Author: Tree

“If you follow every dream You might get lost”. I have been thinking of that line by Neil Young in the song The Painter. I get so many dreams that I have been trying to follow and now yes, I am feeling a bit lost.  The dreams become reality and take on a life of their own. They grow and grow.  They make their demands and clamour for my attention,  overwhelming me at times. I start remembering that most of us are all crazy and don’t know what we are doing or where we are going.

The Free Farm Stand has been that way for me.  It is sort of on auto pilot these days, volunteers come and go and  it has become a very popular event in the Mission.  Now there is a Free Farm Stand and a Free Farm and  a number of gardens needing attention (more on that later). The Free Farm,  a relative of the Stand,  is taking off too in just a year, and during our heat spell last week I was struck with the realization that the idea of growing a million seedlings and growing a zillion bouquets of flowers plus growing a ton of fresh produce is not only a lot of work, but perhaps unachievable with the small numbers of people we have these days running the show. Is my green bubble bursting?

Yesterday it felt like it was the first day at the Free Farm Stand where things have taken off and we have moved into summer though it is still spring. It was the perfect sunny day and we had what seemed like a lot of produce. The Free Farm did a big harvest of the last of the fall planted vegetables and there was quite a lot. We brought pounds of kale, chard, fava beans, and lettuce. I also brought seedlings from our greenhouse.  There was the longest line ever and it was a constant stream of people for a while. There was so much energy in the air.  I was busy talking to a lot of friends that dropped by for the first time. Neighbors brought lemons and Kim from the Secret Garden dropped by with her sister with some harvested goodies.

Pam brought  a beautiful selection of produce and  gave me some seedlings of Cascade Glaze collards to try growing ( a variety of collards that has smooth green leaves and was developed by m favorite  plant breeders Alan Kapuler). Students from USF came by to help give out food and seedlings. They are from Back to da Roots “a student  organization that focuses on environmental and social justice issues in agriculture locally and worldwide”. They had volunteered at the Free Farm the day before and brought some lemons and other produce they harvested when they came to help out at the Stand.

We all know how trendy the local garden/farm movement has become.  Someone recently commented on a Free Farm blog post “offering a leftist critique of of the ideology of “Green” environmentalism, permaculturalism, deep ecology, eco-feminism, and lifestyle politics in general (veganism, “dumpster diving,” “buying organic,” “locavorism,” etc.).” His blog post is here: http://rosswolfe.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/man-and-nature-part-iv-a-radical-critique-of-the-%E2%80%9Cgreen%E2%80%9D-environmental-movement/. I thought it was a well written article though much too long, but I agree with a lot of what he is saying, especially how our capitalist society assimilates and repackages all beautiful fresh ideas and turns them into commodities. I don’t agree with his conclusion,  I think he was saying we need a revolution in the old sense of the word, actually maybe I don’t  understand what he thinks we should do about the mess we are in, but I don’t think Marx & Engles had all the answers. We however can create a real revolution/evolution, by creating a world that promotes community and sharing.

 Yesterday Roberto Perez Rivero who was interviewed in the film The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (http://www.vimeo.com/8653921) spoke at the Secret Garden. And I actually met him for a brief visit at the Free Farm.  He will be speaking again at the Permaculture Guild meeting (Wednesday April 6th.Time: 6:30-9:00pmWhere: Gazebo, CPMC Davies (see http://www.permaculture-sf.org/the-guild/guild-meetings.html for directions).

I think the message he is bringing, or at least what I inspiration I get from what happened in Cuba is that we can create similar neighborshoods of people growing food and feeding themselves.  We have crises now on many levels (which include hunger and food insecurity) and we have the opportunity to do something about the situation if we want to.  I know two or three gardens that need attention now and I have seedlings that can be planted if there were devoted gardeners willing to grow food and flowers and share their surplus with those in need. People are still writing me saying they have a garden or land that needs a gardener. The latest is someone wrote me from Bernal Heights with a garden needing help.

Today they are putting up the fence around the expanded orchard in the park at 23^rd St. and Treat Ave.  I willing be planning a day of tree planting probably in the beginning of May. I hope everyone can sense why it is important to be planting trees, especially fruit and nut trees. Our parks are a logical place where more Community Fruit Orchards should be planted and I think this could be the beginning of a new movement in the city.

I have run out of things to say about our Free Farm Stand. Yesterday I was behind the table handing out the little produce we had grown at the Free Farm and I felt embarrassed that I had so little to give out (most of the produce we did grow was handed out at our stand at the farm the day before). Though it seemed that everyone was so polite and grateful and excited about the fresh food I was handing out. I had to keep reminding myself that we are mainly trying to promote a network of produce sharing among gardeners and that we are not just a food give away program. Further down the table we did have a good selection of organic produce left over from the Ferry Building market. It is hard for me though, something in my wiring, that I just want to help everyone that needs food get it.  Later in the day Kim brought a beautiful selection of produce she harvested from the Secret Garden that was gone in a second.

