How could a Free Farm Stand day be more beautiful?
How could we ever have such a great crew of volunteers helping out?
On Saturday at the Free Farm and Sunday at the Free Farm Stand we had over twenty students from Stanford. Most of the students were taking the class listed below by started by one of our core people Page:
EESS 105: Food and Community: New Visions for a Sustainable Future (EARTHSYS 105)
Service and research focused on providing healthy and environmentally friendly food for the under served in our community. Hands-on collaboration with the Stanford Glean student group, the Stanford Community Garden, and San Francisco nonprofits. Coverage of the broad spectrum from garden development to food dispersal to the needy. Design and implementation of projects that address an aspect of food and social justice, such as urban farming in low-income communities and sustainable food networks for the elderly. Service Learning Course (certified by Haas Center).
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 3-5 | Repeatable for credit | Grading: Satisfactory/No Credit
There were a few extra students that came along for the ride, literally, to check us out. It is exciting to me to see young and old people getting exciting about the kind of work we do and the community we are building. It is truly subversive to direct the rich resources at Stanford to serve the poor and to turn academia and the center of learning on it’s head. The Free Farm Stand and Free Farm is providing participants a chance to experience real life higher learning which is equally as valuable as the learning that is going on in universities.
Another highlight of the day was when Maureen (who helps collects the surplus farmers market produce on our second shift and brings it to the stand) brought by some bags for the customers that she sewed together using recycled pant leg cloth. And the neighbor who brought some surplus tomatoes from his garden.
How could we have a better selection of fall harvested fruits and vegetables?
Pumpkins (Christy brought some from her garden to supplement our ornamental pumpkins), huge winter squash, green beans, tomatoes, pomegrantes, late figs, and apples and pears. The apples gleaned by Produce to the People came from a school in the Bayview that had six trees that were not getting picked and I heard the garden too needed attention. Pretty sad. I harvested a big oyster mushroom from the FARM next to the California College of Arts and Crafts. That garden on Hooper Street now has some beautifully designed beds and a couple of seats made from a wood pallet.
The beautiful green, brown, and red pears also came from the amazing Lauren and her roommate who drove up to Clear Lake and picked an orchard with 800-1000 pear trees and came back with 70 boxes of fruit. She said they only made a small dent in picking pears up there and it would be great if we could find a driver with a vehicle that could go up and harvest more. There is also an apple orchard up by Tahoe that can be harvested. What an abundant place we live in! Stanford Glean provided figs, apples, and pomegranates!
How could we have a more powerful 10-10-10 power day?
Our Sunchoke cooking demo didn’t quite take off (we will try again next week perhaps), but we did get a photo of the Sunchokes laid out to spell 350 in honor of the global 350.org climate change day. And the Sunchokes we harvested from Esperanza garden were very popular.
We also had a visit of 40 bicyclists on a tour visiting different gardens and food projects in the city and I spoke to them for ten minutes or so (using a megaphone for the first time…it felt like I was rallying in the masses). I only hope that with all that the talking I have been doing recently explaining what we are doing I can find people that want to help us run our programs. I would love to take a break more often.
Last Thursday we had our community meeting to discuss my proposal to plant 8 fruit trees in Parque Niños Unidos and basically extend the existing community garden into an underutilized space and create a mini orchard. I must admit that there seemed to be a shortage of permie type people showing up, but I did get a fair turnout of people that support the idea and expressed it at the meeting. Unfortunately this project would have easily sailed forward (I had a number of people send in letters of support and the previous Sunday we had gathered 144 signatures of people supporting the project) had it not been for the handful of people who didn’t support the idea. Most of the objections had to do with taking away the open space where the trees would go if a fence were erected. However, Park and Recreation people that were at the meeting said there was no requirement that there be a fence around the area. The biggest problem with this going forward is the the Lower 24th St. Neighborhood Association sent a letter to Park and Recreation opposing the project. Here is some of what their letter said:
we feel this project is a worthy cause but in the wrong location. With shortage in
open space in the neighborhood, we feel this park should focus on maintaining the park for the youth in the area. Safety for the kids and families should be number one priority and fruit trees could become a hazard for small children if not maintained properly. A small
child could pick fruit (with seed) from the ground and swallow and create issues of liability for the city.
Another woman from that group and who also is part of our community garden had these objections:
I have never been in favor of expanding the community garden because it would reduce the open space used by small kids to run around and play.
… some have expressed concern about flies and odors from the fruit on the ground. There is also a good possibility that fallen fruit could attract more rodents that already can be found in and around the compost bins.
She also claimed at the meeting that in the early days of the garden when we had a low fence the garden was trashed and that kids picked tomatoes and broke windows in the neighborhood.
It is amazing how so many people are afraid of trees and see them as a hazard (either to kids or neighborhoods where criminals could lurk behind them and kids could climb them). Recently I spoke to a friend from the Czech Republic who told me that one of her fondest childhood memories was going to a public park where they had cherry trees planted and she would climb the cherry tree and eat cherries. Our modern playground lack these climbing trees because of fear of lawsuits and liability and codes. And I am not even suggesting planting trees that could be climbed.
Fortunately at the meeting a number of non-obstructionist people spoke and thought that open space and planting fruit trees were not incompatible. Now I have been invited to a meeting with the two big opposition people and Recreation and Park to review the public comments and figure out the next steps. They said that people who were too shy to speak at the meeting could send in their comments. If anyone that couldn’t make it to the meeting and hasn’t already sent in a letter of support wanted to write them that may be helpful (especially addressing the issue of open space and also the safety of kids and the neighborhood). I think Park and Recreation needs to see there are way more people that support this project than those who think it should be somewhere else and who believe that the open space can be preserved by either having no fence or a low fence. Please send me a copy of any support letters that are sent.
MARVIN YEE, Landscape Architect
Capital Improvement Division
Recreation and Park Department
marvin.yee@sfgov.org
Eric.Andersen@sfgov.org
Here are some recent photos from our Free Farm: