Author: Tree

Yesterday Lauren offered to pick up the produce on Saturday and run the stand on Sunday, giving me a much needed break. My back yard garden has been needing attention so I finally got out there for a good chunk of time and I actually got a lettuce lawn planted. The garden hasn’t recovered from the cutting down of the big black acacia tree though more sun is coming in. One mysterious thing happened after the tree was cut down is that the bees in our hive disappeared. I noticed less bees flying in and out so I opened up the hive and most of the bees were gone, including the queen. Without a queen the hive dies as a colony (worker bees live only about four to six weeks). Right now we are going to take a break from beekeeping.

Since I wasn’t at the stand on Sunday I don’t have a firsthand account, though I heard it went well. I do know we had a large amount of Hecka Local produce thanks mostly to the Free Farm (41lbs. of collards) and 18^th and Rhode Island (25lbs of fava beans, 6lbs of chard). We also had one pound of very beautiful purple green broccoli from the same garden.

Other produce arrived at the table including fresh picked greens from Treat Commons and a man named Howard brought by 45lbs of lemons from a neighbor’s tree and 5lbs of kale, chard, cilantro, and Asian greens grown at 27^th and Church. Stanford Glean brought leeks and cabbages. I also heard that Autumn, one of our regulars who often brings open containers of olives from the Farmer’s Market and who plays beautifully on the violin, brought by a massage chair and gave people massages! Also, Eduardo whom I met briefly at the Free Farm ran the plant table and this week we had a lot of plants and starts to give away.

Another historic event took place on Saturday at the Free Farm. A mini-free farm stand was set up on the sidewalk and approximately 40 pounds of lettuce and greens were given away to neighbors and volunteers. Also there were lemons from Stanford Glean. At this point we are still working out the details of the stand and how it works and whether it will be a weekly thing. I heard that about 20 people came by.

I missed the entire morning of the workday at the Free Farm because I was invited months ago to speak at AAscend (Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, Coalition for Education, Networking and Development). I enjoyed meeting that community of people and felt really comfortable sharing not only the work I am involved with, but some personal details of my life and my own uniqueness.

When I got to the Free Farm I met Sandy from Temple Emanu-el and some of the crew who used to work at the Pea’h Garden in the cemetery that grew food and gave it to the Food Bank. They are planning on opening the farm the first Sunday of the month from 10-noon.

Sandy brought with her Michael who is the executive director of the San Francisco Interfaith Council. Some of our farm crew had a wonderful conversation with them about how we can work together and not only feed those in need, but create a farm that also is a sanctuary without walls. I think we all believe that what makes our farm unique is that we are interested in not only making our cities more sustainable environmentally, but we emphasize making sure no one goes hungry and that all people have access to healthy, local, organic produce. We also want to build on the idea that the garden/farm is a place where people can go to heal and nurture themselves and be close to the power of creation, coming with whatever faith they carry with them. I was thinking that the Free Farm is a faith based operation. That we seem to run more on faith these days than anything else, like money for example. Faith that things will grow in this sandy soil, faith that volunteers will help us farm, faith that we can get the material things we need to make this farm work, like hoses,  drip pipe, dump trucks full of manure, sheds, or greenhouses, faith that we can all learn to work with each other, faith that we can all treat each other with compassion and love.

Molly a student who interviewed me on the phone a while back for her school project at Tufts just sent me her final report. It is titled is “From Factories to Fresh Food. Planning for Urban Agriculture in Somerville” ( http://ase.tufts.edu/UEP/Degrees/field_project_reports/2010/Team_5_Final_Report.pdf). It is rather long and well researched (137 pages) and if you can get to page 87 there is a “case study” of the Free Farm Stand. There are some errors, but it certainly does give one the idea that there is another ship our project is traveling on rather than the entrepreneurship of local organic produce. 

Here are two vegan recipes that Molly sent me:

Fava Beans, Lemon and Potato Soup.

I peel the beans to get the beans only. There are two shells.  You can probably eat the inner shell, too, but I just use the shelled beans – about 1 cup to 1.5 cups of beans. Here is a very detailed article on how to shell fava beans including the inner shell with good pictures: http://localfoods.about.com/od/preparationtips/ss/ShellingFavas_3.htm Put them in a large saucepan with three scallions, chopped; or one largish leek, chopped. Dice up one tablespoon of curly parsley or cilantro and add. Add about 2 tbs of olive oil and 1 tsp of mashed crushedgarlic. On a low heat, sauté these items stirring lightly and consistently, so as not to damage the beans. Sautee until the leek/onions have turned clear and the spices are thoroughly blended with the vegetables. Turn off heat. Add juice of one lemon. Cover and let stand. Wash and peel, if desired, 2 or 3 medium sized Yukon potatoes (these are my favorite and most flavorful small potato). Cut into one inch bite sized pieces. Add enough water or vegetable broth to cover the beans well. Add potatoes. Add a bit more liquid as needed. Heat again on a medium heat until simmering. Simmer soup for about 30 to 40 minutes, turn down and cook a bit longer, stirring occasionally to mix all the elements. Correct seasoning with salt and pepper. Remove from heat. Serve hot. You can add plain soy to hot soup for a ‘creamy’ version. Or yogurt or soy yogurt. Good with crackers or homemade bread or croutons.

Makes about 4 large servings.

*****

 Fava Bean Spread

1 cup or less of cooked fava beans, salted
One tablespoon of olive oil.
Lemon juice
Parsely chopped, fine.
Mash together. Add more of your favorite oil and more lemon to taste.
Eat on bread or crackers with diced onion or tomato, or fresh basil.
You could also put a bit of tahini in instead of oil, for a creamier result.

 Makes a bit more than one cup.

She also sent me some photos she had taken a while back. I like this one especially

I don’t want to be a numbers queen, but again this week our new Free Farm provided a lot of produce for the Stand, 80 pounds (including 13 pounds of baby lettuce mix). I just discovered if you click on the green number above for the amount of Hecka Local Food given away you will open up the spreadsheet that totals the amount of produce for each garden supplying food for the stand and also produce that others contribute. The fava beans are coming in from other gardens too. This not just about quantity because we are talking the freshest, most nutritious produce one can get in the city for free to boot.

Antonio led another fabulous garden workshop, this time about growing plants in the Brassica family, which included a hands-on demonstration of potting up broccoli. I relearned the importance of not handling the seedling that is being potted up by the stem which is very delicate and can be damaged. A friend of a friend of Pancho’s named Carlo came all the way up from Santa Cruz where he is finishing a Phd in agro ecology. He helped give out bread and translated the workshop into Spanish. I feel really happy that we are making the effort to reach out to all our neighbors especially the Hispanic community.  Having more people speaking Spanish to those who come by helps deepen the connection that people have with what is going on every week.

So it is funny, in some ways I feel I have achieved my goal that I set out upon when I started the Free Farm Stand two years ago: I wanted to be a real urban farmer and to see how much food that I could grow and give away in the city. I suppose before I retire (ha ha) and move unto some new fabulous project, I should figure out how to keep the production going (which involves better crop planning as farmers call it I think). And training others to carry others to carry on this work. I still dream of a community of like minded spiritual folks living together and running cool service projects together like this.  I do think it is the next step in this project of food justice and making cities sustainable.

In the meantime, the Free Farm Stand continues serving lots of people and it is really a blast being part of the group effort growing what we give away. It also seems like soon we will be distributing produce at the farm site, because already people are asking for produce over there and there is a lot of need.  In fact some produce was given away already. I think we will not have another Free Farm Stand, but at our visitor table have produce that is put out when we are there.

On Sunday I talked to a gardener friend that just returned from Illinois and she was telling me how much she missed the soil there: a deep dark fluffy loam. She got me excited just imagining what it is like and sad that mostly the majority of food grown there is feed corn and soybeans. Plus it is sad that that soil is rapidly being lost because of corporate agriculture and mono-cropping.  I can’t say I am feeling  much excitement with our soil yet. It is pure sand with some manure or compost mixed in. It doesn’t seem alive yet and it is far from black and loamy.  Things are growing well so that is encouraging. So if we can all be soil builders in our lifetime what a way to give back to mother earth.

