Author: Tree

This week’s Free Farm Stand was a bit overwhelming to me and it seemed a little over the top with the crowds. First of all, Antonio brought by all these bicyclists from his 2^nd In Search of Good Food Bicycle Tour. There might have been 30 or more people who showed up and the plan was I was supposed to talk to them about the stand. I am starting to feel like it is a mistake to host these tours, because it is too much for many reasons. I started feeling like I was more of a performer than I really wanted to be, like I was in some kind of side show act. “Step right up and see Tree and his Free Farm Stand Act.” Also, I wound up being busier than I like and having a hard time talking to people who were coming to the Free Farm Stand not only for the tour, but to get food, etc. I hope I inspired some people to go out and garden and grow some food at the bare minimum. I spoke in favor of abandoning our current ways we think about our economic situation and how to tackle it…moving beyond the tired ideas of building a green economy and providing social justice work, or hiring homeless people to learn skills like growing food. Can’t we just grow food and share the surplus and have fun meeting all our neighbors and new friends who come by our gardens? I was just reading the blog for Forage Oakland http://www.forageoakland.blogspot.com/ and her October 28 manifesto is an example of something I am writing about, a model of doing something that is beautiful, fresh, and exciting. She was writing about a passion fruit vine with fruit on it in her neighborhood that she showed her friend. Then her friend went to a restaurant to show them the fruit and to see if they would want it for their pastries (without consulting her or the neighbors whose house it was growing at). “I found it alarming that the immediate reaction was to commodify the passion fruit.” That is the problem there in a nutshell, that a lot of people want to commodify everything in our world, and that was what I was trying to explain at my talk which I am not sure I got across.

After my talk to the bicyclists I did meet a couple of nice people who I talked to directly and it felt better talking to them one on one.

Fortunately I continue to have a great crew of people who are helping me set up the table and run the stand so I am more available to talk to visitors. By the way, I didn’t have a camera this week to document the scene. People are supposed to send me photos so until they arrive you will just have to use your imagination to see things.

At the very beginning two kids Camilla and her brother helped me set up the stand and put things on the table. They seemed to be around through most of the time the stand was open and it was fun having them around. The young boy told me at his school they have a garden and he seemed to know a bunch of stuff about worms and compost, etc.

The Secret Garden is getting less sun every day, but I still harvested small amounts of broccoli, chard, lettuce, kale, and one zucchini. I harvested the kohlrabi leaves as there wasn’t enough sun to get it to make kohlrabi and the aphids were moving in. In Treat Commons I harvested some more yellow peppers, a few rocoto peppers, basil (the perennial African Blue Basil is still growing strong and the other basils are about over for picking), some kale, and a handful of cape gooseberries.

At the permaculture guild meeting on Wednesday Tara brought a small amount cherry tomatoes (three kinds) from her garden in Visitacion Valley. On Friday at the work day at 18^th St. and Rhode Island Christy brought some apples from her CSA box that she couldn’t use and some small pumpkins, a bunch of chives, and the end of the tomatoes from Corona Heights Garden.

I got a lot of left over vegetables from the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market. A lot of salad mix, shelling peas, some beautiful red speckled beans for shelling, green beans, beets, radishes, and chard.

My new friend Marcus showed up with the last of his beautiful peaches. He mentioned that they were dirty and should be washed. I noticed this too when I picked peaches near Mclaren Park. He takes the cake for being a saint, just dropping off some peaches and not taking anything for himself. Another new friend dropped off some tomatillos and a small amount of Aloe Vera. There were also a bag of figs that showed up and a new neighbor came by with a bag of apples from her trees. Granny Smith and Fuji.

Cooking Demonstration

I put up a sign about a cooking demonstration that Nosrat had the original idea of organizing. At around 2pm Nosrat showed how to make a vegan pesto using what we had on the table. He brought some garlic and olive oil, and we had basil from the garden there and walnuts from my backyard tree. He set up a blender and whipped it up and put it on the bread we had (again we got a large amount from our Acme angel) that he sliced up. Sara translated the talk into Spanish and there was a good turnout. Then I showed how to cook the greens we had on the table (a mix of kale, chard, and mustard). I used the wok I brought and put it on the nice portable stove Nosrat brought. Again, Sara translated. People seemed to like the greens, and it was great to see all the kids try it out. It seems with the kids coming to the stand, if you it make it like a party with food they want to try it.

