Author: Tree

This week I had to help host a church pot luck in my back yard, so I asked Corrine to open the stand for me the first hour. She graciously accomplished the task and when I got there things were in full swing. The table was laid out beautifully and some people were already there getting food. My big reflection on the farm stand this week is that it is already growing a life of its own and becoming what it is somewhat independent of me. It is not that every week the farm stand is growing bigger and bigger, though more people are coming, nor do I think that I am growing more food to give away (the amounts of food still vary from week to week). And I haven’t attracted a core group yet of people that want to help run the Free Farm Stand.

The best thing about the farm stand though is that it is becoming an actual part of the neighborhood that is attracting a number of “regulars” every week. Neighbors are getting to meet other neighbors and something else is happening besides a food program for the poor or a tool to support local food growing.

I loved it when I got to the stand and there was a stack of flyers on the table about a peace march in the neighbor happening that evening. I was able to hand them out to people who came by and there was talk generated about the violence in our neighborhood and what people thought about it.

It is so beautiful also when neighbors come by with a small amount of something they grew themselves and bring it to share. And what was exciting was that when something was low, a neighbor would magically show up with a small amount of something to replace it with. That happened with the tomatoes. First Dave came with some more of his cherry tomatoes from Treat Ave. that resupplied the ones I had brought from several gardens. Then those ran out, but Nosrat showed up with a handful of tomatoes he grew right around the corner on Folsom St. Catilyn brought some salad mix from her garden that added to the lettuces I grew and contributed to the bounty. She also brought some nice looking tomatillos and with the different chili peppers we had someone could make a nice salsa.

We had something new on the table this week. Jamie who lives nearby got a job on Saturdays at Acme bakery at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. She hated to see the bread that wasn’t sold at the end of the day being thrown out, so after talking to me we decided to try giving it out at the Free Farm Stand. The company bakes very good organic bread. I gave away two big bags of it. She will bring some more next week, but she had a hard time carrying it all home from work on Bart, so she might bring less.

Justin and Brooke brought the most delicious pears they gleaned from an abandoned pear orchard in Morga in the east bay And Jo had more apples from Candlestick Point community Garden. A couple of people brought some lemons, including Dolores who came to our church potluck earlier. They were all mostly huge lemons. Dolores surprised me when she said hers were Meyer lemons, I thought that variety was small (at the least the ones in our garden are). The lemons at our stand were huge round yellow balls and pretty impressive looking. Someone else also brought a few cucumbers from a garden in Berkeley. There were a few beautiful lemon cucumbers and one Armenian cucumber. I was curious how that long unusual cucumber tasted. Maybe when there is only one of something I should slice it open on the spot so people can have a taste of it.

Peace March

In the wake of the six homicides in our neighborhood, a candlelight peace march was held Sunday night down 24^th St. I thought there were 50-75 people in attendance and I talked to a number of our neighbors, some who I have met at the farm stand. I think everyone is freaked out with the violence going down around here and no one has a clue what to do. So just walking together with your neighbors I think is a good thing and that is why I joined it. We visited the site of three murders and dropped off our prayers for peace.

On the march, I was talking to neighbor whom I have known for years. The subject of horticultural therapy came up because she was telling me since her husband has started getting into gardening recently, he has become happier and he whistles when he comes in from working in the garden. This is a man who has had to deal with horrible treatments for prostrate cancer.

I am a big believer that gardens and trees themselves can bring healing energy to the planet and for that fact alone we need more of them. One of my crazy fantasies right now is to try to talk Delano Market into letting me plant a Peace Garden in a part of their parking lot. I live right across from it and at night a lot of stuff goes down out there, and our neighborhood besides needing some good local organic food could use some good vibe energy that gardens and nature can bring.

Jam

The results are finaly in about the jam Eli made with the plums from the Secret Garden. I opened the jar that Eli brought last week and gave out samples of the plum jam in small plastic containers at the stand. It was really delicious. Eli loves to make jam and maybe we can collect more fruit and work with him making another batch. The plums in the Secret Garden are almost getting to the point where they are too ripe to pick. Though there are still a lot on

Mayor talks the talk for Local Food

I just read last week an article in the Chronicle how our dear mayor has now come out in support of local food and has gotten the Slow Food bite or something: The article is titled “S.F. is developing a policy on use of local food” ( http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/05/BAT312OBND.DTL&hw=local+food&sn=009&sc=614). “The policy will also encourage urban gardens and call for planting fruit-bearing trees and plants in street medians and abandoned lots.” “Mayor Gavin Newsom wants to get a lot more of that local produce onto the plates of anyone served a public meal – including schoolchildren, homeless people, hospital patients and jail inmates.”

Personally I have a hard time not thinking this is hot air. I contacted Daniel Homsey in city hall who I know to see if anyone there can help me find a place to start a free farm stand farm in the city. I pointed out the article to him and he said he would try to figure out who to contact there that might help. I also asked him for leads to get free compost. We will see if anything turns up for small nobodys and projects like mine. I also wound up talking to Tom Ammiano at the Peace walk and he liked my idea of setting up an urban peace farm or garden and said to contact him about it.

I love the idea and hope something good will come out of it. In the meantime I hope to start working on moving foward the projects of planting fruit trees and bushes in Parque Niños Unidos and getting a garden planted at 18th St. and Rhode Island.

We Bay Area folks are lucky to have so much choice in fruit to eat during the summer. The Free Farm Stand had a good selection of local fruit today. On Saturday night Angie and I visited friends in El Cerrito in the east bay. Having a one track mind and thinking a lot about food harvesting and collecting, I realized that a social visit can be turned into a fun fruit gleaning trip. I noticed right away that the family we were visiting had an orange tree loaded with fruit and the next door neighbor a tree loaded with apples. And the house on the other side had been foreclosed and was abandoned and up for auction. It had a dying lemon in the front yard and an apple in the back. Both had a lot of fruit on them that I picked, and I also got to pick some oranges from our friends. The other apple tree I had to get permission from the neighbor, but I didn’t have time.

So besides the apples, oranges, and lemons, I scored a lot of delicious organic Brown Turkey figs from the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market. Of course they were delicious and very popular and I learned the word higo for fig. We also had more plums from the Secret Garden and a woman came by with what looked like the last of her tasty dark red plums. I am still picking cape gooseberries that I wrote about previously and had some to give out today. People don’t know what they are, but once they taste them they usually like them. This was the first week we had a lot of tomatoes, another fruit of the summer though we think of it as a vegetable. I picked them from all the gardens. And then Dave from down the street came by with three bags of the most delicious cherry tomatoes he just picked. I want to find out the variety name for his dark red ones that looked like Cherokee Purple.

Eli who I also wrote about last week, came by as promised with a large jar of plum sauce that he made from a half bucket of plums that he got from the stand last week that I picked from the secret garden. I am going to give it away next week probably if I get some small plastic yoghurt containers with lids to put it in. Brooke and Justin recently found an abandoned pear orchard in Moraga in the east bay and picked a lot of pears and have been drying them with a food dryer. I tasted one of the dried pears and it was yummy. I am really busy all this week, but would like to organize a trip there to pick the pears. Also, I would like to organize a community food processing day to can or dry some of our abundance.

Again I was surprised with the amount of other produce we had at the farm stand and that I was able to give almost all of it away. The secret garden produced a lot of lettuce, kale, and Asian greens. The runner beans are declining in productivity, I picked just a handful. A Treat Common gardener complained to me that she didn’t like the way the runner beans tasted and that the fuzziness was unpleasant, but I disagreed with her. Am I a minority of people who like to eat runner beans? Christy came by with the end of her harvest of purple string beans, more rhubarb, and some summer squash from the Corona Heights Community Garden. I am continuing to grow sprouts and people like them.

Christiane came by with some honey from her bees in Golden Gate Park and it tasted very different from our honey. She put it in larger jars and once I get some more jars, I will bottle it up to share at the stand. She left some honeycomb in it for people to see it. I really appreciate people sharing something so special like honey that comes from hives taken care of with love and gentleness.

I was happy that Allegra and Christy came by and could speak Spanish with the large number of Hispanic people who come by the stand. I love all the families that get fresh organic and local produce, knowing that the kids are getting real healthy food. With diabetes and obesity of the rise, especially in minority communities, encouraging people to eat and grow some of their own organic food is a step in the right direction we all need to go in. I hope the free farm stand is getting this message out to the people who come. Here are some photos of some Mission kids, some of the cutest ones around.

Slow Food Madness

I made it down to the Slow Food events in the Civic Center on Saturday. The main event down there seemed to be the farmer’s market with all the hippest probably most expensive, organic and sustainable produce and products around. I understand the labor that goes into growing this kind of beautiful loving food and probably putting your money into organic food (if you have it) is worth it to support the industry and the bees (more on that later). But the market by its nature and the whole Slow Food weekend hardly promoted slowing down and moving away from consumerism.

Personally, being a wannabe farmer, I got over excited and stimulated being down there with all the crowds and the excitement of all these groovy booths selling the most wonderful melons, or dry farmed early girl tomatoes, or Koda rice which I have never heard of but made me want to buy it all. Each booth had a printed sign describing the farm or product they were selling, and where they were located and why what they were doing was so great. I fell in love with the heirloom potatoes and was able to talk the saleswoman into giving me a red Peruvian spud to try growing at home (I didn’t have say much she was very generous). To tell you the truth I didn’t even look at any prices. The elephant heart plums were exciting too. I recently tasted an elephant heart plum at Martin’s soup kitchen before I knew what variety they were, and they were absolutely delicious. The woman at the stand said they were alternate bearing, but worth growing them. I can’t wait to get some scion wood for them and try growing them myself. I also dropped in the bookstore booth and checked out all the books out promoting local organic food, there are so many of them out now. Plus all the cookbooks with the same theme…”cook you own local organic sustainable slow foods”.

I also made it over to the free ‘Soapbox” events in the fabulous Victory Garden. Our local permaculture promoter Benjamin Fahrer was doing a great job as MC. When I showed up he was talking about pee-pee ponics and saving your nitrogen rich urine for your citrus trees (10 parts water to one part piss). I thought that was far out to talk about that with that crowd (the place was packed). He also made a great pitch to make the Victory Garden there permanent and told us to contact our local politicians to tell them that.

I spoke later in the day with John Bela who helped make the garden a reality and he told me that the garden was going to stay there until November. He says they already have harvest over five hundred pounds of food for the food bank! (By the way if anyone has an extra scale to loan or give us, I would love to weigh how much produce we are giving out at the Free Farm Stand each week, I think it is great to document these things).

John made one of the best arguments for moving the garden from its present location. He said that the space should be preserved for large gatherings that often happen in front of city hall, like big protests or rallies. I see his point, but am not sure if there isn’t room both for garden and rallies. I saw a complaint on the SFist website (http://sfist.com/2008/06/25/farmers_market_survives_newsom_thre.php) about the closing down of the City Farmer’s Market for the Pride Sunday event.

There has been a fair amount of complaints about the Victory Garden being only temporary and even a protest on August 20^th by Food Not Bombs (http://sffnb.org/2008/08/13/event-protest-serving-at-city-hall/). .. “In this case the garden is temporary and at a cost of $180,000 (though sponsored by a private group), while the nearby Heart of the City Farmers Market, a critical and much needed source of healthy food in the tenderloin and south of market neighborhoods has fought for it’s survival and against massive rent increases pushed by the mayor and real estate
department“. SFBG Politics (http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2008/07/a_hollow_victory_for_urban_gar.html ) called it a “Hollow Victory”. .. “Indeed, if Newsom and other city officials wanted to make a real commitment to support this effort, they would pursue a citywide program of supporting community gardens (which keep getting ripped up these days) and doing a survey of what surplus city properties could be turned into gardens that might still be there after the television crews have gone.” I think having the garden downtown and across from city hall is a valuable educational tool that gets a large number of people thinking about all kinds of food issues and gardening in general. I think finding another sunny place downtown to grow a big garden would be a good goal of the city, Slow Food Nation and Victory Gardens 08. There is a lot of lawn around the new library though not as sunny as where it is. I also like community gardens, but I think we need more Victory Gardens that grow food for non-profit groups feeding the hungry. Like FNB writes, “Enough with theatrics, resolutions and press conferences, San Francisco needs concrete support for permanent, healthy and accessible food for residents of civic center/tenderloin neighborhood and other low-income communities.” They might have missed the point that the current garden is doing that right now and it is a beautiful effort, it just needs to be made permanent.

The best talk I heard was by Serge Labesque who is a bee keeper and teacher from Sonoma County. He is the teacher that my bee teacher Bryan respects. He spoke about the “trouble time for our bees”. He explained what the factors are for the pollinators declining in the U.S. He said the number of honey bee hives have declined to critically low levels for the past six decades. He said there were a number of things we can do. Among the things he recommended to help the bee is to buy locally grown organic produce, to provide habitat for pollinators around your homes, don’t use chemical compounds in your gardens, become an organic backyard beekeeper, propagate local bee stock (don’t buy bees especially queens that were raised away from our area), or join a local bee club.

Wild Boar Eaters

Last Thursday went to a local event don’t the street called the Pirate Seed Swap. The poster I got by email said “The Greenhorns, a sneak peak at the documentary about America’s young Farmers”, “Heather Flores, author of Food Not Lawns with a slide show about saving seeds and swapping them”, “with slow nibbles, biodynamic wines, seed to swap, handout, nation –wide slow food friends”. The event was hosted by the Greenhorns, Slow-Food Nation, and the Bull Moose Hunting Society (it was in their warehouse). Here is a review of the event on the web: http://www.saveur.com/article_print.jsp?ID=1000064576. Here is my reporting.

I actually looked the documentary trailer up online and I discovered my friend Brooke was in it. It looked interesting, stories about young people that become hip farmers that grow safe and sustainable food. The filmmakers want to inspire a new generation of farmers that will preserve our farmland and our food supply. And make a living out of farming (good luck!).

I checked out the seed swap and it was mostly seeds from seed companies, some seeds that people saved and brought, but I didn’t find anything I needed. I talked up the seeds I brought to share to a couple of people looking at the seeds, the Double Purple Orach that I grew this year. I also attended the talk by Heather and she was mainly promoting seed swapping events. I like the idea of people saving seed and sharing it and eventually having a seed library, another wonderful project a local garden team could organize.

The part of the event that really sent my mind reeling was the introduction by this man from the Slow Food Nation. He welcomed everyone and explained the nature of the event and that people were invited to join in the feast, that include recently hunted wild boar from Sonoma (inspired I suppose by Michael Pollan in Omnivore’s Dilema). The article above said it was shot on a non-functioning ranch north of Sacramento. He introduced
a man who lived at the warehouse that was hosting the event who is a member of the Bull Moose Hunting Society. The society is about promoting hunting and tracking, and teaches young people how to hunt and shoot a gun and clean and gut the animal for meat. The wild boar are non-native pests (kind of like non-native trees but more destructive) according to them and so it is good to shoot them and eat them and to know where your food comes from and what they eat. It is sustainable they claim and a good thing that we should all learn. My friend Antonio was trying it out and he said it was weird tasting, but that he has been eating vegetarian for a while so maybe he wasn’t used to it. The platters of boar disappeared pretty fast as people chowed down on it all.

I just want to put this matter to rest. As much as I understand this boar eating, I personally prefer to remain a vegan and stay with my principles of doing as little harm as possible in the world. About a year or so ago I was so mad at the rats eating the avocadoes in the trees in the garden I was working in, I thought about getting night vision goggles and a bb gun and shooting them. I think I could have done it at that time. Now I am thinking that the wild boar eaters don’t have to travel out of town to go hunting. They should stay local and hunt the rats that are everywhere here (it is a delicacy in Thailand and it doesn’t come with the karma of eating pork). Then they could go for the feral cats that are everywhere pooping in our gardens and eating the birds and over reproducing.

Apples, plums, lemons, and tomatoes

There was lots of locally grown produce on Sunday. I could tell people who came that ” these tomatoes came from Treat Ave. your neighbor Dave grew them and put them in used strawberry baskets. ” Some apples and huge lemons came from around the corner on Folsom St. from Olga’s backyard. Other apples came from two other people. The plums that everyone loves are from the Secret Garden on Harrison St. around the corner of 23^rd St.. The lettuce and the kale come from that garden too, the kids who worked in the garden with Robert , Corrine, and I this summer grew it. Some of the tomatoes came from Treat Commons and my backyard nearby and a lot of the salad mix was from Treat Commons. Others came from a garden in San Mateo that Sigrid who also brought along with more of her green beans. The beets, stir fry greens, turnips, basil, herbs, and bok choy was unsold organic produce from the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market or the Now Valley Farmer’s Market and was probably the food that came from furthest away (at the most 100 miles). It is collected and redistributed by Food Runners. For some reason they often have a lot of beets they don’t sell so we gave away about 30-40lbs of them! I think that leftover organic produce from the fancy farmer’ market is great to give away and is a form of city gleaning, but I still hope we mostly can grow and share a lot of our own home grown fruits, vegetables, and flowers. It is the freshest and tastiest. A friend came with some organic carrots that looked like they were dumpster dived or sitting in a refrigerator too long, and I was reluctant to put them on the table, even after he clean them up. If I don’t know exactly where they came from I am a bit concerned. They looked sad, tasteless and were probably low on nutrition, but he didn’t have a garden and he really wanted to bring something to share, so I let the handful of them sit there with the more regal produce. And it turned out they were all given away.

Local honey

I brought some small jars of honey (I still have more to bottle but ran out of 2,4 or 8 ounce glass jars if anyone has some we can sure use them…baby food jars are the best). A great surprise is that Eli, a beekeeper I met at the San Francisco Beekeeper’s Association, came by with some honey from his five hives in his backyard at 20^th and Dolores St. And he brought some homemade plum jam. He likes to cook down fruit and bottle it, so he took half the plums I brought to make into more jam and some of the apples to make applesauce. So soon we will have more canned fruit, hooray. I forgot to ask him how he sweetens it.

We talked about organizing a plum picking day at the Secret Garden and then he would make more jam. If anyone wants to help make this happen please let me know.

Everlasting Flowers

Earlier in the week Jo brought the most beautiful blue statice flowers she grew in the Candlestick Point Community Garden (she also brought apples). I love everlasting flowers and like the fact that everlasting flowers retain their form and color after they dry. It was much fun to give them away.

Slow Food Weekend coming up

As I have written about before, there is a lot of excitement in the air about growing local foods and eating organic. The Slow Foods Nation big event is coming up this weekend and I am feeling pretty alienated from what is going on: A food tasting pavilion that is not only expensive to go to, but offers little for vegans, a high price speaker series with all the foodie/ecology big names and stars, and an expensive I am sure marketplace with vendors approved by the Slow Food Nation staff for their commitment to using good, clean, and fair production practices ($50 a pound chocolate).

There are going to be free talks and events all three days at the Soapbox (http://slowfoodnation.org/events/the-main-event/marketplace/soap-box/ for schedule). At 2:300 on Saturday Serge Labesque a Sonoma area beekeeper is speaking and I hear he is a great teacher.

There is a also list of Slow Journeys that also require you to fork over a good chunk of change to see places like wine vineyards, cheesemaking farms,a gourmet mushroom facility, some organic farms, and an olive oil ranch. There is one free Slow Journey to Alemany Farm (no bus ride included), the hip San Francisco farm that “provides green jobs for low-income communities, while sowing the seeds of economic and environmental justice.” You have to bring your own potluck lunch to that journey and you can stick around and volunteer at their workday.

So the Free Farm Stand will not be represented at the Slow Food big to do and there won’t be a Slow Journey to the Farm Stand on Sunday. I know I am all for local food and slowing down, but I am not on the big Slow Food Nation radar (though I have spoken to many of the people involved). Maybe I am too on the fringe with my crazy idea of giving food away. I don’t think the idea is taken seriously. It could be a good thing actually and maybe what we need is similarly minded gardeners to unite and work together: those who like the idea of forming a network of neighbors helping each other to grow food and sharing it with each other, and giving away the surplus. Right now there is so much gardening that can be done and all that is needed is a group of committed people to put in a minimum of work every week. In some ways this is already starting to happen. On Tuesday afternoons from 1-3pm I meet up with a few people in Treat Commons and we work together. I am hoping to make Saturdays a regular work day at the Secret Garden for now, maybe at another garden in the future.

The Victory Garden in front of city hall is still one of the best parts of the Slow Food show and I think it will be taken down after labor day (hopefully moved to a permanent location). For anyone interesting in growing food and flowers, it is really worth seeing just to see how close you can plant vegetables and flowers. Things are growing so well there and I love it that the food is being given to the Food Bank. I especially liked seeing the three sisters and how well they are growing together.

Blog zine?

Someone suggested that I print up my blog postings every week and hand them out at the stand for those who come and don’t go online to read it. I am thinking about this, maybe publishing a shortened version, and wonder if there is anyone out there that could translate a copy of it in Spanish every week. I could also use artists that might illustrate the zine. Please contact me if these ideas inspire you to get involved.

Shooting on 23^rd and Treat

I learned from a neighbor who came to the stand that the night before a young man was shot and killed on the corner of 23^rd Street and Treat Ave. The neighbor who told me about it had witnessed the previous shooting of someone right outside his door on Treat Ave, a few months ago I believe. He heard the shots and ran out to help and saw a man bleeding on the doorstep. This kind of violence makes me feel powerless and I am not sure what I can do to help the situation out. All the good vibes at the farm stand may or may not have an effect in the long run, but right now it’s a whole world I am not a part of, though it is in my neighborhood. I send out a prayer for peace and love to the young mans family and for all of us that are touched by this senseless violence.