Talking about soil on Tuesday night May 18th at 7:30pm the Hayes Valley Farm is having a fundraiser for their wheelbarrow fund and they are showing a movie called Dirt which I really want to see. It seems we all need wheelbarrows these days to move mulch and manure around, in our case we have a lot of wheelbarrows that have flat tires (we need tires or innertubes).  Unfortunately Hayes Valley doesn’t say no one turned away for lack of funds, how un-progressive, though maybe you aren’t supposed to invite people without money to a benefit to raise money. Here is the info: http://www.hayesvalleyfarm.com/activities/events-and-activities/details/52-farm-film-night-kick-off.html.

Yesterday is what I call a historic day at the Free Farm Stand. It is something I don’t think I ever imagined would happen. I had more produce that was grown hecka locally than the produce I usually get leftover from the high end farmer’s markets. By the way if I were ever to go commercial like my friends at Little City Gardens, maybe I would call our produce company Hecka Local or as someone suggested Hecka Loco.

Yes I felt like I had achieved the status as a real farmer or more like a farm manager, as the food grown and harvested was really a group effort. I had over ten boxes of produce we had grown, a total of 119 1/4lbs of produce: 57lbs of greens, lettuce, and kohlrabi from the Free Farm and 32 lbs. of produce from 18^th and Rhode Island (chard and fava beans). 16lbs of favas from Treat Commons Community Garden ( those were grown in a space about 4” x 6’ approximately). It just so happened that I didn’t get much left over from the Farmer’s Markets, so the hecka local table saved the day. Though in reality we are getting people lined up down the sidewalk and we ran out of produce quickly. I mean 13 pounds of Red Bok Choy was about 14 heads and 7 pounds of lettuce is really only about 15 heads of lettuce.

We also had a great plant give away table with lots of seedlings. Antonio led another free garden workshop that unfortunately I was too busy to attend. I think he is going to keep leading these workshops all summer at the stand which makes me happy, because he is a great teacher and I want the Free Farm Stand to have an educational component as well as helping poor folks to get fresh organic produce.

It was a Heck Local weekend in general. The Free Farm and the stand is getting so much press recently. The latest thing was we were mentioned of both the Free Farm and Farm Stand on KQED TV. Here is the link: http://www.kqed.org/tv/programs/thisweek/. Stephanie, who has helped at both the stand and the farm, did a good job explaining what both projects are about (you can slide the slider forward if you want to skip most of the TV show).  At the bottom of the page you can click on the link about Food Runners and Urban Gardens to read more.

I hope this publicity inspires others to make some news themselves. Pancho sent me a beautiful blog from a friend of his: http://dosomethingbeautifulthebook.wordpress.com/. I love the name of this blog, “Do Something Beautiful”.  I read about the author’s visit to Neem Karoli Baba’s ashram in Kainchi, India where the teacher’s only teaching was: Love All. Serve All. Feed All.  I second that and would like to adopt it as our message to the world too.

I thought about calling the blog this week Everyone’s Doing It! I went to the Arbor Day celebration at the Growing Home Garden (Project Homeless Connect Garden) on Friday and it was quite the scene. A truck load of trees being given away, some being planted by a lot of teens, and free strawberries and Dryer frozen fruit bars. There was a lot of excitement in the air and that is when it struck me that the whole town has gotten a sort of mass hysteria right now about gardening and growing things like trees and gardens. I think this is great and maybe this “farming in the city revolution” will have some lasting effect on making cities more green and sustainable.

I just uploaded Antonio’s  cartoon about Seed Saving that I like a lot…check it out on the sidebar under cartoons.

Also, the Free Farm is zooming forward. With the weather warming up we may need more help to water things…we do have some drip set up, but we have a lot of seedlings that need a lot of water  and other  areas that need special attention. This Wednesday I think a bunch of kids are coming to help out and there is so much to do.