Author: Tree

I want to start off saying that I have become overwhelmed this last week with all the amazing sweet and energetic people I have been in touch with. Besides being overwhelmed with such spring bounty of produce, the bay area seems bountiful now with local garden projects galore and people wanting to plug in somehow.

Talking about being overwhelmed Christy sent me an email about how she is overwhelmed with the produce from the Farmer’s Market. Here is her words with a great suggestion that I think we can follow up on next week.:

“Hey Tree,

I had an idea after being at the farm stand yesterday. Do you think it would work to reserve a section of one of the tables for the food that the community and home gardeners like you and some of us donate to the stand? Maybe with a little sign indicating that? I think it might spur more people to bring stuff. For me it’s a little overwhelming to see all the produce that the commercial growers just throw away piled up there, and it’s just not as special as knowing one of your neighbors worked to produce food to share with you. It would also be a gentle lesson for folks who visit the stand on the number and variety, even if small quantity, of things that are being grown by their neighbors, and might inspire them more to grow stuff themselves.”

The Free Farm Stand this week was well attended this week, and we had a good number of great helpers running it. Christy in her email also noted that the popularity is growing with the “younger, hip, diet-conscious folks” and that she saw “fewer Latino and other immigrant families”. I do see the stand becoming more popular. One of my goals has been to see the stand bringing neighbors together every week and that is happening. And I continue to strive to make this local food movement accessible to all especially those on tight budgets and low incomes. I am thinking that is more and more of us these days.

The amount of produce this week from three of the gardens I work in was phenomenal: 48lbs of fava beans from 18^th and Rhode Island, 6lbs from my backyard, and 7 ½ lbs from the Secret Garden. I also harvested 6 ½ lbs of greens from 18^th and Rhode Island and 5 lbs of baby lettuce from the secret garden. I also picked lemons from my neighbor’s tree. Other people brought more mustard greens, and peppermint and peppermint starter plants, and chamomile. One woman brought produce from a CSA box that didn’t get picked up. We also gave out left over flowers that originally came from Whole Foods and sweet pea flowers from Treat Commons (it was Mother’s Day and everyone loved the flowers).

We also gave out a lot of seedlings, mostly tomatoes and artichokes. It was really nice having a new person around named Pancho who spoke Spanish with people. I also brought a small camp stove and boiled up some shelled fava beans to show people how to cook them and what they taste like. People loved them and luckily we had a lot to give away (I also got a box of them from the farmer’s market delivery).

Report on last week as it relates to the Free Farm Stand

Last Tuesday we had a great work day in Treat Commons ( a number of new people showed up to volunteer) and we planted some trombone squash and cucumbers, plus thinned carrots and did some weeding. Then at the Secret Garden the kids harvested 6 ½ lbs of fava beans that grew in a very shady part of the garden. We also mulched the potatoes growing in the tater towers. All but one of the towers is doing well.

Last Wednesday which was the first Wednesday of the month and I went to the SF Permaculture Guild meeting. I mainly went to hear Laurence Schechtman ,”Laurence Of Berkeley” talk about the project I have heard about and mentioned in my blog last year called Neighborhood Vegetables http://neighborhoodveggies.ning.com/. It is a group that encourages and organizes neighbors to help each other grow food. What I learned from Laurence is a good tip on having a successful meeting: “A meeting is never complete without everyone having a job to do and someone to do it with.” The meeting he organizes ends with a “responsibility circle” where people tell the group what responsibility they are going to take on. I just signed up for Neighborhood Vegetables and joined the San Francisco group. I really don’t know where this will lead. I like the idea of neighbors helping each other grow food by planting gardens together and that is why I joined. Though right now I am pretty busy trying to be an urban farmer and growing food to give away to those who don’t have the land to grow food or the time to garden (though I think everyone can probably make some time to grow some food somewhere). I had forgotten that whenever I go to the guild meeting now I see not only so many people I know, but meet others who are usually interesting in different ways.

Thursday I had one new friend Brian help me harvest fava beans from my backyard (6lbs from another shady garden and I realized later that I missed some). I moved a lot of the seedlings out of the garden and am ready to start planting more seeds.

The On Friday we had a great workday at 18^th and Rhode Island. About six people showed up to help. We spent the morning harvesting some of the fava beans on the hill. I was really surprised that when we finished harvesting we had a big trash can bag full of fava beans. When I took them home to weigh them there were 48lbs of beans. We also harvested 6 ½ lbs of various greens, mostly Swiss chard and some lettuce. We also planted two avocado trees, a number of pineapple guava, sunchokes, stinging nettle, and some rocoto hot peppers.

On Saturday was the grand opening of the Esperanza Garden Sustainability Center. There was a great turnout and good music and food. The sound system was bike peddled generated and there was also a bike pedaled blender that made smoothies.

I had a mini-farm stand set up and next to me was a free lemonade stand made with big lemons from the tree of the dad and his young daughter who made it. The stand was sort of a bust I thought, not too many people seemed interested in the food nor seedlings I was giving away. Maybe the wrong kind of crowd I don’t know. I did give a short hands on demonstration of how to build a tater tower and also growing tomatoes upside down. I met a woman there who has already tried this and she says it does work.

One last thing is that I have been corresponding with some people for a while online who are also doing similar “gift economy” work in different places. We have both been inspiring each other. On Saturday I got to meet Jeff for the first time at the Esperanza opening and then on Sunday he and two others, Pancho and Elizabeth came out to help at the stand. One of the things they are involved with is the Karma Kitchen. Read his blog about the Farmers Market comes to Karma Kitchen: http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=1954. I hope we can collaborate on wonderful projects in the future.

I thought there has been a lot of focus on the Free Farm Stand and less on the gardens that supply some of the food. So here is a slide show from the Secret Garden last week and the exciting delicious lettuce lawn.

I am back from my three day trip out of town. It was a totally surreal trip for me to spend time in the suburbs outside Denver. I am familiar with suburbs since I grew up in one, but I still felt like I was on another planet. I started a poem when I was there:

I missed the boat a long time ago to be normal

at an early age I got off the path

As soon as I got home I was anxious to get out into the gardens. First I went over to the Esperanza Garden where there was going to be a work day preparing the garden for the grand opening next Saturday May 9th. Like I said last week this garden might not be around in two months, but people are planting things in pots and annuals in the ground. I planted some lettuce and a yellow zucchini and will come back hopefully in the middle of the week to plant some pole beans. I think if we can get one crop of something edible out of the garden before it gets developed that will be great. At the opening I think I am going to be there doing a workshop on growing potatoes in towers and tomatoes upside down in pots. I then went over to Treat Commons and harvested a big trash bag full of chard and kale for the free farm stand.

Our greens

I guess it has been raining a bit which is great news. It was raining a little when we set up the stand, but for the most part the day was clear and we had another large crowd with a large amount of food that I brought over in a van from the soup kitchen where I work the first Sunday of the month. We are still in the season of garden greens which filled our table.
We again had large amounts of basil which should be out of season now and were probably grown in a green house since it is supposedly locally grown. Nosrat, our neighbor who lives around the corner and is an excellent cook, took a sample of the different things we had on the table, including basil, walnuts, young garlic, and some cilantro and went home and blended up some tasty vegan pesto. He brought it back and shared it with everyone served on some bread. Ashly came later and brought some fava bean spread made with curry that we put out for people to taste (the fava beans came from 18th and Rhode Island…I plan to go there Friday for the workday and will probably harvest more for the stand). Later a gardener in Treat Commons came by with her young daughter to bring some cookies to share. It was her daughter’s idea who just got some cookies from a new cookie shop on Valencia to bring some over to share at the stand. I didn’t say anything about them not being vegan and just gave them away any way becausethe gesture was so sweet (the cookies I am sure were too).

A couple of people came by with lemons from their trees or neighbors trees. One woman brought both Meyer lemons and Ponderosa lemons that are big and round and have a thick rind.

Can you tell which one is the Ponderosa Lemon?

Page and Margret came by with some offerings from their garden (actually I am not sure which garden things came from since they grow things all over, including a garden at Holy Innocents Church in Noe Valley, a rooftop garden where they live also in Noe Valley, and a garden in Stanford where they work). They brought one bunch of celery, a few carrot thinnings, some lettuce and arugula, and a bag of gigantic ponderosa lemons from a neighbor.
Page told me that the gleaning project he is organizing at Stanford is going ahead. Page teaches a course in sustainability there and has gotten interested in getting the fruit trees growing there (in the area where the faculty lives) picked by his students. Apparently they have identified 140 fruit trees and have them located with a GPS unit and have put them on a Google map. They are going to eventually harvest the trees and Page will bring the fruit in his truck to the stand.

I wanted to report that another reporter came by the stand who is doing a piece for KALW radio about farmer’s markets. He interviewed me for maybe five minutes and other people too. The popularity of local food growing continues. I just got a link to a four minute video made by students at City College about the farm stand and I have included it on the sidebar of this blog. My hope that what grows out of all this talk (especially on my part) is that we can find the energy and people with the time to grow more food so we don’t have to rely so much on the left-over’s from the farmers market (though it is itself a great way of gleaning organic relatively local food).

Every week I learn about some new cool local gardening event or project taking off. Here are two:

From an email:

“I just learned that the City of Lafayette formed a Sustainability Committee and that East Bay Municipal Utility District is allowing the City to utilize about 2 acres by the Lafayette Reservoir for their community garden sustainability project, which may interest you. The citizens there are very interested in this and you may find partnerships there with the many wealthier organizations in town. They are also building a gazillion dollar state of the art Library which will be completed I believe this year or early next year.”

From the permaculture list serve:

food forest for food first

Posted by: “wildseed christopher” wildheartgardens@yahoo.com wildheartgardens

Sun May 3, 2009 9:40 pm (PDT)

Who wants to help create a mini food forest at Food First?!
Our goal is to create a high profile permaculture garden that will be seen by hundreds of visitors who come to Food First from all parts of the world. The food produced on site will supplement the lunches that FF provides for its staff and interns. The installation will be only us volunteers so please come out and help if you have a few hours to spare over the weekend – It will be a lot of fun!
The plan:
We will remove much of the existing ornamental and invasive bushes and shrubs, create rainwater catchments, earthworks with swales and infiltration basins, spread a heavy layer of mulch, and plant a bunch of food producing plants, natives and insectaries.
Where:
398 60th St. at Colby (near the Oakland/Berkeley border)
For those of you unfamiliar with the organization, Food First is an amazing Non-Profit organization working to change the global food system. “The Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First shapes how people think by analyzing the root causes of global hunger, poverty, and ecological degradation and developing solutions in partnership with movements working for social change.” Check it out at http://www.foodfirst.org/
When:
May 8-10 (Fri, Sat, Sun) 10am -5pm
Come whatever day(s) you can for as long as you want!
Please let me know if you are interested in bringing this project to fruition so I can organize enough tools and materials.
Vegetarian lunch will be provided :)
Thanks,
Alex
510 717 1299

I find things like this are very exciting. Wish I could get involved in everything!

I was feeling a bit of excitement when I came to the Free Farm Stand a little late today. I just arrived from Martin de Porres soup kitchen where I volunteer and had gotten the lucky chance to hear the Dalai Lama speak. Here is an article in the Chronicle about it: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/04/26/national/a200532D22.DTL&tsp=1. The thing that stood out in my mind is that he seemed to have a simple and clear message of compassion and respect for others (especially the poor) and other religions and faiths. And I was surprised how accessible he seemed, though I guess it took two years for this event to happen, it seemed amazing that such a celebrity would even visit a place like Martin’s, and once he was there he was also surprisingly real and human. I do feel that he gave off a human glow and energy that truly spread joy and peace around him. I guess that comes from his commitment to “the promotion of human values such as compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment and self-discipline”.

I didn’t take many pictures of the stand today, partly because I was not all there. I could use someone who can take good pictures to document the scene. Though one could argue that I have taken enough pictures already to get the idea of what is happening. Beautiful people and beautiful vegetables and fruit.

I just love the people who have been coming out and helping run the stand, which has left me free to talk to people and to work a little with people that want to garden while the stand is open. I got busy for a while working with my young friend Zeus who loves to garden, so we planted some scarlet runner beans. I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to talk to everyone and I know some people came that I wanted to say hi to. Also, I keep meeting people that want to help. There is so much gardening to do and seedlings to propagate. I am hoping that I can help enlist some of the gardening energy that is out there so we can grow more of our own produce.

And that ties into this other thought. I would still like to get a good garden information booth set up that can help people with their garden questions and can encourage people to grow their own (in English and Spanish). We have been giving away a lot of plants, but it could be better if we gave out information on how to care for them and if we could set up a garden support network.

Well those are some random thoughts. We seem to be getting a lot of greens the last few weeks. Because I was so busy this weekend I didn’t get a chance to harvest all the greens (mostly chard and kale) in the different gardens that are ready to pick. But we got so much from the farmers market there was no shortage of chard or arugula or lettuce. And we hit the jackpot with fava beans. At 18^th and Rhode Island we harvested 15 pounds of beans and then I got a box more of them from the farmers market. I wrote an update on the Potrero garden on the18^th and Rhode Island website. The ones we picked were larger pods with bigger beans. The ones from the farmers market were young and much smaller. A woman came by the stand and told me that the young favas could be covered with a light sprinkling of olive oil and a shake of salt and roasted in the oven in a pan (she might have also suggested garlic) and then eaten pod and all. I got excited with that idea because I have been having pretty good luck roasting other vegetables that way like cauliflower and asparagus. So I went home and tried it, but was a little disappointed. They were edible, but I didn’t like the flavor all that much. I think others who have some immature fava beans should try this out and maybe add garlic.

People are still coming by the stand and making contributions. Two people brought lemons from their tree and another woman brought the most beautiful peppermint from her garden that I had to take a photo of it. A woman brought a nice bunch of chervil that she grew. It is an herb that is not as commonly grown that has a sweet licorice taste. Dave brought me some sad looking vegetable starts that came from Rainbow that they couldn’t sell, but were still alive and I am sure will grow.