Month: September 2012

Just a quickie update on the Free Farm Stand. Things are going great,  recently every Sunday has been gorgeous and the sunny weather has been a treat. It also seems to bring the crowds out. Unfortunately the last two weeks we have had so little produce to share, though the second shift we have been loaded with fruit. I have been able to bring some seedlings, this week cabbage, and they are very popular. I talked to one Latino man who loves taking the seedlings and he said he grows them for his grand daughter so she can have the experience of growing a garden. He doesn’t get a lot of produce to eat from his tiny garden, I think he grows things in containers, but he really enjoys growing the plants we supply. This is the real goal of the Free Farm Stand is getting people to grow some of their own produce.

The Free Farm is winding down in terms of what we can bring to the stand right now. We are bringing the last of the summer crops like tomatoes and peppers and squash. I also brought some of the beautiful perennial sunflowers that I so much enjoy.

How local can we get…Ross and I harvested chestnuts I planted in  1982 on 23rd St. a block from the Stand.

 I noticed a friend of mine wrote on her blog about her chestnut harvest in NE Georgia: http://madhupamaypop.com/2012/09/07/chestnuts-winter-is-near-fall-is-here/. Our chestnuts look somewhat  the same  because hers are Chinese Chestnuts while ours has some Chinese heritage in them.

October 1st is World Meatless Lunch Day http://worldmeatlesslunch.org/. “For the first time, there will be a global movement where all people shall join together on one “virtual table” to see whether they can find a better alternative to meat during lunch break on October 1, 2012.” I wonder how many people know that the Free Farm Stand promotes a vegan diet, though some weeks we get bread or pizza from Arizimendi  Bakery that is not vegan.

Here is some good news for the Free Farm Stand, because we were told we could not give out tastes of homemade jam or honey because they were not processed in a code kitchen: California Homemade Food Act, AB 1616, SIGNED by the Governor! http://www.theselc.org/cottage-food-laws/. As part of a growing movement to localize food systems and stimulate small-scale food production, SELC proposed that the State of California allow for the sale of certain homemade food products, namely: baked goods (but with no cream or meat fillings), jams and jellies, granola and other dry cereal, popcorn, waffle cones, nut mixes, chocolate covered non-perishables (such as nuts and dried fruit), roasted coffee, dried herbs, dried tea, dried fruit, honey and candy. You can read more about the bill that was just signed into law here.”

Our Sunday I heard from Ryan that Kezar Gardens got another eviction notice. I had been there for the Be-in and it was the first time I had seen the garden. It is really beautiful and I don’t understand why the garden has to move  out (or for that matter why does the recycling center have to move out too?). Is San Francisco supposed to be “green” and supports recycling and gardens. Does it matter who uses the garden or recycling center, isn’t it all good? I guess we need to keep an ear open in case they really go ahead with the eviction, I have a feeling there will be non-violent love warriors there try to stop it.

 

The pictures Mike took of yesterdays Free Farm Stand could be mistaken for pictures from the Heirloom Expo that I attended last week. Our tables are always like a display from an exhibit and this week the  we had some diverse Hecka Local produce from the farm and other hecka local sources. Our mysterious neighbor whom I haven’t met yet, called me again with more rocoto peppers from her garden

 

Art grew some extra kale in his garden plot in Potrero del Sol garden and brought it by. I really appreciated the vegetables because we got so little left-overs from the farmer’s markets. It was so fresh and was fresher than the vegetables we got on Saturday.

Kimberly brought some produce from the Secret Garden, including cosmos flowers that I didn’t recognize.

It was a nice day though we had less produce than usual for the first half. We had so much fruit the second half I wound up taking it home and am now trying to find people to use it.  On sunny days like we have been having the larger crowds and though we usually have nothing left, people can on take so much fruit.

A week or so ago I got an email from Liz with the folks on the Yes on 37 campaign trying to get GMO food labeled and they wanted to set up a table next to our Free Farm Stand. I told her that our stand avoids endorsing political campaigns though I liked fighting for people having the right to know what is in their food. I suggested they set up on a blanket on the lawn so it wasn’t part of the Free Farm Stand. So they came out this Sunday with literature in both Spanish and English which I appreciated and I got a cute button that says GMO Free Farmer. I have a lot of mixed feelings participating in the voting process because of all the money that goes into the ballot fight. Even with this issue I know it is David and Goliath fighting companies like Monsanto or Dow that  are really evil, but one also has to be fair and see that questionable doctors like Joseph Mercola are putting in tons of money also ($1.1 million I read) in the Yes campaign. Trying to getting GMO labeling passed in the legislature apparently hasn’t been successful, so people feel like they have to put this to vote.

When it comes down to it, the best thing one can do is grow some of your own food and saving some of your own seed. We can’t change the world with these kind of actions, but we can move in the right direction on a small scale and I think that is the best we can do.

