Author: Tree

After today’s mellow farm stand I was standing around talking with friends. Someone was saying she didn’t understand how things like airplanes can fly and another friend was explaining Bernoulli’s equation and the force of uplift. I think the force is actually called lift. Anyway all the time they were talking I was in my crazy fashion thinking that what this world needs now is a big uplift from the weight of heaviness dragging us all down. How can one feel good about the wars going on everywhere, and the suffering of the innocent people caught in between is hard to ignore. Fortunately most of the time I find the Free Farm Stand uplifting and myself flying. I guess to fly we have to have a careful balance of forces. Good work to do, good challenges to face, good support from friends and strangers, and a connection with the all mighty, the power of creation.

Today I knew again I would have no surplus produce from the farmer’s market so it was going to be another really local affair. I quickly learned that there wouldn’t be any bread either. Fortunately the Secret Garden is still producing lettuce and arugula and some broccoli and greens. I harvested less than a pound of lettuce and arugula and less than a pound of greens and broccoli. I was also able to harvest some greens from my backyard (mostly arugula). There is actually a neglected garden on the site of the permaculture garden and I was able to reach over the short fence and pick almost a pound of mustard greens and found a handful of yellow cherry tomatoes peeking through the wire mesh. I also brought some more walnuts from our tree and a friend brought some beautiful walnuts from Nevada City (they tasted different). I also brought about ten more jars of honey. Later in the day Christy came by with some surplus produce from the Corona Heights community garden, 1 ½ lbs of carrots that were delicious and less than a pound of baby kale. She also brought more Cape Gooseberries or ground cherries. Then at the end of the day Sheryl came by with two small baskets of the most handsome cherry tomatoes that she grew in Berkeley. She harvested them yellow two weeks ago and set them out by a sunny window to ripen more. There were really perfect and tasted great. Tomatoes in January hooray and amazing! If we had our act together we could probably grow a lot more tomatoes all the way into December…next year.

Going into the New Year I am jazzed by all the attention growing local food is attracting. I met with some wonderful folks who are starting to plant gardens in local Episcopal churches to give away at food pantries and other food programs. They have already started by putting in a garden at Holy Innocents Church in the Mission. I just heard from a friend who works with a non-profit called anewamerica that is serving low income immigrants and refugees in the Bay Area. I guess they want to put gardens in day care centers among other things and are looking for volunteer permaculture designers to give them some design help. If they start serving healthy food in day care centers that would be great, though I might lose some of my source for free baby food jars. And in my neighborhood within a ten block radius of lower 24th Street area of the Mission a bunch of neighbors got together and got a big grant to tear up the sidewalks in front of 23 houses and put in gardens or permeable landscaping. They started last weekend and next weekend too they will be doing the actually planting I think and say they can use help. I wonder if anyone is looking into planting anything edible like the artichokes I saw on a Dolores Street sidewalk.

The workday at 18^th and Rhode Island was canceled because of rain. It really didn’t rain hard, but it was cold and wet, and I personally whimped out. But on Saturday I made it over there and met up with Kevin and David G. We put stakes where the trees are going to be planted. I learned how at least one permaculture designer approached the situation of where to plant trees and I was impressed with the thought that went into it. We have plans to plant 22 fruit trees. Most of the bare root trees are at my house and we have two dates set to have tree planting/workshops Friday January 10^th and Saturday January 11^th (the dates will be bumped to the next weekend in case of rain). On Saturday we also dug a test hole and poured water in it and measured how long it took 2 gallons of water to drain (3 hours and 21 minutes). That seems to be barely ok and I guess we aren’t going to have to worry about drainage since we are going to plant trees sort of on a mound, especially the avocados.

The project of planting fruit trees in our park where we put up the stand is still alive and kicking. Unfortunately Park and Recreation changed the scheduled bike ride of Jared the interim supposedly cool director and I missed his visit (he came a week earlier). I am now on his list to get 15 minutes of his time to pitch my idea to him (my proposal calls for the creation of a Fruit and Recreation Park), though I don’t have a date set yet. I have a proposal and just got a generous donation of $205 to buy trees for the project. I know it is a crazy idea putting fruit trees where the public can pick them. Just today I noticed someone had picked the unripe passion fruit in our community garden and thrown it on the ground after figuring out it tasted sour. But Jim just came back from Southern California and told me about a cool edible park he accidentally ran into while on a walk or skateboard ride. Jenny told me too of an edible park she just visited during the holidays in Irvine. So we have to catch up with our southern conservatives down there in Orange Country that may have it wrong about gay marriage, but have it right about growing fruits and nuts in public places.

And thinking about trees I must say that I see a lot of leaves right now on sidewalks that are just getting pushed into the gutter to be swept up by our city streetsweepers. What a waste of useable “browns” for our compost piles. Think how much a tree works to make those leaves and what a miracle it really is. If I had the time I would collect as many as possible and add them to compost piles around town.

This week I had no left over produce from the Farmer’s Market and all I had to give away was the little amount of harvest I was able to pick out of three gardens right now that are within a block of the stand.. I think next week will be the same. A little bit of arugula, some salad mix, some Speckles butterhead lettuces, a few cape gooseberry fruits, a few chili peppers, a handful of greens, and a couple of Florence fennel or finocchio bulbs. Later in the day Jose and Minda came by with a couple of nice daikon roots from Potrero de Sol garden. I also gave away more honey and olives, and we shelled walnuts from our tree and gave them out.. There wasn’t much bread either, mostly a big basket of raisin rolls.

I must admit besides arugula I am pretty impressed with growing broccoli plants this year, because of their ability to keep sending out side shoots (though our few plants are about dead). Also, yesterday Max came by after the farm stand was over carrying a big bunch of tree collard greens he harvested from the All in Common Garden that he was taking to the friary where he lives. I am growing some tree collards right now that I just started this year and they are all growing rather slowly (being in pretty much shade). My oldest plant in my backyard doesn’t have many leaves and it wouldn’t be worth harvesting. I should plant a bunch of them in the permaculture garden where they get more sun.

I have heard a story from a friend about seeing an abandoned house in the Capay Valley near Davis that had orange trees on the property and another house that wasn’t abandoned that seemed to have a tree loaded with oranges that wasn’t getting picked. I wonder if it would be worth driving east to check out gleaning oranges there.

Though there wasn’t a lot of produce, it was a beautiful somewhat sunny winter day and there were quite a number of people who showed up. There might have been more talk than food. Sara Miles came by who is involved with Saint Gregory’s Church on Potrero Hill near the 18^th and Rhode Island garden. We talked about a plan that is being discussed to get a lot of Episcopal Churches to grow food for their food pantries. I am very excited about this and the possibility of working with them somehow. I think that the churches that are interested in growing food need to be visited and see what would be appropriate for their space. I told Sara that I think the Churches should be planting fruit trees if they have the space and grow them small and closely planted. She also wants to contact people in the churches to see if they have fruit trees in their backyards that could use picking ad make a database of trees that could be gleaned. Caleb a wonderful volunteer who was helping out at the table talked to her also and is interested in setting up a gleaning project in the city. I think Sara is going to coordinate a meeting of people that may be interested in this project.

I also enjoyed talking to some of our other local neighbors. It was great having Sara around who could talk in Spanish to people and I was able to somewhat follow the conversations. One guy was talking about his father who sounded like he had a great garden. He was talking about a tree that his father grows that had a fruit he didn’t know the name for in English. He called it Nispero and I figured out it was loquat. Here is a link to a youtube video of a loquat fruit unpeeling http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-r0dpWBFXg. I also heard a lot of stories from another man whose son helped us shell walnuts, about grwoing food in El Salvador. The man seemed to be really hip about growing food organically and using natural remedies and herbs for medicine. He said that now the young people there don’t want to be farmers though and he said there were a lot of empty fields.

Last Friday we had a well attended 18th and Rhode Island work day. I brought more seedlings and we planted them all around (the other seedlings are growing though very slowly). The fava beans are coming up and also the clover has sprouted. The garlic too is growing. The crew of four or five people pulled ivy up with the goal of seeing where we are going to plant our avocado grove and as a first step towards mulching the area.

Like I probably said before, I ordered trees and I just spoke to Jim in Southern California who is generously picking them up (plus making the rounds to some other nurseries to get some more hard to get plants and trees). Tentatively we are planing a tree planting on Saturday January 10th which will be partly a hands on workshop.

I just finished reading an inspiring book called Where our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov’v Quest to End Famine by Gary Nahan. I liked this book partly because it is somewhat of a biography and a glimpse of history that I love to read. This book covers so much more though, including a real world view of climate change on our planet, a glimpse into how other people and cultures grow and eat food, what corporations are doing to our food supply, etc.

More than anything I have read, it clearly highlights the debate about how to deal with the issues of hunger and food insecurity in the world and in our local communities. This is something I have thought a lot about and why I started the Free Farm Stand. On the one side are the people who believe in the technology intensive “modern” approach to agriculture versus Gary’s approach which is to support local and traditional agriculture that fosters small scale diversity and isn’t aiming for mass maximum production values. The world can seem pretty depressing while reading his book, but there does seem to be hope nestled in between the pages and he presents a lot of examples of evidence of a growing movement of people’s efforts to turn things around.

Yesterday was the solstice and the days now will be lengthening. Now is a good time for us all to gather up our spent energies during the last year and get inspired again to plant new seeds come spring. We the people are the ones that have to make the changes that are needed in this world (that is what I always come back to, especially after reading inspiring books). I just ordered 18 trees to plant at our new garden on Potrero Hill and I can’t tell you how exciting that is to me. Planting fruit trees is one of the best votes for hope one can make. I was thinking that we should have at least one hands-on workshop on tree planting in January and also one on grafting.

We had another cold and rainy day at the Free Farm Stand. I got no leftover produce from the fancy farmer’s market, though I still had small bags of Brussel sprouts and radish left from last week (and I will be out next Sunday, but I really am not expecting to have much right after Christmas).

My surprise was that the combination of the three gardens I work in produced an ok amount of food to give away. I bought a scale recently and this week I weighed some of the produce I harvested. I picked a total of two pounds of baby greens from the gardens. With the exception of Treat Commons, the places where I am growing food are pretty shady. I would love to learn what others are growing now and it would be great if serious city growers could get together and exchange notes on what grows best for them and in what conditions (shade, sun, a little sun, etc).

My big discovery this week is to realize that arugula is a great plant to grow in a shady spot in the garden. It is so easy to grow. In a lot of shade the plants don’t get very big, but I did manage to harvest quite a lot. And in full sun where we grew some too, I got so much bigger plants and the yield was terrific. Arugula is in the cabbage family and is nutritionally good to eat and I think we can throw some not only in our salads, but throw the small greens on foods that we cook, like in the end in soups or on pizza right out of the oven, or in tofu scrambles. The same with baby greens or baby stir fry mix, just throw it in with our salads or cooked dishes at the very end.

So our table, despite the lack of huge amounts of farmer’s market produce had a nice display and variety of more locally grown food. Besides the baby greens and salad mix, I harvested almost the last of the hot peppers from the sunniest garden. And I also had basil from the African Blue basil plant (it ‘s flavor is not as strong a basil flavor as regular basil). This is an amazing perennial plant that is still growing very well in the full sun. I plan to make some cuttings to propagate it, because it is a hybrid and doesn’t produce seed. I cut up a giant pumpkin I found on the sidewalk last week and tried to give it away. Some people took it. Myself I am not a big pumpkin eater and this pumpkin was very orange inside and was probably loaded with vitamins and minerals, but it was rather bland tasting at least raw. Good to throw in a soup perhaps. But twenty pounds of food in the start of winter is something not to turn away from. I was talking to Greg a neighbor at the stand and he came back later with a friend and brought some Meyer lemons from his backyard which was really great.

To cheer things up a bit, I put on my Santa’s hat and gave away gift wrapped jars of honey from our bees and olives from the tree down the street. Cynthia processed most of the ones I gave out using just salt and water. I can’t believe she hand slit each olive. For the ones I processed I used lye which is faster though the final taste may be slightly different. And some sad news is that Jamie the bread girl lost her job at the bakery. She showed up to get some produce. I am now picking up the bread and if anyone wants to take that project on please contact me (it needs picking up at 7pm on Saturday night and a vehicle or a big bike cart is needed…I have a medium size bike cart that would be available and another cart that needs rebuilding).

I didn’t make it to the last work Friday workday at 18^th St. and Rhode Island, though others showed up and pulled ivy and built stone retaining walls. We are trying to determine now if anyone wants to come out after Christmas this Friday to work. I will probably show up to visit the garden in any case and see how things are doing. Last week there was some frost on the berms that David photographed with his telephone camera. No real damage was done to anything is what I heard.