Treat Commons, because I hate to see produce get planted and then it grows and no one harvests it. I know this is a common occurrence in community gardens. This week we also had a great garden table with a lot of seedlings and information. Susannah who works with Stanford Glean came by and stayed at the table the whole time. I think we will be seeing more of her this summer and she might be an intern with this project. Hooray! Again we had another fabulous mini-garden workshop and I was really happy with the turn out. Antonio and Pancho make a great team and Antonio is one of the best garden teachers around.  I always come away from learning something new from him.

The Free Farm is really taking off. There are weekly updates at http://thefreefarm.org/ . One of our  challenges right now is the need for funds to create the infrastructure of the farm (none of us involved really like having to raise money, we’d rather be farming and feeding the masses). We are also in need of volunteers who want to learn how to lead others in projects at the farm . We get a lot of people showing up to help, but we need help directing everyone (we might want to get funds to pay a small stipend to another coordinator. Right now all of us are volunteers).  Another big challenge is to stay small and beautiful…to stay personal not institutional. There was talk at the blessing ceremony two weeks ago of making the farm a church without walls. So that is another challenge we face. A church or temple in my mind is a place where people gather together in community to share the energy of love and compassion that flows through everything. To experience that divine force together.  To learn to work together to serve those in need.

In terms of raising funds to create the infrastructure,  I’m seeing how comfortable I am with new approaches besides writing grants (our last grant got rejected).  A new volunteer named Brian told me he is playing music Wednesday at a new space on Valencia called Viracoha. He offered to donate the money to the Free Farm and I said go for it. So his gig turned into a small benefit concert  this week. I was really impressed with the poster his friend Morgan created. I would go just to hear him play and the fact that he is one of sweetest men I have met recently. He even agreed to put no one turned away on his poster.

I still believe in the idea of manifesting things. Here is the list of this we are trying to manifest:

A big tool shed, 3 long (100’) hoses in good shape, a lot of wheelbarrow tires or inner tubes, someone with a huge truck that could pick up a lot manure for us,  outdoor plywood to build a stage, used redwood or cedar lumber to build a bulletin board and a welcoming area and other things, a big greenhouse or a carpenter to build a beautiful greenhouse out of old glass windows, someone to sew a large fabric tent to put on our canopy structure.

Both the Free Farm and the Free Farm Stand continue to get a lot of media attention. I read a biography of Raymond Chandler who shared with me a similar feeling about publicity: “I’m strictly the background type.”   Despite wanting to just quietly do our work , I think  growing food in the city has really caught on and so we are in the limelight. Besides a write up in last week’s  Bay Guardian, KQED was out filming the farm last week and a we will be mentioned in a show for Earth Day about farms in urban areas at 8pm this coming Friday.

The Secret Garden which has always held a special place in my heart is going through some big changes. Clara who has been the garden anchor there for  maybe a year is not going to continue in that role for right now. She was the perfect person for that job and brought a lot of beautiful energy into that place. I am really sad she is not going to be around and I don’t know about the others who came because of her bringing them in.. Good Samaritan who owns the land just got a large grant (I don’t know how much) and is planing on rebuilding the stage, build a new shed, and make other improvements. They also hired Robert who has been connected with that garden for a long time to be the coordinator though I am not sure how much he will be actually gardening or be there once the physical improvements are made. He told me he will be in the garden on Sundays at 11am until about 2pm and that he is looking for people that want to garden there or learn how to garden and who will help grow food for the stand.  His contact information is if you want to help.

Since the Free Farm is such a big focus of the work I am doing it seems to be getting more attention here on this web site. On Saturday at the farm we had a Blessing Ceremony that I really enjoyed. Pastor Dan from St. Paulus Church, the owners of the property that are “loaning” us the land, led the ceremony which also included the Bishop from the Lutheran Church and the Bishop from the Episcopal Church. It was beautiful that the clergy were all on board the idea that out of the ashes of the burned down church is rising a church without walls…a garden to feed the poor. Different people took turns blessing different parts of the farm and when it came to Pancho blessing the murals he explained that he was giving a secular blessing and that the space was all about spreading the love. After he spoke I think Pastor Dan was really moved and gave Pancho a big hug.

our potato crop
Whenever I stop what I am doing and just look around, I feel amazed that things are not only growing (I must admit I had my doubts when I realized the soil here is all sand), but most of the plants look like they are doing well.  On top of that we had our first  harvest for the  Free Farm Stand ( 61/2 lbs of lettuces and  2 ½ lbs lettuce mix (from the lettuce lawn).

The hecka local table looked hecka cool this week with all the pretty lettuces on it and other produce brought by friends and neighbors. Besides the produce from the Free Farm we had another harvest of chard from the 18th and Rhode Island garden and a nice basket of greens from the Secret Garden, including some very handsome carrots  This week I have started getting a little more produce brought and shared by neighbors. Robyn brought a dozen big heads of lettuce from a student farm at UC Davis. Another friend brought some left over Eatwell Farm CSA produce and some extra kale and chard from her backyard. Towards the end Nosrat who lives around the corner brought a handful beautiful of red rocoto peppers.  A nearby neighbor brought some beautiful Meyer lemons (9 ½ lbs) and Page brought about 100lbs of oranges from Stanford Glean (check out this great article about that project here: http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/04/19/fruits-of-their-labor/).  One of the highlights for me at the stand this week was Antonio and Pancho held the first in a series of garden workshops. It was supposed to start at 1:30pm and I think it did, but a lot of people left by the time it started. But after a little chaos of trying to get people together it finally happened and there was a good turn out that included a good mix of people. Antonio and mostly Pancho translated in Spanish and the talk seemed to hold everyone’s attention. He mostly spoke about the basics of growing fruit here and there was also a tour of the fruit trees in the garden. People got to see some of my efforts at grafting, including my plum that I put on an apricot.

To me this was almost the perfect kind of Farm Stand Day. Bringing some produce grown just for the stand, neighbors bringing some extra produce to share, a lot of surplus left over from the farmer’s markets, some seedlings to give away, and a workshop on how to grow some of your own food.

I had to leave early to go to a reunion of the Angels of Light which was happening in Hayes Valley (that is a whole story in itself). It was so great that I had volunteers to keep the stand open for a little while longer and then close up. Pancho wrote me this “at the very end, a woman came with her partner and her kid and she gave us in small box (a couple of lbs): at the bottom fava beans, on top rosemary, then beautiful green mint decorated with orange edible flowers. Everything was super fresh.” How beautiful, this is not the gift economy, but the gift society we are creating.

On the way to the reunion event I stopped by the Growing  Home CommunityGarden on Octavia and ran into my friend Renata who is involved there. This garden is a good example of how you can turn an empty space into a very utilitarian garden space for growing lots of food. I love that we are creating these food centered spaces, like something out of Havana (here is a good website that has a good video on Havana Homegrown: http://kitchengardeners.org/blogs/roger-doiron/havana-homegrown. This video is even better and really inspirational: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRz34Dee7XY). I also like the  focus of the garden on building community and addressing the issues of malnutrition, homelessness, and  unemployment.  I wish we could also create spaces a little further away from car traffic and make spaces with less rectangles and squares and more jungle, places that really provide those who are stressed out a place to get away from the urban harshness we are always bombarded with. The Free Farm has that challenge too.

I then dropped by the Hayes Valley Farm and David Cody graciously led me on a quick tour. Since I have been there last I was totally impressed with all the work that has gone on there. My initial impression was rolling hills of mulch and manure covering the “poison ivy” that took over the place (and fields of fava beans interspersed with donated lettuce seedlings from Green Gulch). Plus the huge number of volunteers all breaking their backs hauling tons of mulch everywhere and hacking away at ivy was impressive. I saw a few of the same volunteers that work at the free farm helping out there. It’s like China and the army of peasants  creating the Green Revolution. I was very envious of their piles of manure from Mar Vista stables and understood why we are having a hard time getting any from them right now.

Wow what a weekend of being immersed in the new sixties movement focused on growing local food.  The article linked above to Havana Homegrown said something that I think is right on target: “Unlike with most people in the US and other wealthy countries, growing their own and doing it organically were not really choices for Cubans: they did it to survive.”  I wonder if for us (though most of us don’t know it) if our spiritual survival is linked to growing food and building community. If we really have a choice or not to continue on the status quo lifestyle most of us live.  Or if we must today drop into a new way of living that is more in harmony with not only nature, but with the power of creation.

All in all it was a pretty fabulous day. Lauren or should I call her Saint Lauren, agreed to help pick up food once a month on Saturday afternoons and  I gave her a lesson in running the stand. Just having her and all the others around took a big weight off my shoulders.  All the volunteers were saints  as we were really cold and wet out there. Even the people coming out for produce and bread were pretty saintly braving the rain.  We had a large amount of chard from 18^th and Rhode Island and a fair amount of produce from the farmer’s markets. We started early because it wouldn’t have made sense for people to stand in line in that weather and we had a continuous crowd of people for about an hour or so and we ended around 2pm. One of the first people who showed up early was a man who said he was unemployed and the food was really helpful to him.

I was disappointed that we had to cancel our first garden workshop because of the downpour. Hopefully the series will begin next week. Check the calendar for more information.

The day before we had another very productive workday at the Free Farm.  Angie my wife came by for the first time to see what is going on and I gave her a tour. We looked at everything and I felt amazed myself at all the work we have accomplished in such a short time. The vegetables are growing well under the row cover plastic, the potatoes are looking good in the trenches, the labyrinth is now finished and just needs more herb plants, we have a good selection of trees planted, eight kinds of scarlet runners are up, strawberries forming, sunflowers growing on the hillside, lots of seedlings started, pathways mulched, we have an outdoor dining room of sorts made with stumps from the huge tree cut down in my backyard, some drip irrigation installed, some big planters set up on top on the concrete next to the fence and planted with passion fruit, hops, and chayote, and we starting putting together a free funky small greenhouse.

This Saturday we also had our real first harvest (not just a tasting for volunteers) and Hedi and another volunteer named Sean  (who is writing a story on the FF for an online magazine called the Bold Italic) cut some baby lettuce from our lettuce lawn and picked lettuces (2 pounds and 3.6 pounds of lettuces). The food went to Welcome’s Saturday Community Dinners that happen the 2^nd and 4^th Saturday of the month. The guests are community members who are homeless or formerly homeless, seniors, and low income folk.

There is just so much going on with urban gardening at the moment it really spins me around. So many projects I have been promoting are starting to grow like seeds planted. I am excited to get emails that Esperanza garden is starting to blossom and may get some new garden stewards. Then there is Karla, Jay, and Sean, and others who have been taking the project of promoting more backyard kitchen gardens and running with the idea. I just got an email with photos from an event Saturday where they started working on a new garden called Finny Farm: We moved 20 yards of mulch, across the street, down steps, through a narrow breezeway and across 20 feet of cardboard, AND we did it in 5 hours.” Check out these photos of before and after: http://picasaweb.google.com/karlanjohnson/FinnyFarmBefore?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/karlanjohnson/FinneyFarmWorkdayApril102010?feat=directlink

They even have a website with more info on the garden: http://finnyfarm.org/Finny_Farm/Welcome.html

I do think this was real super human effort. If anyone wants to help install gardens in people’s backyards and/or possibly be an anchor or garden steward or mentor I think you can join their Google group and join in the fun and at the same time help make San Francisco more food secure:  http://groups.google.com/group/afg-permablitz-sf. I know a number of people interested in help in turning their backyards into gardens.