I tried an experiment of growing lettuce mix in 2 Styrofoam grape boxes in our greenhouse. I was very excited that one of the trays worked out perfectly and I had a nice lettuce lawn to “mow” and give out. Part of it was to demonstrate how we can grow a salad in a kitchen window or on a porch.  A beautiful young 12 year old girl cut part of the tray for us to hand out and it turned out to be such a small amount. Nice theater though.

lettuce lawn in the greenhouse

from the Secret Garden

Here are some photos of what we have in the greenhouse. We distributed a few seedlings at the stand yesterday and they were very popular. Hopefully soon we will have more, so we can encourage more people to grow their own:

sunflower greens

 

waiting to germinate

There are lots more great photos and text on the Free Farm Blog at http://thefreefarm.org/

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times about heirloom vs. hybrid seeds:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/garden/24seeds.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1. It is something I have thought about, especially this time of year when I have been buying seeds to plant. The article points out some of the hype around heirloom seed and the bad rap hybrid seed has gotten. It is pretty unhip these days and almost politically incorrect to talk about this subject and suggest that the heirloom seed  business is  being heavily marketed these days as like everything gardening  is booming. So I appreciate articles like this that question some of the claims being made by the promoters of heirlooms.  The significant point here is that if we grow heirloom seeds or open pollinated seed we should select the plants that do best in our gardens and save them and eventually change them by selecting the plants whose seeds make the best adaptations to our micro-climate and growing conditions.

Last night I went to the Roxie to see a film I had heard about called Queen of the Sun. Here is the website for the film: http://www.queenofthesun.com/. This is a film made by the director of The Real Dirt on Farmer John, another great film. This film is being independently distributed and is worth supporting. I really think everyone should see this film, there is so much to learn here.  It is not just a film about the current global bee crises, but it also is an inspiring look at nature and bees. There is a great cast of characters who are passionate about changing the ways things are. I also like the biodynamic approach to beekeeping that is represented in the movie and it is an approach I think more beekeepers should adopt. For example, it is pointed out that it wasn’t until about 200 years ago that honey was sold. That it was always a precious gift that was shared. How cool knowing that!

One last thing, I have been trying to learn more about the news that part of Hayes Valley Farm has been sold. I think for all of us that that care about HVF and couldn’t attend the first public meeting announcing this news, we would like to find out more, if anyone knows. How long do they have before they have to vacate, what about the part of the land that wasn’t sold, does HVF have any plans for the future or do they need any help?  I know that the site was never to be permanent and that it is good to respect the original deal. Personally, I think it is so short sighted of the city to not promote more open space and farms vs selling land for more condos. I guess business is business.

This ties into the need for our cities to shrink. Last Saturday at our work day at the Free Farm two woman who are making a movie that “aims to document the diversity of new economic cultures emerging” and they wanted to film what we were doing. Tonight at 9pm they are screening their short documentary Life After Growth at the Noisebridge Hacker Space, 2169 Mission St. This film is part of an ongoing project to document the rise of a new movement – calling not for more economic growth, but LESS. The degrowth movement, or “mouvement por le decroissance”, argues that through a voluntary reduction of the economy we can work less, consume less and live better, fuller lives.” I can dig that (I am not sure about the part of working less…seems like a lot of work to create a revolution).

The rains stopped miraculously and the day was beautiful for a Sunday Free Farm Stand. Surprisingly we had a great deal of produce (a lot of cabbage, artichokes,  Brussels sprouts, and greens), though it was a little sparse on the Hecka Local side of the table. Saturday it was raining hard and not a lot of produce was harvested at the Free Farm Though hat’s off to tree collards, not only we are still harvesting them from the farm, but the Secret Garden is still offering us a few leaves from just one or two plants. I was especially excited with the four pounds of sunflower greens I grew in the greenhouse, starting with just two cups of sunflower seeds. I hope people learn from this that we can grow salads almost anywhere , even if you don’t have a backyard garden.

tree collards

sunflower greens

My friend LLyn from the Sharing Garden in Oregon (http://alpinegarden.blogspot.com/)  emailed me this letter from a friend in Sendai , Japan. I have been thinking about this inspirational piece all week and how it applies to our actions here:

We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories.

During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes… If someone has water running in their home, they put out sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.

Utterly amazingly where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, “Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another.”

The reason the Free Farm Stand and the Free Farm is free is because we feel we don’t need more of a crisis than we have now on this planet to begin living like we are all family and caring for each other.  My friend Pancho also shared with me an inspirational article her wrote about Astrobiology (he will be sharing his interest in this subject at the SF refresh event we will be hosting at the Free Farm on April 16^th) http://earthlingopinion.wordpress.com/2007/08/20/astrobiology-red-stars-and-the-new-renaissance-of-humanity/.  Pancho repeats the idea that we need to have a “world community” that looks out for the planet and it’s people. That community I believe has its basic economics based on sharing rather than barter or buying and selling. Sharing the greens or call it the greens economy.