Author: Tree

I am totally inspired by the Occupy movement going down.  It’s wild and free and beautiful. The General Assembly meetings are a fantastic experiment in democracy and decision making.  I think they are worth checking out. The other thing I love is that a group of people have seized the commons and are camping out on it, a sort of  Rainbow Gathering style with a political message.  Also, young and old have taken to the street to disrupt business as usual and are questioning the sacred cow of capitalism, especially those corporate institutions that are the most exploitative.

My hope is that these General Assemblies continue no matter what happens, that this exercise in communication needs constant practice like yoga and eventually it needs to be brought into our neighborhoods.  I also hope people will understand that the Occupy movement it is not really about us vs them which I think the phrase we are the 99% reinforces. We have to be careful with this kind of thinking and language which has the potential for growing hate and fear and can be polarizing.  Don’t get me wrong, if you check out my email address I have been on this 99 thing for a while before 99% became cool (iamtree99@gmail.com). It is the corporate takeover of our world that is one big  problem.

We are 100% connected with each other
We are 100% part of the big picture in it all together
We are 100% sharing the same carbon cycle
We are 100% sharing the same breath
We are 100% sharing our bodies with 90 trillion microbes
We are 100% living under the same stars and galaxies
We are 100% all needing love and compassion

Jason who helped us build our greenhouse at the Free Farm wrote some beautiful words about Occupy in the eastbaypermaculture yahoo group (you have to join the yahoo group to read this Laying the Foundations).   It really is in line with what I have been thinking. He says “One next step is to engage and develop local, community-based systems to provide for all of our basic human needs… The piece that we here in the Bay Area are perhaps best suited to take the lead on is Food Sovereignty. There is some energy and infrastructure for this already, although it would need to be increased if we want to develop true autonomy for local Occupations. Residential food producing landscapes, urban farms, and mass chicken coop construction for residential settings could be cooperatively developed and installed. In doing so, we would vastly increase our capacity for local self-sufficiency on a wider scale… As we transition away from our dependence on destructive distribution and processing systems to meet our basic needs, we can go beyond merely denouncing the current economic model and prove that WE DO NOT NEED their system. Another world is possible, and being actualized through the place-based autonomous zones now occupying many major cities. The more we can provide for the social services and basic human needs of those in the Occupied spaces without supporting or depending upon governments and mass distribution systems, the more we can accurately declare we are living a viable alternative”.

Here is something I have been doing when I have some time and my junk mail is piling up from credit card companies:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JlxbKtBkGM

I also got an email from my friend Justin who with his friends are thinking the same thoughts here in San Francisco:  “Hey all, so the other night some of us were sitting around talking about the occupy movement and ways to make this radical movement/ community more relevant to everyday folks around our cities. We wanted spread the message of autonomy and community building outside of capitalism in a way that would work for people in their lives, thus spreading these radical ideas throughout our neighborhoods. One idea that we came up with was a garden project. We all recognize how gardens offer families and communities a degree of self-sufficiency, autonomy and a chance to transform our social relationships.” Their idea is 99 Gardens for the 99%. I like the way he ended the email “Lets Overgrow Capitalism!”

I liked this sign

Wondering where our friend Pancho is these days…a no show at the Free Stand (and the Free Farm)…we forgive him…

shutting down the bank and getting some receptive silence in too

The Free Farm Stand was not rained out and well occupied. We are there rain or shine by the way, though we will be closed the Sunday after Thanksgiving (Nov. 27). It was a beautiful day and thanks to our organizer extraordinaire, Cat, things are running pretty smooth. It has been remarkable to me how after our run in with Recreation and Park, so many new people showed up eager to help in some way, Besides Cat, another woman surfaced named Jill who is experienced in crowd management and she has been working with Cat to make the experience for people coming to the Stand to have a good experience as we grow larger in size. Our volunteer crew has been so great and I can’t say enough how grateful I am. There are several things I would like to manifest for the Free Farm Stand:

• a Cantonese speaking person to help us translate fliers and ideally to volunteer with us to help talk to the Cantonese speaking shoppers who come by.
• a photographer that would like to set up a photo booth at the FFS
• a large homey free space to throw a big party in around December to celebrate a year of wonderful volunteers and good work…room for dancing and maybe someone who can lead a contra dance or square dance

We are still getting a lot of produce left over from the Farmer’s Markets and we did have some nice sunchokes from the Free Farm and  beautiful squash (I think the variety we grew was Musquee de Provence though I think we should have let it get orange on the outside). Stanford students from Stanford glean came again with pomegranates, pineapple  guavas, quince, and apples, such lovely fruit for November!

Cristina was back serving a while before her tango class. The African Blue basil flowers matched her outfit

My favorite twins with Clara their mom (I got a volunteer name tag part of our new order)

healthy happy baby sisters

Planting red clover

Billee Sharp, a regular supporter of the Free Farm Stand came by on Sunday and gave me a copy of a bookshe wrote called “fix it, make it, grow it, bake it”  that mentions the Free Farm Stand in it. She also wrote an interesting article in a blog by Matt Gonalez and others I didn’t know existed  “As it Ought to Be”
http://asitoughttobe.com/2010/06/29/confessions-of-a-bad-hippie-by-billee-sharp/. She gives a pretty good short history of the Sixties diggers who also reclaimed the commons and uprooted our system with revolutionary ideas (like the thought that things should be free and who circulated another 1% idea…1% Free).

Here is what I was dreaming this morning:
I plug in my moral GPS
and put in the location I want to go
to arrive at a just and equitable world
a planet treated with respect
I don’t know how I am getting there
putting trust in my modern moral compass

We all need this GPS unit to guide us on the right path during this time of large waves being created.  I myself have been busy with the constructive program  that my friend Pancho writes about on his blog Earthling Opinion http://earthlingopinion.wordpress.com/constructive-program/. At the same time I have been neglectful in getting  out into the street and joining the Occupiers. I need to figure out  how to be helpful and how can I  integrate the work of the Free Farm Stand and the Free Farm with the Occupy movement.

While this is going on the Free Farm Stand keeps chugging along. We have been trying to keep the stand operating in a smaller space  than before, trying not to have a negative impact on the park in terms of how much space we take up and not blocking the entrance, giving park users room to walk, and not blocking the wheelchair accessible ramp. We just applied for a health permit which Recreation and Park wants us to have and that the Health Department says we don’t really need. I am expecting soon a visit by the Health Inspector who will make sure we have a bathroom which we do and being sure that the boxes of produce don’t sit directly on the cement, but are elevated 6” above the ground. We had a trial run setting our boxes on recycling crates and milk crates and it was a bit challenging doing this.

A volunteer made a connection with someone with Terra Firma farm who gave us a great donation of fresh vegetables in (4 boxes of produce). Stanford Glean brought 71 pounds of apples all from one tree and my friend Tom was in town from Santa Rosa and he brought us 130 pounds of various winter squash from Santa Rosa, half given away at the Free Farm Stand at the Free Farm on Saturday. A friend and neighbor brought some chayote squash (4lbs). I love growing that vegetable!

our clean up crew

cinderella pumpkin some of the vegan “meat” that was donated from Eco-vegan and Tofu Town

Maybe your moral GPS will lead you here:

There is an Oakland General Strike on Wednesday Nov 2 http://www.occupyoakland.org/2011/10/general-strike-mass-day-of-action/: 
 
“…we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of.”

On Saturday night I went to a swing dance birthday party and enjoyed the music, the band and their singer,  the moves, and especially the footwork. The Free Farm Stand and the Free Farm is a swing dance of sorts (Swing Beans, Lindy Hops,  and our Hive Jive on the Free Farm). We definitely swing as our volunteers jitterbug around schlepping boxes of produce, unpacking them, loading up baskets, and setting the stage on the tables for our main event  of distributing for free high quality local organic vegetables and fruits. It is a weekly celebration with neighbors and friends. And it don’t mean a thing if we don’t got the swing.

This week it was quite a lot of foot and heart work  going on, as we had 20 Stanford students come to the stand to lend a hand.

We got a lot of garden work done and we sheet mulched the small orchard that was planted this year. We also gave out a number of seedlings and strawberry plants, and iris bulbs.

 

One thing that I thought was really swinging were the pears we gave out. I picked them up last week from a neighbor named Fred who lives next next to the Little City Gardens (http://www.littlecitygardens.com/). They were the most handsome russet type and tasty pears, and Fred was so generous in offering us four boxes that were surplus from his tree. I also finally got a chance to swing by Little City Gardens for the first time run by Brooke and Caitlyn who are dear friends . Brooke told Fred about us which was great. I have admired Little City Farms from a distance since they started (I had first visited Brooke at her lovely garden on Guerrero St. years ago and was convinced she was serious about growing food when I saw that garden). It is my contention that art and style can almost trump one’s personal philosophy or politics. Everything these two women do is not only well done, but simply beautiful. So I had to put aside my belief that  everything should be  be free and just take in the wonderfulness of their farm while I was there. I think it is the ideal place for a city farm and is just so perfect in so many ways. They are in the situation where a landlord wants to sell the land to developers (they are now on a month to month rental agreement). If it were sold, maybe unlikely in these hard economic times, that would be the end of a great open lot with a gorgeous farm growing on it. I really think all San Franciscans should get together and somehow figure out how to save this land from development. One problem beside the cost of the land are the property taxes which are too high for the women or a land trust to pay.  If they were a non-profit they might have more opportunities open up. Anyway I always learn a lot about farming and growing food when I talk with them and I get totally inspired which is the best we can hope from friends. Also, they gave me some of their salad mix and some lettuce which I brought to our Free Farm lunch and it was so flavorful and delicious.

this photo I took from way in the back of the Little City Gardens…they have more room to develop, like plant an orchard if they had this land more permanently…see how much land there is!

Things are running smoother every week the stand thanks to the organizational talents of a volunteer named Cat. Though it seems we are somewhat cramped for space, things are working out. I am still working with the Recreation and Park Dept. and soon will fill out an application for a permit from the Health Dept.  According to the Health Dept. I technically don’t need a permit to give out produce or day old bread, but the Park’s department wants us to have one. So I will most likely send it in. What that will mean is that I have to have the bathrooms open every week which they are and I have to keep the boxes of food off the ground by 6”. If anyone has any milk crates, or ideally any folding crates or pallets that are small that we can put our boxes on that would be helpful. We do have a bit of a storage crunch, but I think we can manage.

the smooth orderly running stand

two of our best volunteers with name tags

Another piece of news that is mentioned in our Free Farm blog (a fun read) is that I learned last week that developers have offered 5.4 million to St Paulus Church to buy the land the Free Farm is on to make it into housing (I think the idea is to build 90 rental units of which 18% or 16 units will be “affordable”). I heard the latest design is to include a rooftop garden and also 10,000 sq.  ft of undeveloped space would be given to the church. Even if the church goes ahead with this offer it will take at least three years for something called an entitlement phase, which is part of the City’s review process, which might also include an environmental report. St. Paulus is really gracious in supporting our farm and now they must go through the discernment process of what to do with such a tempting offer and balancing that with their desire to do the right thing for the community. I have always known that the Free Farm has been on temporary ground and like in most places I have gardened there has been a similar situation (Esperana and the 18th and Rhode Island site are also places where gardens are with no written contract). I trust that the universe will take care of us and give us good work to do. I encourage us all to meditate on this situation and put out prayers or good thoughts to bring clarity and vision to all involved in this discernment process.

I also continue to voice my support for those people Occupying Wall Street that are dissatisfied with the status quo. I feel like I am in the same boat (I guess we are called the 99%).  If we move towards a society more focused on the common good perhaps we will see the day where city parks are growing food for hungry neighbors who are in need, where more truly affordable housing is built (equivalent to section 8 housing) to shelter the record numbers of families and homeless on the streets or sleeping on couches or cars, where health care is available to all, and where education is a top priority also. Not to mention a day when cities will have more open space, more trees, and less cars, and the environment and nature will be on an up turn.  I think the time is now for us to either sink or swing.