Author: Tree

This week the harvest at the farm was pretty minimal and it was all given away at the farm.  I felt sort of bad that there was so little our Hecka Local  brand produce this week on our table. I felt it not worth putting out the signs labeling the two kinds of produce we had.  There was a lot of produce from the farmers market, a huge amount, and it’s now a fact that we are now getting  tons of summer produce left over from local farmers. I am still overwhelmed what an abundant society we live and there is so much waste everywhere. Just the other day a local market was throwing a lot of non-organic slightly damaged or ripe produce into a green bin. At least San Francisco has green bins and composts some of the waste. It seems that if one wants to live sustainably in the city, besides growing one’s own food and harvesting fruit trees that need picking, we need to live off the waste. Fortunately the Free Farm Stand for now has a great free resource for locally grown, mostly organic and all fresh produce. It is hard at times to think that this produce is really a waste product, but it is.

I did have some lemons that my friend Erik brought on his way back here from Southern California and as lemons go these were particularly beautiful and big. I also brought the first of the loquats from my huge backyard tree. Fruit is coming into season. The Secret Garden has lots of cherry plums starting to redden up and we are looking for someone with no fear of heights to climb a large ladder and pick them some morning. I was super happy that Pam showed up with a lot of bounty from the City College garden  including a large amount of beautiful lettuce and a handful of boquets from flowers she picked (sorry no one photographed her treasures). Mike amazed us again with homemade pickles from cucumbers from last weeks table. This was his first try making pickles, using a recipe from youtube. They were simple and delicious.

Mikes pickles

As you can see in the photographs, I did manage to bring seedlings to give away and they were pretty popular. I met a woman named Lilian who took some seedlings and told me she made a Foosball Planter and planted the seedlings she gathered before from the stand. She sent me an email today with photos of her planter and wrote this informative and sweet email: “With the Free Farm Stand’s donation, we were able to get things going in our container garden and eventually transfer them over to the foosball table: Chard, Kale, Cherry tree, Tomato plant, red lettuce, garlic, and potato… thank you for contributing to this wonderful community-based agriculture educational experience. This is what makes San Francisco truly a wonderful place to call home” I agree and this to me is some of what the core philosophy of the Free Farm Stand is about: A neighborhood of people helping each other grow food and sharing their surplus if they have it with those in need.  Here are some photos:

I am always saying this but I think one of the best things about the stand is that I meet so many wonderful people every week.

The other excitement going on these days is at the Free Farm. Thanks to Carmen, we have a lively blog these days at http://thefreefarm.org/ and she documents the amazing work going on there every week. At the farm there often seems to be new challenges coming up from rats eating all our seedlings to night visitors taking things that are not locked up. What really amazes me is that despite our setbacks and at times what seems like lack of organization, we get so much done at the farm. I love it. Right now we are in need of a driver with or without a big truck to drive to Oakland probably to pick up a load of manure. That’s what make our farm grow and brings food to our table.

There is an article in today’s Chronicle about Urban Homesteading http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/12/HOO91JL14L.DTL.  A friend Ruby is organizing a tour of urban farms in the eastbay this Sunday June 19th and no one turned away for lack of funds. I personally love garden tours and that is where I often learn a lot. I must admit though as much as I love animals and gardens together, I don’t like the idea of popularizing the butchering of animals  as a cool thing to do.  Most of these gardens/farms have animals it looks like and I wonder how many kill the male offspring or off the old chickens. Some raise rabbits for meat. In the article there is some mention of the controversy around changing the zoning code in cities to let people raise animals. Ruby makes the argument that “Look at the number of people who take really poor care of their cats and dogs, and yet it’s completely legal to have six cats,”.  If we were to change the law to let people raise dogs and cats to butcher and eat, I wonder if urban homesteaders would be ok with that? Would they complain if their neighbor was barbequing a home grown cat?  I know these are all personal choices whether to eat meat or not and it is probably better that people who eat meat grow and kill it themselves, but I am one of those NIMBY people I guess. You can learn more about the tour and register here: www.iuhoakland.com/farmtour.html.

I am not sure what it was about yesterday’s Farm Stand, but I came home completely in another mental world. It was like my head was in some haze and I couldn’t remember things or concentrate on much at all. Every once in a while a fragment of reality would pop up, like remembering a part of a conversation or an important piece of paper or a card someone had given me, but not knowing where I put it. I am sure I got in that state because there were so many people I was happily chatting with the whole day and it was an overload of stimulation. It was also an intense day at the end, me having to don the role of police person because of one person in line who didn’t speak English, and did not understand the kind of scene we are trying to create at the Free Farm Stand.

I love rescuing and distributing free produce from local organic farmer’s markets, it to me is a form of urban gleaning. I also like doing what I can do to address the issue of hunger and food insecurity in our neighborhood, issues I think we can’t ignore. I also like staying small and personal. A friend whom I work with at the Free Farm on a regular basis came to the Free farm Stand for the first time and I really appreciated her perspective.  She told me she likes the farm stand we run on Saturdays at the Free Farm a lot better. It is small in terms of the number of people who come and we mostly just give out produce that we grow there, not the tons of produce saved from the fancy farmer’s markets. So we don’t get the long line and the intense craziness that some people bring, causing an unpleasant scene to say the least. Also, the people who come automatically see the connection between the farm and the produce they take home.  We need a farm in the Mission I have known that for a while. It is such a challenge to distribute large amounts of produce in a respectful and dignified way and I know that the language barrier is one big part of that challenge.

spring bounty

Earlier in the morning  I learned about a Hebrew word Kavanah and was thinking about it it during the day. As I get it the meaning is  “concentration” or”intention” or as a friend wrote me in an email “direction of the heart”. At the service I was attending it was pointed out that one needs a cetain amount of Kavanah while saying prayers. I guess we at the least  have to be aware of and keep in mind whom we are praying or speaking to. I have been thinking how this applies to the work I am most familiar with, that of service or karma yoga. Another form of prayer or meditation as I see it. Yesterday perhaps I needed more Kavanah.

There are so many beautiful people I meet every day when I am at the stand or the farm and I  always feel so happy to meet and talk with them all. Yesterday I met a couple of sisters, one who was visiting the other from New York. Nicolette, the sister who lives in the bay area, dropped by the stand with a 7lbs of lettuce and 2lbs of kale from a non-profit farm she is starting in Petaluma.  The vegetables were so neatly bunched and tied together like boquets. She comes to the city often and wants to bring more vegetables to share with us.

On Friday I picked lemons from a neighbors tree and brought 34lbs to the stand. I also had another 31lbs of lemons my friend Erik picked and someone else brought 5lbs to the stand. I also had a lot of tomato seedlings and some rocoto hot pepper plants I had gotten from Pam from City College. The plants go very fast and hopefully I will get some feedback from people how they grew (I am curious because most of the plants were growing too big for the pots and were stressed out).

Whenever I hear of a friend driving to parts south of San Francisco, like Southern California in particular, I see if they can pick me up a hard to get plant or tree for me to bring back because the nurseries are so much better there. So I am excited that to hear that Erik not only got me a Reed avocado to plant here, he also picked more lemons  on the way back. Bless it up!

Check out the most recent workday at the Free Farm blog at thefreefarm.org. This week there is a great selection of photos and a little text going with each one.

The two weeks of self-promoting our work for the Bay Citizen of Tomorrow online voting contest is finally over!  I am so grateful and thankful on many levels. We came in 2^nd place with most votes (over 5,000 total voted is all the Bay Citizen web site said)) and we got a $2,500 check for the Free Farm Stand and Free Farm at a fancy award dinner last week. I am most grateful and thankful for all the support that we got from people literally all over the world voting (and more than once). All the other groups in the contest were worthy of the awards. The East Bay Children’s Book Project was the winner and got $5,000 and Loved Twice who gives out free baby clothes came in third and got $1,000. I was a little sad that SF Refresh and Megan  got less votes. I hope we work with them in future SF events this year.

The ceremony I attended with Angie was fun as it turned out (I was somewhat dreading it). It was a very formal affair, with a lot of people and reporters connected to the online newspaper the Bay Citizen. Plus there was a room full of philanthropist types and folks with money I assumed (judging from the cost of tickets).  I paced myself with the free cocktails  (I am such a newbie at bars I needed help deciding what kind of drink I should go with: I wound up with a screwdriver…It just came back to me now that I remember having that drink at a Bar Mitizvah of a cousin years and years ago). Two of those got me through most of the night. I was well lubricated and could talk and be Mister Sociable. I also lucked out that they were able to accompany my vegan diet with two small but delicious dishes.  Fortunately I didn’t have to give a speech and I met a foundation person that wants to visit us. How good can it get!

this was the salad

this was my main course

the desert with dairy I didn’t eat

On Saturday I had a real blast at the Free Farm.  Another one of my dreams is finally becoming a reality. If any of you have been reading these blogs, you might know of my vision of propagating avocado trees and giving them away at the Free Farm Stand. On Friday I went to the garden at 18^th and Rhode Island  to collect bud wood from two avocados that I helped plant there three years ago. Actually I was so happy going there and seeing all the trees we planted,  I think there are now up to 100 fruit and nut trees there in that future food forest.  They were all mostly doing really well and some had fruit and nuts on the trees. Anyway I scored some budwood from the Sir Prize and Lamb Haas trees and took it to the Free Farm on Saturday. We held a informal workshop where I demonstrated my method of budding the avocado trees I have been propagating there from seed in the greenhouse. I am really just learning to do this and have had some small successes so far (at the 18^th and Rhode Island I also saw some grafts that had taken that we had done on the sapote tree there ).  Anyway I am crossing my fingers that these buds take.

It was such a thrill today at the Free Farm Stand to give away some avocados from trees I helped plant years ago that were growing just down the street from the Free Farm Stand. Unfortunately, the people who picked the fruit didn’t know that it takes some experience knowing when to pick an avocado. Haas avocados for example, the kind we gave out, need to remain on a tree for one year before they are ready to pick.  I could tell that the ones we gave out were probably too young to pick, judging by the color and size of the fruit. I am not sure if they will ripen or  will have much flavor or be creamy or watery. Cross our fingers again.

Norma & Lolita with our hecka local produce

I was a little jealous of the  Farm Stand at the Free Farm on Saturday. I never thought of having two farm stands and my original idea was to have the Free Farm Stand located on an urban farm so people could really see the link between farm and table. It turned out the land that was available for a farm was not located in the Mission where I have been living and working since 1974. This is something I have been thinking about a lot, whether there should just be one farm stand located at the Free Farm t or try to manifest a farm in the Mission.

So when we harvested our raspberries they were so beautiful and delicious, but we really had to give them away there at the Free Farm. We couldn’t ship them to the Mission! I can’t tell you how much I love raspberries and the few plants that we put in at the community garden where the Free Farm Stand is go mainly to the kids adventurous enough to find them. We did get some of the strawberries though, enough to give people in line a little taste.

Talking about fruit, a woman with two kids came by with a peach tree seedling she somehow got and gave it to us. I thought it would be fun if we got her kids to pot up the seedling and it turned out to be such a beautiful experience. Pancho translated as I showed them what to do and then we took a tour of the trees we planted last week.  We left the potted tree under the shade of a sister plum tree we planted last week and I think the family had a good experience.