Treespired

I decided to write something short this week about the Free Farm Stand so I can get it out tonight.  I am also going to do a double header by writing a short blog over at http://thefreefarm.org/. If there is anything that most stands out in my mind about the Stand this week is that I continually meet people who tell me this is their first visit and that they really appreciate our efforts. Like the universe it seems our little Free Farm stand is continually expanding. I know my gratitude and isnspiration is also continually expanding for all the people that come and all the people that volunteer or bring something to share. This week a new friend came to the Free Farm with two bags of lemons to share at the Stand and Bilkis brought lemons and oranges she picked from trees in Marin.

We got a lot of fava beans from 18th and Rhode Island garden, the first amount of produce harvested from there in a long while. When I went over there the other day to pick up the harvested beans, I was inspired to see all the trees growing there so happily. The thing is that we planted those fruit and almond trees in 2009 and now they are looking so good and starting to bear fruit and nuts. This high density fruit tree planting is what I copied in the park fruit tree planting last week, growing fruit trees more like bush/tree hybrids. Next week we may have at the stand some avocados from the trees from the garden I helped plant more than 25 years ago and it was also exciting to see that the newly planted avocado trees there were doing well and one tree (the Lamb Haas) has two avocados. The other tree (Sir Prize) doesn’t have fruit yet, but some bud wood I might cut next Friday and then on Saturday I might start budding the trees in our greenhouse that I grew from seed.

I also brought some surplus favas from my shady garden. It is amazing that those plants will grow in almost total shade and eventually produce fava beans. I planted those in November or December and harvested them the other day, so that is about 5 months or more to get beans. What a miracle! There was so much produce this week, the van was totally filled mostly with fresh left-over produce from the farmer’s market! Is summer here already? We also gave away the rest of our summer seedlings, but hopefully we will have more to give away in the weeks to come

I am looking forward to checking out my friend Antonio’s new movie In Search of Good Food. …a tour of “California’s Emerging Sustainable Food System. It is a double feature with the film the Greenhorns. Thursday and Friday May 19^th and May 20^th 6-10pm at Recology 900 7^th St. cross Street Berry.

The Free Farm Stand could really use a person with a good eye for art that has a camera to take photos for weekly writings here. Alas, this week I misplaced our camera and didn’t take any photos. Blogs without art can get pretty boring! Talking about photographers and art and a person with a great eye, I have been enjoying the 2,000 photos of trees (and bushes) my friend Bob downloaded onto  my computer. You can see them or download them on his artSharing site here: http://plantpersonalities.com/share.html. Can you tell by  now that I just love trees and the miracle they are?  Bob told me these are all trees and bushes that  connected with him in some way and that is why he photographed them. And while talking about trees, here is another link a friend sent me who know this man Jack Gescheidt who started the TreeSpirit Project (http://www.treespiritproject.com/Mission.html ). Jack captures fantabulous photos of amazing trees with naked people in them. He sells his prints and donates some of the profits to non-profit environmental groups. Finally  talking about naked people, unfortunately  (or fortunately) I just missed getting an email on Saturday, our workday at the Free Farm, telling methat it was World Naked Gardening Day http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43018053/ns/today-today_people/.