On Saturday another great event happened and this one I think was pretty revolutionary. My friend Jonathan and his non-profit Feel the Earth, who directed the fabulous Pea’h garden before it was shut down for a rest this year, put on the “Seeds on Streets” event which was a big success.  His idea which I thought was brilliant, was to take seed planting to the sidewalk, to get passersby engaged in learning the art of seed planting. Then grow the seeds and give them away to schools and community groups and gardens to increase food production in the city. The Free Farm Stand and the Free Farm is working with him to help make this happen. Specifically, the Free Farm is going to help grow the seedlings until they are ready to distribute.  Jonathan told me people were coming by all day and from the photos it seems a lot of children were engaged in the fun. Not only were a lot of flats planted (42 flats or I think something like over 2,000 potential seedlings), but his great team gave away individual six packs to people and I think seeds as well. Check out these pictures to see the event in all it’s glory: http://picasaweb.google.com/victoryfarmer2/SeedsOnStreets?feat=directlink#slideshow/5458941637576556610.

Right now we are going to do the best we can with growing these flats with the minimum of greenhouse space (and a funky one at that). I just got a letter saying we were turned down for a grant for building a greenhouse at the Free Farm so we need to work on writing more grants or think of another fundraising strategy. Last week I read on craigslist about 10 greenhouse frames 20’ x 100’ being sold for $500 that need plastic and to be disassembled and then moved. I was thinking if my friends at Little City Gardens can raise $17,199.9 on Kickstarter.com ($1,000 less than what I tried to get for a grant) maybe we can do the same thing. My problem is that I am not a sales person and am not sure if I could sell what my crazy ideas as well as they do. I have always relied more on faith and the universe providing.

Brooke and  Caitlyn do challenge my free philosophy and there latest blog entry is pretty interesting and I am still tossing this around in my head ( http://www.littlecitygardens.com/) . I enjoyed reading about how they are celebrating the land use contract they just signed for a new market-garden site. And then when you scroll down their defense of capitalism is pretty interesting. “Why a business and not a non-profit?” I just watched the new movie by Michael Moore called Capitalism: A Love Affair which is also got me thinking. How about this for making a business growing food in the city:  “Michael Score, president of Hantz Farms, has begun purchasing abandoned properties around the city in order to turn them into commercial farming operations. His company plans to obtain as much as 5,000 acres within the city limits to use for growing organic vegetables for food and trees and shrubs for biofuels. His company has other agricultural projects that it wishes to pursue as well. With his initial investment of $30 million just two years ago, Hantz hopes to take full advantage of the fertile land within the city. Next spring, his company plans to begin growing crops on 30 acres of land and has plans in the works for other nearby parcels.” I found this on the Permaculture-sf listserve.

Yes us new diggers/old free faith based hippies/old farmers have our ideas competing with the new generation of people seeking a “right livelihood” and nothing is new under the sun. The Free Farm Stand won’t sell out, but hopefully the funds will rain down like manna someday so we can build greenhouses, get a couple of new hoses, a few wheelbarrows with flat free tires, a dump truck or two of manure, more expensive salad mix seeds, some parts for our bike cart collection,a shed to store our tools in,  a compost tea brewer, gloves for our volunteers hands, and a few more  hand tools. Or how about thinking big and us winning the lottery or getting a Stanford size endowment (a sugar mama?) to acquire a building to run an urban kibbutz with farm and a communal house of hospitality and home of love and prayer?

Oh on Wednesday April 14th Tamara will be leading a free yoga class at 9am at the farm…I am not sure if we know how this will happen, but bring a mat. It should be yoga that anyone can do or at least under stretched me. And then on Saturday April 17th from 10am-11am we will have a blessing ceremony at the Free Farm. The ceremony will have Christian elements since St. Paulus Church will be involved, the folks who  own the site and are letting us grow food there. But all blessings are welcome and encouraged.

The Free Farm is growing quickly. One thing is that we are getting a lot of attention from the media. As a result of the Chronicle article I was approached by KTVU_TV 2  was asked to be interviewed. I suggested they interview Megan with Welcome who we are partnering with and she was on tv for 6 minutes (I didn’t see the show). Then last Friday a woman from San Francisco State came out Saturday to film the farm for a tv show they produce called State of Events. Then on Sunday she came out in the rain to shoot the Free Farm Stand. I fortunately didn’t have to be interviewed at all though she probably caught me on camera. Aside from news attention, we the free farm is getting a lot of attention of volunteers and neighbors. We had also had a visit by Girls Inc. in Oakland and about 13 8^th grade girls who volunteered. We are getting so much done and we actually had our first harvest of baby lettuce from our lettuce lawn (3 weeks since we planted it) and we also picked a head of lettuce from our first planting of lettuce. We served the lettuce at our volunteer lunch. I really think the row cover is speeding up the growth of the plants. Case started planting carrots and the labyrinth is getting finished and planted. Next Saturday we hope to build a temporary greenhouse to help us grow a lot of seedlings to distribute. We are working with Jonathan and his group Feel the Earth who is planning an event next Sunday and is planning to plant fifty flats of seedlings to distribute all over the city. (see the calendar for more information).

Here is a link I got off the permaculture guild listserve that I enjoyed withan update of the White House Garden. If they can grow a garden during winter we can too: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/26/exclusive-video-white-house-garden-survives-thrives-in-washing/

One result of getting publicity is that I met online a couple in Oregon who have the same philosophy as me in terms of sharing and the idea of living communally and sharing all things in common. I was very inspired seeing their web site for one of their projects called the Sharing Garden http://www.alpinegarden.blogspot.com/. Here is what they say: “We think of these as ‘Stone Soup’ Gardens, where if each of us shares a little of what we have, whether that’s time or materials, that we’ll be able to grow food for all of us to enjoy.” And here is more: “These community gardens are unique. They are each one large plot instead of many separate ones. All labor and materials are donated. The harvest is for people in our community who are in need and any surplus is donated to the Monroe Food Bank.” This would be my ideal for community gardens of the future and what I originally envisioned for Treat Commons Community Garden of which I am the current garden coordinator. I had to compromise when we created that garden and we do have some private beds. Their website also has a lot of practical garden information, like about planting potatoes or carrots. They also have a website that has a beautiful vision and again is something I am interested in, but in an urban center like San Francisco: http://www.fullcirclefamily.blogspot.com/.  “We are a ‘community of two’ adults, living in rural Oregon near Corvallis. Our vision is to demonstrate the efficacy of sharing ‘all things common’ in a sustainable manner. It is our intention to create a rural, communal village and eventually to have other branches – both urban and rural. We are looking for partners to assist us; either through donations, or by moving to this area and living together to expand the demonstration.”

I do think this is the time to shake things up in the way we live our lives and move towards a society of sharing and caring for the earth and for all it’s inhabitants: trees, plants, animals, people.

What I have been thinking about is how do we attract volunteers that are in it for the long haul for the all the local food growing projects currently going on? How can we get people, most who have to work at jobs in the unreal world to pay rent, to make a long term commitment to one garden project?  I feel like there have been some real successes like at the Secret Garden where Clara and others have really kept that garden going and made it a vibrant space that serves the community. I just got these photos from last week where kids from Cesar Chavez Elementary School after shool program visited the  Secret Garden.

Projects like the Hayes Valley Farm, which is on the high profile radar these days, get a lot of volunteers on their workdays, but recently the number of volunteers at 18^th and Rhode Island Sts. has gone down.

One factor that may be key is that it is easier for people to work on something that is nearby or in their neighborhood.  I have been a big advocate of working as locally as possible. For example, for years I lived in a community that grew a garden open to the public that was right next door to our house. Two years ago I started the Free Farm Stand and looked for gardens in my neighborhood to grow food for the stand in. The best opportunity that  came up sometime later was on a vacant lot on Potrero Hill, and I started working with the Permaculture Guild in developing the site into a garden. Now I am even further from my neighborhood at the Free Farm not too far from Civic Center in a neighborhood that seems to need a free farm stand as much as the Mission. I am starting to find it challenging and puzzling how to stay local myself and self-sustaining. It feels like I am walking a thin line these days in terms of keeping it all together.

The Free Farm Stand days continue to be wonderful though and I continue to appreciate all the wonderful souls that pass through like rays of sunshine warming me up. by On Saturday Pancho brought to the Free Farm three fabulous women from a community of 35 in Sebastopol. Two of them and Pancho stayed the night at our place and helped load the van and then helped at the stand all day. We both shared some of our experiences living in community and I am convinced that is our next step in this evolution, like I mentioned before in a previous post, the formation of an Urban Kibbutz/Farm. Other new volunteers showed up like Corinne and mMingpha (he told us it means Blissfully Breathing, Absolutely Healing). I love it when I meet angels like him who have turned away from earning money and are trying to live like a pilgrim.

It was also a very colorful stand this week, Pam from her City College garden brought by beautiful edible flowers for a salad, a handful of lavender flowers that we gave to as many people as possible, some red mustard, miner’s or Indian lettuce, and some colorful chard. Cristina brought by flowers too. Zach brought by some nice greens also to add to the record amount I harvested from 18^th and Rhode Island. Clara brought some greens from the Secret Garden, and we had two people picking stuff from Treat Commons Community Garden next door to the stand. We also had a nice selection of Meyer lemons from neighbors. I was excited that I actually got it together to grow a bucket of sprouts this week. Look for my upcoming cartoon on growing sprouts. I am still working on how to post it.

A number of people were looking for starts and I feel bad that I have been way behind in growing them. A greenhouse will help and we are working on getting one set up soon. I would love to encourage anyone who has a source for local flowers to please bring some to share next Sunday.

Our work day at the Free Farm was another great thing. I was so busy I didn’t even pull out my camera to try to capture some of the magic happening there. It may take some time before we grow good soil there let alone produce. Some of the lettuces are growing big and this small amount of rain will help nourish the other greens in the ground. We have been covering the planted beds with row covers which should also help. A few more fruit trees were planted as well as some other perennials.  I think this Wednesday a bunch of kids from Children’s Day School will show up (unless it is raining) and we have a newly finished bed to plant carrots. We also have some newly donated large planter boxes that we can fill with soil and I have some things to plant in them that can grow against the fence.

appreciation for all the people that are volunteer,  and appreciation for all the people who come by to “shop” at the Free Farm Stand

appreciation for sunny days and sunny gardens to work in

appreciation for neighbors dropping off lemons to share with other neighbors,appreciation for friends from Stanford who keep bringing fruit from their campus, this week 35lbs of oranges, appreciation for Little City Farms for dropping off 8 1/2lbs of their beautiful Mission grown organic lettuce mix, appreciation for all the gardens contributing to the sharing going on at the stand, including Potrero del Sol and Shelly and Steve for 2 1/2lbs of mustard greens, the SPROUTs childrens garden bringing by 12.5 lbs of greens,  the Mission Library Garden with 1.5lbsd of cilantro, the Dearbon Garden bringing us 2 1/2 lbs of produce, appreciation for farmers sharing their surplus at the end of the day and Food Runners who pick it up and distribute it, appreciation for gifts that people bring to share with strangers, like the cloth bags gleaned from “healthy food trade shows” with crazy logos like “hippy chips” that Jaclyn her business Tofutown dropped off, appreciation for friends like Clara who sent over some homemade vegan argula pesto to share, it  that tasted so great on the free Acme bread that we had so much of that I also appreciate and a beautiful basket of the most wonderful greens from the Secret Garden  (the bearer of the garden gifts I also appreciate Bernadette in her lovely colorful dress)

yes I appreciate arugula even though we have way too much of it or just not enough arugula pesto…I have been throwing arugula in everything I cook, but just at the end, besides adding it to salads

appreciation for seeds and seed donations and people planting seeds…the seeds themselves though get a special pat on the back for germinating and performing the miracle of growing into food for us to eat

appreciation for all the new people and neighbors I meet in the work I do: like Wiley the mechanic who has dropped by the Free Farm and has been farming with us. He likes to fix things…he has been tackling our funky wheelbarrows with tools that a volunteer had in her car (and this week he said he would bring more tools for fixing tires).

appreciation for the good work there is to do, appreciation for the good challenges life presents us with, appreciation for those who put up with my difficultness at times

appreciation for all that is beautiful including the batch of new children growing up around us. I was watching them Sunday in the community garden appreciating their curiosity and wonder and enthusiasm for everything

Other news besides me feeling appreciative is that I got a call today from a friend that I was written up in the Chronicle. I was interviewed on Wednesday at the Free Farm and a photographer was out  Sunday. I have such mixed feelings about granting interviews especially with corporate media and this is the first time I have really plunged into that world of publicity. The main thing that came to mind when I thought about it is that we got the Permaculture Guild farm on Potrero Hill because of an inspiring article about Kevin in the Chronicle talking about all the vacant lots that could be used for growing food. Just now channel 2 T.V. called me and wants to talk to me because of the article. Wow this is crazy! A friend whom I hadn’t seen in a year dropped by and made me feel better by saying they would interview the farm if it could talk, so I am speaking for it. But the farm and the Free Farm and the Free Farm Stand do talk and I don’t really have to say much if people just show up and check things out.

I must say the Free Farm is pretty exciting for me and every week we make great leaps forward. We are finding some large chunks of rubble under the ground that are challenging to move out of our beds. Potatoes have been planted, our lettuce mix bed has sprouted, we have several more beds left to plant, seedlings are growing happily in our makeshift green house, a trellis has been made over the steps and we are almost ready to plant my collection of Scarlett Runner Beans, and the labyrinth is shaping up. We also have an amazing work crew and neighbors showing up to help, some bringing their kitchen scraps for our compost, some bringing seeds for us to plant.  I also love the variety of people that show up every week. On Saturday I met a woman who lives in the big white apartment building down the street that wants to put a bee hive at the space. She has taken care of silk worms before and wants to work with bees. She is also an amazing artist who gave me her card made on handmade paper and printed on a Vandercock letterpress that she knows how to use.

free bicycle rims to make hoops for reemay cloth

excatvating rubble & double digging

With all the hub bub around the new Free Farm, I need to mention that the farm at 18th and Rhode Island is still producing most of the produce for our hecka local table and is still looking great. The photos Cristina took this Friday workday are amazing in capturing the colors there. And now we have two hives and bees living on site. I am getting there earlier now at 9am unitl 11am and David is there at 11am if you want to join us. Then I hoof it over to Treat Commons another great garden that needs attention too.

Also, I have been talking to Jonathan my Victory Farmer friend who ran the fabulous Pe’ah Garden in the Colma Cemetery that closed down (I don’t have the story yet on why). He also has his own non-profit called Feel the Earth. He is planning an event that sounds pretty wild:

“All foot traffic people will have this civic engagement opportunity between 11am -3pm on Sunday April 11, 2010 in Noe Vally -San Francisco, CA at a chosen parking metered spot on 24th street between noe and castro. This free interactive educational urban agriculture zone is designed for foot traffic streetwalkers to participate in a FEEL THE EARTH victory farmer “Art of Seeding” workshop.” Our community goal is using public space to support local urban food production. For 4 hours we will gather 200 participants to work together to seed at least 50 flats of warm seasonal vegetables/herbs to then be distributed throughout the needs for various local community gardens that are established in San Francisco.”

He needs a greenhouse to grow the flats of seeds in so we have been talking about building a temporary green house at the farm. If anyone has ideas on how to do this cheaply and quickly or has materials that may help like rolls of plastic or pvc pipe please contact us asap. You can also contact him directly here victoryfarmer.blogspot.com and check out his other projects that you can get involved in.

I am also looking for help on Thursday afternoon taking apart a tree house and moving it to the Free Farm to be used for a secret purpose. Call me for more information.