Here are some pictures from the Heirloom Expo. It was a fabulous event, though I am not into the what I call hype about heirlooms. Heirlooms are great that you can save the seed because they are not hybrids and they are the precious germplasm that we need to keep alive to preserve genetic diversity. Heirlooms though need to be grown and bred and new varieties need to be developed. That is their beauty , but a lot of companies are selling heirlooms like they should be the same varieties you grow again and again without saving your own seed from them and without tinkering with the variety by breeding it.

There was also a lot of commercialism at the event, a lot of folks trying to sell you the best garden amendments like compost or rock dust, etc. When I went around the vendors I had to focus on what I was looking for, like seeds and garlic.

There were also a lot of inspiring speakers and I learned much about apples, root crops, “the father of perennial agriculture in the West”, Felix Gillet (check out this article http://www.bioneers.org/programs/food-farming-1/articles-interviews/treasure-of-the-sierra-foothills-a-cornucopia-of-heritage-fruit-and-nut-trees-discovered-and-preserved), about a better approach to living with bees,  and I learned from Gary Nabhan the “Terroir-ist Manifesto” which I will reprint some of it at the end.

A Terroir-ist’s Manifesto for Eating in Place Jan 22, 2007   (http://garynabhan.com/i/archives/501)

Know where your food has come from
through knowing those who produced it for you,
from farmer to forager, rancher or fisher
to earthworms building a deeper, richer soil,
to the heirloom vegetable, the nitrogen-fixing legume,
the pollinator, the heritage breed of livestock,
& the sourdough culture rising in your flour…

Know where your food has come from
by ascertaining the health & wealth
of those who picked & processed it,
by the fertility of the soil that is left
in the patch where it once grew,
by the traces of pesticides
found in the birds & the bees there.
Know whether the bays & shoals
where your shrimp & fish once swam
were left richer or poorer than before
you & your kin ate from them.

Know where your food comes from
by the richness of stories told around the table
recalling all that was harvested nearby
during the years that came before you,
when your predecessors & ancestors,
roamed the same woods & neighborhoods
where you & yours now roam.
Know them by the songs sung to praise them,
by the handmade tools kept to harvest them,
by the rites & feasts held to celebrate them,
by the laughter let loose to show them our affection.

Know where your foods come from
by the patience displayed while putting them up ,
while peeling, skinning, coring or gutting them,
while pit-roasting, poaching or fermenting them,
while canning, salting or smoking them,
while arranging them on a plate for our eyes to behold.
Know where your food comes from
by the slow savoring of each and every morsel,
by letting their fragrances lodge in your memory
reminding you of just exactly where you were the very day
that you became blessed by each of their distinctive flavors.
When you know where your food comes from
you can give something back to those lands & waters,
that rural culture, that migrant harvester,
curer, smoker, poacher, roaster or vinyer.
You can give something back to that soil,
something fecund & fleeting like compost
or something lasting & legal like protection.
We, as humans, have not been given
roots as obvious as those of plants.
The surest way we have to lodge ourselves
within this blessed earth is by knowing
where our food comes from.

Gary Paul Nabhan, January 2007

Last week I it really dawned on me that something is happening and I sort of know what it is. There is an evolutionary consciousness that is  spreading, it is the idea  of getting away from money, call it free, call it gift economy, call it no moola, call it no transactions, call it getting away from economics or capitalism, call it spreading  love energy or the generous vibe, or call it sharing the abundance or sharing from abundance. The Free Farm Stand grew into existence not out of some lonely idea I had, but more like a beautiful light bulb that exploded and sent light everywhere. That light  is in everything but has been covered up with dust and time. People have been over the many million of years been uncovering that light  and letting it shine again and it becomes brighter and brighter every generation.

Here are some examples I have discovered recently of projects that are spreading these ideas:

From Edible East Bay: http://www.ediblecommunities.com/eastbay/fall-2012/uncommon-exchange.htm…”serving up a radical idea of food sharing”. This guy Doug Reil who is in El Cerrito has started a Garden to Table project which is an experiment in an alternative economy. He collects surplus produce from local neighbors and then gives them to local restaurants.It actually is hard for me to understand this effort. Here is what the article says: “Giving produce to local restaurants may seem like a surprising choice when so many people don’t have fresh food to eat. But Reil is not just donating food; he’s arguing for a profound shift in our society, from a competitive model to a cooperative one. This is the heart of sustainability, he says, adding that it’s also a response to real future challenges. Although his focus is on highlighting a new type of local economy, he also has plans for donating produce to food banks and for building partnerships with school and community gardens.”

Here is a produce donation program called GIFT (Give it Fresh) in Hawaii.http://www.kaimukihawaii.com/calendar/3597.html where shoppers can buy some extra produce at their Farmer’s Market and give it to their program to give to people in need. They have also started collecting donations of produce from farmers at the end of the day like us.

I love this site and I just wrote them and got a reply…http://www.nomoola.com. Under the section on gardens they talk about their inspiration from the Diggers and their experience planting fruit trees (specifically papaya) on public land without permission (this project was also in Hawaii).  It is a pretty interesting and bold story (though rather long). What they write here is exactly what happened to our Free Farm Stand…it was deemed criminal to give away produce in the public space…also I had to get permission to plant the trees we did or ours would have been pulled up too:

“…For those without private homes, or reliable, secure access to food, or for those performing activities prohibited in public for other sets of reasons, the ‘public space’ becomes a zone of criminality. Like us, the planters of prohibited papaya seedlings, all such ‘trespassers’ can be charged with being a nuisance to ‘the public,’ thereby eradicating them from this supposedly all-encompassing category and making them legitimate targets for state coercive force.”

They also have a nifty seed sharing station that they build and I was thinking the Free Farm Stand could use one…they have plans for their version online though we need to have a more mobile version (they just sent me a design they built for the project above). Any carpenters out there or good scavengers that can help set up a small seed station in English and Spanish?

Also locally I have been in touch with Rob Joyce who is one of the co-founders of the Please Touch Gardens. It is a beautiful garden that I just visited on 165 Grove Street (at Van Ness) next to the Public Health Departmet building ( entrance located on Lech Waleesa). It is open on Wednesdays right now and is a joy to visit. We talked about our similar philosophy of not selling produce. One of the guidelines of the Please Touch Garden is “to share from abundance whenever reasonable.” He sent me this nice piece he wrote that is also published on his website, http://www.enjoyro.com/. It is called Beyond Transctions : “When perpetuating the paradigm of scarcity and consumption, the individual asks two questions: What do I want? What do I have to transact? The transaction is the constant intravenous drip of poison, continually asking: Am I getting the proper return for what I am relinquishing? Scarcity is at the core of this perverse economic management of resources, for it is scarcity, whether perceived or real, that creates value in this paradigm. Simply changing the currency, as many alternate economies propose, does nothing to eradicate the underlying perversity that the transaction perpetuates…imagine a paradigm driven by these two questions: What do I have to give?  What is available?  This paradigm shift does not require the absence of scarcity, or a fundamental abundance of anything. It simply requires the individual to ask different questions”.

We got mentioned in the recent Bay Guardian (http://www.sfbg.com/2012/08/28/jesus-free-food) in an article about secular places that share free food. Yael Chanoff the reporter  got it pretty accurate this time about our program (I got a chance to edit the copy about us)….She is  the same reporter who wrote the article about San Francisco losing it’s urban farms that I mentioned last week and was very gracious to correct the mistakes she made writing about the Free Farm. The only thing I would change about what she wrote is that I don’t consider the Free Farm a secular organization. I know what she meant is that she was focusing on groups that are not churches sharing food.  The table that we put food on is as holy as the table at the Last Supper…it is a symbol and a prayer for abundance and the sharing of that wealth with our brothers and sisters/neighbors.

It was another abundant day at the Stand on Sunday and there was some nice sharing going on. A neighbor called me and had  6lbs of rocoto peppers for us…she found them too hot to eat!  We have been growing them at the farm and though I don’t eat them either, I love growing this perennial pepper, plus all the other ones we grow. In general peppers are one of the most beautiful vegetables to grow and I was in glee with our selection this week. Also Antonio brought some beautiful pepino dulce fruit from his garden (4lbs) plus we had some from the farm. This is another perennial that I love to grow, it is also very handsome, and I love the way it tastes. I plan to start propagating this plant soon and according to Antonio it should be easy. We also had some more delicious kale from the School Farm. Did I mention more tomatoes?

Trombone squash from Treat Commons garden plus a round zucchini

this man brought a pie for the volunteers made

with fruit from last week…alas I did’t eat any because it wasn’t vegan….

how many people know we are promoting a plant based diet?

Tillie took Mike place as picnic master…I was so busy I didn’t see what she served…

I know there was some jam from the fruit overload last week

Here  is a sweet email I got from my friend Alex that I wanted to share (I think it fits in with the topic about the evolution of consciousness). This is an truly amazing example of our evolution story:

“below is an article about research that found out that the spicy flavors in wild mustards work to keep insects off.
funny how we assume that a plant’s “purpose” is how it tastes to US.
like they’re “God’s gift to man” not living things in their own right.
it seems their flavor is just one part of what they are and just a parsimonious & convenient route to survival.
“survival” after all is just a word that means “life beyond” or “life over”, life beyond the call of duty or beyond the
the limits.
in religion you pay to get into heaven with your behavior.
in life you live and slowly you start to live on and on.
heaven is full of obedient humans not wild mustards.
there’s a good chance wild mustards are humans who escaped from heaven.”

among the flowers we gave away was a perennial sunflower from the Midwest

Helianthus laetiflorus “Showy Sunflower”