I could have titled this week’s blog with a bad pun like “the beet goes on”. It is true though that it feels like we are on auto-pilot and each Sunday’s Free Farm Stand follows the next and the produce comes and goes. It is another summer and what is truly a miracle each week seems like the ordinary. Boxes and boxes of fresh mostly organic vegetables collected from the local farmer’s markets. This week our free farm contributed one box of vegetables, there was a box of locally harvested plums, and some really beautiful kale grown by one of our regular volunteers. I also harvested kale from the Esperanza Garden. Later at the end of the day a friend brought by some surplus artichokes and fava beans that he grew in the outer Mission. We also had a lot of seedlings including some odd things like magenta lamb quarters and sunberry seedlings. Not only is the produce truly a gift, but we are blessed with so many helpful hands and sweet “customers”.
local plums
magenta lambs quarters
So in our lives we can be up to our knees in blessings and yet not recognize it, because our days become routine. I personally have to take time out and step back and be thankful.
This Saturday there is an event that is all the buzz of the local food growing people and is attracts my interest (I will be at our farm that day with some guests): Roots to Fruits: Tasting our Shared Fruiture. It is on Saturday, July 23 · 10:00am – 4:00pm and is 555 Portola Drive at School of the Arts (SOTA) Enter via O’Shaughnessy Drive. Pam Pierce my favorite garden teacher who often contributes produce to our stand will be speaking about our microclimates here and there will be a fruit tasting (it costs $4) and other activities. Also Dr. John Preece, of the Wolfskill Germplasm Repository, Discusses ‘Why A Germ Bank for Fruit and Nut Crops are Important in Our Food System. More buzz heere http://www.facebook.com/rootstofruitsSF?sk=events#!/event.php?eid=110183875738805
One thing that I can’t help commenting on is that the idea of sharing something is becoming synonymous with selling something. In reading something posted on the permaculture listserve recently about this event it said: “Got plums? Come and celebrate our inspiring web of community resiliency by selling what you grow. Growing it locally, producing it locally, sharing it locally. We will collectively lower our carbon footprint and offer a place where supply meets demand, by providing a new kind of marketplace for farmers and foodies.”
I believe sharing is sharing not selling. I would like to believe that sharing is gift giving. I also feel strongly that since the earth is a common treasury, fruit is a gift and should be shared with all. It just seems so backwards to encourage people to sell what they grow, as if capitalism is so groovy and that the system we got going right now is great, if only it could be friendlier and home grown. Also, I really hope I am not a foodie and that the Free Farm Stand is not a Foodies Paradise.
Here is a public event not related to anything doing with the Free Farm Stand, except that I met Josh a long while back when he came from Aprovecho to San Francisco: One Million Voices for Shane and Josh: International call-in blitz!! Monday, July 25 at 8:00am – July 29 at 5:00pm One Million Voices for Shane and Josh: International call-in blitz on the Iranian Interest Section in Washington D.C. from July 25th-29th. CALL EVERYDAY! (202) 965-4990 Using Google voice is free if you get a number. More info here: http://twoyearsistoolong.wordpress.com/