Plant Stand Expansion

Earlier in the week I spoke with some new friends that go to SF State who are eager to get involved in gardening and growing food and want to work with the farm stand. I talked about the part of the Free Farm Stand that needs work on which is outreach to neighbors to help them set up gardens and grow food in their backyards if they have space. I talked about my desire to improve the plant stand area and to have it be a place where someone would be there staffing the table, taking to people about the plants we are giving away, answering people’s garden questions, providing garden advice, and offering support for people that want to start a garden. Sara made a nice sign in English and Spanish for the table and a number of people potted up seedlings and labeled them. I also saw some kids get involved in planting the seedlings into bigger pots. I think we have a ways to go with having it work out more smoothly, but I thought it was a good start.

Kier from SF State brought his hand drum and at one point got the attention of people in the park by drumming, and Skyler joined in with the flute. Kier told me he started a Free Farm Stand at SF State by giving away the produce from their garden on campus.

18^th and Rhode Island Progress

The last Friday workday was pretty successful. A lot more people showed up and we got almost two more berms installed with 20 plus yds of chips laid down on 2 thousand pounds more of cardboard. There will be another work day on Friday and a workday on Saturday perhaps. We have been talking about having a workday every other Saturday maybe alternating Fridays and Saturdays. But this week we want to finish sheet mulching the entire site

News about the Victory Garden across from City Hall

I just got this email about the Victory Garden closing down and what is happening to it. A couple of weeks ago I heard about the city giving land to Project Homeless Connect at 16th and 7^th St. (I think about an acre!). Right now there is concrete there. Here is the email:

Hello-

I want to begin by thanking all of you who have been involved in the Victory Garden project over the past few months. The garden has been a huge success and we could not have done it without the amazing volunteer support from all of you!

As many of you may know, the garden is being removed from Civic Center Plaza beginning on November 23rd. While it will be sad to see the garden go, we do have exciting news about its future! All of the materials are being moved to another site in the City where Project Homeless Connect will create a permanent educational food garden for the homeless community. We are very excited about this garden, and are grateful for the opportunity to donate the Victory Garden materials to such an amazing new project.

Between Sunday 11/23 and Friday 12/5 (excluding Thanksgiving weekend) we will be needing volunteer help as we disassemble the garden and move it to its new location. We will be potting up perennial plants and herbs, taking apart the straw wattle beds and fence, moving soil, hauling materials, disassembling irrigation, and more. This will be hard manual work, but should be fun and rewarding. Many of the tasks will require heavy lifting (35+ lbs) and as there is a lot of work to be done in a short amount of time we ask that volunteers commit to their scheduled shifts, and show up on time and ready to work.

If you are able to volunteer on any of the days listed below please let me know. We will be working from 8:30am-4:30pm. Full day and half day (8:30-12:30 or 12:30-4:30) shifts are available and lunch and other goodies will be provided for volunteers!

Sunday 11/23
Monday 11/24
Tuesday 11/25
Wednesday 11/26
Monday 12/1
Tuesday 12/2
Wednesday 12/3
Thursday 12/4
Friday 12/5

Thank you again for all of your help over the past months. We could never have done this project without you!

Best,
Anna Fleishman
Victory Garden Coordinator
Slow Food Nation
609 Mission Street, 3rd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
415.369.9950 T
415.369.9951 F

Talk about the homeless and Slow Food Nation, someone sent me a flyer with information and guidelines for staff and volunteers when they had the Slow Food Nation event in September across from City Hall. She was somewhat upset with part of what she read: “Handouts: Please do NOT give food, samples, or leftovers of any kind to any homeless person, at any location, under any circumstances. Word will spread of free food and we will soon have an encampment…” I wonder if the people who wrote these guidelines are going to be working on the new homeless garden?

I am excited about another garden springing up in the city and hope it can become a beautiful oasis in an industrial freeway dominated landscape.

I was expecting rain and I actually thought I would have few people coming by the stand. As it turned out the weather was actually pretty nice most of the day and we did have a crowd. It was the perfect day in fact and exactly what I dreamed the farm stand could be like.

First of all, I had no produce from the farmer’s market. I was told few farmer’s showed up because of the rain Saturday. All I had was a small amount of produce that I picked from the Secret Garden and Treat Commons. My home backyard is pretty shady now and I am not expecting much from there right now, maybe some greens eventually.

A new volunteer Stephanie came by Saturday and on the way to Treat Commons we found 3 big perfect pumpkins in on the sidewalk. At Treat Commons we picked some kale and a few snap peas. I also pulled up a couple of daikon radish that looked twisted and deformed. Then we went to the Secret Garden and picked arugula, Swiss chard, some zucchini, and kale. I love a variety of yellow zucchini I grow it even though it is a hybrid (called Sebring from Johnny’s). It is so productive! I also like a variety of Swiss chard that Territorial Seed sells called Perpetual Swiss Chard. Chard doesn’t grow well here in the summer because of the pesky leaf miner (the larvae of a fly), but growing it now between about October and March it doesn’t get leaf damage. This variety doesn’t seem to bolt and just keeps growing and producing more and more leaves after you start harvesting.

I knew Sunday morning that I didn’t have a lot of produce to give away, but I just said to myself that is ok, it is becoming winter and food production will just have to slow down. When I got home from working at the soup kitchen in the morning there were three beautiful “Eight Ball” zucchinis at my front door. It was left I am sure by José who with Minda has been bringing me small amounts of surplus cucumbers and zucchini from their plot at Potrero de Sol Community Garden. It is great to know someone by the vegetables they grow. Like knowing José the Farmer, he’s the guy who grows those great cucumbers and zucchinis. When I got to the garden to set up the stand hanging on the fence was a bag of produce from Ellen with a sweet note inside saying she couldn’t make it today, but wanted to share some stuff. And Pam had written me and asked if we could use some apples and said she would try to drop some off. There was a lot of apples and pears and a big tub of mums (I am not sure who brought those). And also a big pile of scarlet runner beans I think from the Treat Commons.

I have been getting a lot of help these days from students at San Francisco State who are all taking a holistic health class. They have been showing up and helping me set up and run the stand which has been great. We had a pretty full table considering it was all from San Francisco local sources.

Some other big surprises. We got fourteen bags of bread this week.

It started out Jamie was hauling the rescued bread from her job home on Bart which sort of limited her on how much she could get. She and her boyfriend Mark both decided to get rid of their cars at some point and use public transportation most of the time. Then somehow Mark got his parents in the act and I met them on Sunday when they pulled up with this car full of bread. Amazingly I gave away most of it, I have about three bags left, which will go to Food Not Bombs or Martin de Porres.

Another wonderful surprise is that Marcus showed up with fruit from his Visitacion Valley backyard. I met him at the really really free market last week and he said he would bring some fruit by sometime. So this Sunday he came by and he showed me these small dark purple figs he harvested.

I tasted one and they were sweet and flavorful. Then he started pulling out peaches!

They were also very tasty and I was blown away by peaches growing in November. The story he told me about his house was also interesting. He thinks it is one of the oldest houses in the city and was on one of the last farms in the city too. The city took it over by eminent domain and divided it up and developed it. The property on which he lives still has the trees left from that farm. How sad in a way that cities by nature don’t have farms and yet wonderful that the trees that farmers planted here have survived to feed us today.

Jenny also showed up with a basket of basil that she and Dan harvested from Treat Commons.

Update on 18^th and Rhode Island

On Friday we had another great workday and finished building one berm. I have also gotten some soil and as soon as we get some compost to mix in with it I think we can begin planting. I assume we may talk about this more at the next permaculture guild meeting on Wednesday night.

I have been feeling an excitement in the air and a sense of change, but it has not so much to do with the upcoming election. One would like to believe that politics really changes things on a deep level. That is why a lot of us pay attention to all that is going on in the world, and we get sucked into the election news so easily. If nothing else we wear our political buttons and hang our signs up, yes on this and no on that, and we vote for all the right things to vote for. The change I feel though comes from meeting a lot of positive people these days and that keeps me from feeling more hopeful and less cynical. I just learned something basic about the seasonal changes here in this part of California that I will write about later, but somehow being in touch with the garden and these seasonal changes is also comforting to me these days.

Kirsten memorial and the Really Really Free Market…

On Saturday I turned my trusty wagon into a traveling Free Farm Road Show and hauled a lot of seedlings and plants to Dolores Park for the RRFM and memorial for Kirsten, one the main people who helped start it and organize it. I also brought pictures of the Farm Stand, a bucket of walnuts from my backyard to shell, and a sign Free Garden Advice. I spent a number of hours just shelling walnuts and talking to people, and giving away plants. Later in the day a friend watched the stand and I walked around looking at all the stuff being given away, but wasn’t really looking for anything. It is amazing how many people haven’t had fresh walnuts from a tree and they were a big hit. A lot of people want to try gardening, but think they it is hard and they can’t possibly grow anything. I got a lot of questions about how to water plants and my general reply is don’t over water. That the most common gardening error is over loving a plant by drowning it. The other common error is neglecting a plant and letting it dry up or just death by neglect. I did enjoy meeting some really sweet people, both gardeners and wannabe gardeners alike, and connecting with some of Kirsten’s closer friends that have the same idealism that she did.

A couple of other nice things happened at my Free Farm Stand Road Show. People came by and dropped off some pretty good tasting and giant grapefruit (they could have been pomelos) and another person dropped off some seeds, some mint, and lemon verbena. And someone gave me two high quality sharp knives to use in the kitchen, because they liked what I was doing.

After the Dolores Park event I went to Clarion Alley to set up because Ivy asked me to come. I wasn’t there long because I started asking myself what am I doing trying to promote this project by having my sign up and my “informational wagon”. I really am not trying to inflate myself or what I am doing and started feeling silly being there when it was really about music (mostly loud music) and partying anyway.

The Farm Stand gets a Farm (sort of)

After being “farmless ” since we started, the Free Farm Stand looks like we will have a place to grow a lot of food to share every Sunday. We have started working with the San Francisco Permaculture Guild turning a “vacant lot into garden plots”. David has put up a website to keep everyone interested up-to-date and try to explain what permaculture is (I am not sure if I am a permaculture person or not, but am open to trying out their approach to starting a garden from scratch): http://18thandrhodeisland.org/ . We have started having Friday workdays at 10am (I plan to show up at 9:30am). We could use pitchforks, wheel barrows, and flat shovels for the process in we are in of laying down wet cardboard and wood chips. We are also on the lookout for free clean soil (vs. fill).

Season Change at the Free Farm Stand

Somehow I had one of those moments where I felt a really learned something related to growing food. I have been feeling that the air is crisper and the light has changed significantly this last month and it felt like the season has definitely changed to autumn here. Our backyards are getting less and less sun as it is lower on the horizon. But another obvious clearer sign of season change is what is being harvested now and what is on our Free Farm Stand table.

This week was such a clear example of what I am writing about. The amount of San Francisco local grown tomatoes is for the most part over. I have been talking to some neighbors whose tomatoes are just coming in strong, but they seem to be the exception. They are the ones I guess who got their tomatoes in late (and I have also grown tomatoes here into December that I planted in June instead of February). In Treat Commons, which gets lots of direct sun every ay, we still have tomatoes producing. I harvested the last tomatoes from a number of plants and Christy brought a big bag of tomatoes from the Corona Heights Community Garden. She also brought Cape Gooseberries that everyone gets excited about and they are still growing well and producing the Chinese lantern looking fruit. The one yellow zucchini plant at the Secret Garden is still producing zucchinis and I picked two of them to share. I have been saving the four pumpkins I grew this year to put out on the table for an autumn touch to the stand. I also had an unusual looking buttercup type squash to give away. The scarlet runner beans are still pumping out the beans and I had more than a handful to give away (and they have more flowers too). The basil in all the gardens is flowering and I am pulling up the plants and giving out mostly flowers from the plants. The African blue basil which is supposed to be a perennial is growing well and I keep clipping back the flower stems.

I got a ton of leftover food from the Ferry Building Farmer’s market and some of it very seasonal. There were beautiful fuyu persimmons for example and the very end of the grapes from the one farmer who had them (they were getting soft but were very sweet). I also got from them some apples, cauliflower, a few potatoes,salad mix, and stir fry mix. Next Sunday Nosrat and Allegra are going to put on a cooking demonstration showing their ideas of how to use some of the produce we get.

