Wow this is the 10th year of the Free Farm Stand and we are still giving out beautiful, local, organic produce every Sunday! I am now in the garden one block away on Sundays and the regular crew has been running it with love without my being there which is so fantastic. I am so grateful to have others step up and keep our wonderful program going strong. Here are two photos , one is of Ms. Yu a wonderful long time helper and the other is Winter, a young long time helper. Also there is a poster by Barbara May another fabulous volunteer who sadly passed away early this year.
Laura our terrific coordinator of the Stand these days asked me to post this request for help:
BE A VOLUNTEER OR RECRUIT ONE!
Love and volunteers power the Free Farm Stand. We need your support to continue to build community through the sharing and growing of beautiful, organic produce. Volunteer with us!
Possible tasks:
- Setting up veggies, serving veggies, and cleaning up at the Stand on Sundays.
- Harvesting produce from Alemany Farm on Fridays.
- Gardening on Tuesdays and Sundays at the All in Common Garden
- Driving our van on Saturdays to pick up produce. (2 hour task, starts around 3:45pm)
- Driving our van on Sundays to pick up produce. (2 hour task, starts around 11:45am)
- Opening on Sundays, bringing produce to the park. (45 minute task, starts around 10am)
- Closer on Sundays, storing empty boxes and baskets. (30-45 minute task, starts around 3pm)
- A tech type person to keep our facebook page and blog page up to date
(#4-7 above require a driver’s license and ability to drive an automatic van))
Interested in volunteering?
Contact Laura: checkitoff@outlook.com
I would add that many volunteers help just once a month with one of these tasks and it is so great when all the slots are filled and the coordination becomes easier.
Just yesterday a woman named Natasha walked over from the Free Farm Stand looking for me in the garden, because she wanted to start a gleaning project in the city. She heard that I knew about gleaning in San Francisco. I am the perennial hippie gardener it seems, and I have been in the neighborhood forever. I do know about gleaning and the “old days” going back to when the food revolution took off here in 2008. The Free Farm Stand was just a part of that revolution. There was a lot more going on in the way of gleaning in the Bay Area at that time and I am out of touch with what is going on now. I think all the gleaning projects have gone by the wayside around here. Just look at back issues of our blog to read about gleaning in the city in past years (“Glorious Gleaning Galore” published October 12, 2009 is just one example).
I write about this because when I was talking to her, I was reminded how in some ways that local food revolution was a very popular excitement at that time and now a number of urban farms and gleaning projects have ended (though I think there is still a lot of produce that could be gleaned . I am just looking out my window at our loquat tree). There are still a lot of community gardens and even new ones have opened. Projects like Alemany Farm and the Free Farm Stand are special and stand out from the pack in my opinion. We are still going after all these years and all the produce at Alemany Farm is grown for free for those in need and can be picked fresh from the field or picked up at the Stand on Sundays. And the Free Farm Stand remains a people powered all volunteer effort. It seems that as some of us age we continue to need not only new body parts and to keep stretching those parts we do have. That is so we can keep lifting and hauling, and doing the fun grunt work mentioned in the last blog. We could also use a transfusion of fresh love energy to flow through our work and that is what we are putting out there to the universe.