On a happier note last Tuesday night I attended the first Urban Agriculture meeting organized by my friend Antonio plus help from Ellen and  Elizabeth and hosted by ReBar (I think the Mission Rocks with groups like this fermenting grand schemes right down the street from me). The event really got me pumped up with excitement. There were two main themes “How can we work better together and how do we better interact with the City”. I thought the most fun part was seeing all the people from different groups who are doing great Urban Agriculture work…there must have been forty or more people there representing many groups: “Permaculture Guild representatives, , Greywater Guerillas, member of San Francisco Parks Trust, Architect that helps design farms, staff from Garden for the Environment, chefs, Oakland Soul, Urban farm coordinator at Treasure Island, Free Farm representatives,  Produce to the People, Alemany Farm, Secret Garden/Free Farm Stand, Welcome,  Little City Gardens, Enviro journalist, Feel the Earth, Eco-SF, Kitchen Table Talks, Hayes Valley Farm, SF Glean, teen garden program at Mission library, , Urban Forrest Coordinator, Cultivate SF, School Lunch Program, Department of public health, San Francisco “Bee cause”,  Green House Project—Portola neighborhood, Center for Food Safety, Growing Home Community Garden,  rooftop garden at Glide, Raise the Roof, Urban Sprouts, professor of community studies at UCSC (writing book on the history of SLUG), Community Alliance for Family Farms (CAFF). At least three breakout groups got together: Policy work, movement building/organization, backyard gardens promotion, and Food Justice. I went to the Backyard Kitchen Gardens meeting where we talked about what is needed to get more backyards in the city growing food. It seems like the backyards represent a lot of potential growing space and we looked into what we need to make a backyard garden movement move forward. I also popped into the Urban Ag policy discussion where there was a lot of talk about what is needed in term of city policies that will further our goal of having move food grown here. Someone suggested we try to get Park and Recreation to grow more food in its parks. Kevin talked  about Toronto’s Community Orchards. Like community gardens but fruit orchards on public land like parks. That is what I am trying to do next to the Treat Commons Community Garden. I didn’t make it to the Food Justice discussion group, but it sounded like it was mostly attended by people connected with the Free Farm Stand and the Free Farm. It will be interesting to see where things go from here. Another meeting is being planned with the idea of seeing if we have some goals we can prioritize.

The Free Farm Stand went by so fast. I decide to help only a little bit at the beginning setting up the table. I decided to give out seeds and some Stinging Nettle Plants that I dug up.  The amount of produce in total was skimpy though I brought 20 pounds of mostly greens from Rhode Island garden. There were also some snap peas that I harvested.  The Secret Garden  harvested 3.6lbs of produce for the stand. Steve and Shelly brought by a lot of produce from their plot at Potrero del Sol Garden and a few others brought some produce to share. I totally missed the person who brought tea and shared it with people.  We were done giving away most produce by 2pm.

I realized that I really need an apprentice manager to learn how to run the stand without me. Everything for the most part worked out, but some things I would have done differently. Also, there was a lot of bread left in the van that I brought out after the stand was taken down and I stayed for a short while longer and gave most of it away…the rest wound up at Food Not Bombs.

The “Garden Table” went really well though there was one unfortunate incident. I had a lot of seed to give away. I had the packets on the table with envelopes so there would be seeds for everyone. I had almost 1/2lb of broccoli seed that I wanted to share with everyone, but some guy came by and while I was helping his friend get some seed he walked off with the whole package, perhaps enough to plant a whole field. I wonder what he was thinking?

Our last Free Farm workday which was pretty awesome. More beds got dug and planted, including uncovering another huge piece of rubble. Lauren started working on the irrigation and also set up a temporary pee station tent. It is especially exciting the connections we are making with our neighbors. Some woman brought by seeds to share and Wiley another neighbor came by to help. I also met two women from the Catherdral Hill Neighborhood Association who are excited about what we are doing and may provide some help to our project.