Figs are also ripening now. In my backyard I have a green variety called Genoa that are slowing getting soft. They never have been very sweet nor tasty, but I may try grilling them and seeing how they taste that way. A woman brought some figs to the stand and gave me one to taste. It was so beautiful inside I had to take a photo of it.

It was sweet and yummy too! Another unknown visitor left a bag of figs in a bag on the fence with a sign for the Free Farm Stand.. This is terrific!. At the very end of the day when we were closing up there was one woman who showed up late and was taking the rest of what we had left over (not much). Sarah Miles who lives nearby came in with what looked like Granny Smith apples and dark fresh figs from her garden.

I want to comment that we had a great crew of women volunteers helping me set up this week. Corrine showed up with a couple of friends from the gardening & composting educator training program (GCETP or what I have called “getup” class) they all took this summer. Also, later in the day Sara showed up who also took the class and having her Spanish speaking skills was really great. Some of our more regular helpers were there too, Jenny, Thy, Maeve, and Maria. There was plenty to do, besides setting up the stand, they were able to label plants and put them on the plant give away table and also to just hand out produce to everyone. It left me with time to talk to neighbors and answer garden questions.

Food Program or neighborhood produce growing/sharing project?

I am really fortunate to have friends who help try to keep me in line when I seemingly stray from my goals. Christy sent me this email query last week that I appreciated:

” I thought the stand was really about using what people could produce here locally (as in right in SF proper) and outside of the commercial system, not just about redistributing surplus. I think maybe if you decide to stick more strictly to making available only what people here in the city who do not produce food commercially can produce, even if that seems like a smaller amount of food, you will have more of a chance of building a real full circle between producers and consumers, and building the sense of community the stand seemed to be developing when it first started. If the stand becomes another food bank, even if the food you redistribute is fresh and organic and all comes from within a few hundred miles, then you are doing something different. Not a bad thing, probably something necessary and helpful in its own way, but different from what I thought the original intention was. “

My reply:

“I have thought a lot about this issue… I have always seen getting surplus food as a form of city gleaning and as part of a strategy to deal with hunger in addition to growing food. Using the waste food in our cities.

But you are also right that the farm stand was not intended to be a food program in the traditional sense, like the food pantries I have run. I personally have wanted to be a farmer for one thing and just want to grow a lot of food to give away. I also like the idea of doing my part to make local organic food not just a thing for rich people. And part of that is to build a network of neighbors who grow food and share it with each other. I was inspired by not only the City Slickers Farm Stand in West Oakland, but this guy in Berkeley who has organized maybe a 100 houses to grow food…I am not too sure on the details. Of all my efforts so far, I think are falling short the most in terms of building a network of neighbors growing and sharing food together.”

At least two other people whom I have talked to sort of agreed with Christy and warned me about letting things grow too big. One woman said don’t give away bread let Martin’s do that. I guess I want to do two somewhat different things at the same time, and right now because the growing food part is going slower the free surplus local organic food is dominating the scene.

So I really am happy when people who come to the stand to bring something to share, even if it is not much. Maybe I need an AA group for people who like to give food away and are addicted to working in food programs

Gleaning report

For the second week in a row, I haven’t gone out to pick apples for the stand. I know where there is fruit, but I just haven’t felt like I have had the time to go out picking or researching the trees I have heard of. I did get some fruit from the Farmer’s Market, though it isn’t the same as picking your own locally grown fruit. While I was at the RRFM shelling walnuts someone told me about a huge walnut tree just blocks from the park. That would be a self-less job to harvest walnuts for the Free Farm Stand.

More Honey

Today we extracted over five gallons of honey. That makes the total of over 15 gallons of honey this year with one hive!

Jamestown Crew

On Tuesday afternoon I have been meeting with whomever shows up at Treat Commons to do some gardening and then later the Jamestown Center after school program shows up and we go to the Secret Garden to do more gardening for the Farm Stand. It always amazes me that we have such great volunteers who are so good at working with the kids. And that the kids and Nicole and her teachers aid are great to work with too. Below is a group photo and some pictures of the kids in action: