This last week I have been thinking a lot about seeds and seedlings.
I just placed a big seed order and we have a lot of seeds that were donated to us and to Welcome. We have some seedlings that were donated from Sunnyside Organic Nursery, most that have been put in the ground already, and we have seedlings that we started that are growing in cold frames at the Free Farm. We need to be planting the seeds we have and that are coming in the mail soon. Almost everyone that wants to plant a garden needs seedlings and seeds. I say almost because we also like to plant root crops like potatoes that you start from tubers, and garlic from bulbs. My real passion is planting fruit and nut trees that you don’t always start from seeds, though I do with avocados and white sapotes that I then later graft.Seeding help is needed now to make this seedy story happen.
I wrote in my last blog that if we get a greenhouse the revolution will really begin. Actually seeds are the revolution packed with hope.
The Free Farm Stand too is really just a seed that I have planted to help grow an urban farming movement in our neighborhood to make sure everyone has access to fresh locally grown produce, especially those on tight budgets and low incomes. Now a lot of people are making that seed grow.This week the long line was back and we are still in the early part of the season with less produce available. The hecka local table was hecka seasonal with mostly greens and oranges. Wendy with the Urban Sprouts School Gardens brought by 3lbs of greens from their gardens, and a volunteer brought lemon balm from his backyard. Spike also brought produce from her ex-myfarm garden that she said is growing well. Again we ran out of produce early.
We are making great progress with the Free Farm. On Wednesday another bed was double dug and planted. Saturday started off to a good start when a huge dump truck arrived with about 12 yards of manure. Then more beds were finished and planted, steps down to the farm were improved, some work on the labyrinth was done, and it being Arbor Day two trees were planted: a Pakistan Mulberry and a Lamb Haas avocado. More neighbors showed up to help and what is nice is that we have all age groups represented, from kids to seniors. Also check out the Free Farm website for other write-ups of the project as it goes along and
What a glorious day of sharing! Sunday was on target of what I have imagined a neighborhood food sharing network would be like. I really don’t have a lot of produce to bring to the stand these days. Everything is mostly coming from 18th and Rhode Island. The greens there are about over in terms of harvesting and we don’t have anything to replace them with so far.
Just as we started setting up, Ed a neighbor on Shotwell St. came by with 10lbs of lemons from his tree. Then a man and two women whose names I unfortunately have forgotten came by with two big bins of really beautiful baby kale and chard that they just harvested. I was so busy weighing the bounty that I didn’t get a photo, but truly it was like some angels had arrived with gifts from heaven. I brought some white sapotes from my tree that Mike cut up to give people a taste. Wendy brought some more greens from the SPROUTS school gardens she teaches in. I heard Allison dropped off produce too. We had about forty pounds of avocados that Lauren dropped off. Read about where they came from towards the end of this blog. All the gardens that we have been encouraging and helping in some ways came by with some produce which made me feel great Spike brought green onions and greens, Lisa brought some broccoli, and Clara and crew brought by greens from the Secret Garden. The Secret Garden is really taking off and I am so happy that there seems to be a regular day of activity happening there on Sundays. Brooke and Courtney came by with some extra produce from their local little business called Little City Gardens (http://www.littlecitygardens.com/). Although I am in the free world I must say that Little City Gardens has charm and class. I am also impressed that they raised over $15,000 I think in a couple of weeks on a website called kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1189103863/little-city-gardens-an-experiment-in-the-economic). Brooke told me they are working on getting a larger piece of land so they can expand and start a CSA, which I think is much better than just supplying fancy restaurants with expensive greens.
Urban Agriculture is so much in the air these days. I have even been invited to be on a panel to talk to some students at USF on Tuesday on the subject “URBAN AGRICULTURE in the 21st CENTURY…
Where art, commerce, education, politics and generosity meet to promote city-grown food”. Melinda Stone is a professor of Environmental Studies at USF who is hosting this panel discussion and is the one who contacted me. She asked if before the discussion I would check out their gardens. My friend Justin is the garden coordinator at their garden on Turk near Masonic on campus. I have wanted to visit the garden for some time and finally did get over there last week. This is also the garden where some of our Free Farm Stand volunteers go to school. Melinda Stone and another professor actually started the garden and then got the school to hire a coordinator when the project started growing bigger. She has just recently gotten her foot in the door at another garden at Booker T Washington Service Center near Sutter and Presidio, not far from the university. Both sites are fantastic. I was really inspired with what Jason and the students have done at this garden. This is also the place that has set up another Free Farm Stand on campus for students and neighbors. The Booker T Washington site is behind the Family Resource Center and is a former SLUG garden that has been sitting vacant and abandoned for years. Students are cleaning it up, laying down cardboard, and mulching. There are also some beds they are going to plant. Melinda said she was inspired by the idea that we have been promoting of creating a neighbor nexus of food growing. So with the growing interest in students wanting to get involved with urban agriculture she is expanding the gardens near the university that are growing food for the community. The Family Resource Center next to the new garden will be great because they already have a food pantry on Mondays happening there that can get fresh produce from the garden. Already some greens from the university garden have made their way to the pantry and people love them.
One of the things that really excited me was the number of fruit trees planted at the university site. This is an amazing resource for the city, besides the fruit it will produce for the “shoppers” at the USF Farm Stand. If everyone could keep a record of what they are growing and keeping notes think how valuable that would be to everyone interested in fruit growing!
The Free Farm is rocking! Did I mention our blog for this collaborative project: http://thefreefarm.org? On Wednesday more work was done on finishing the steps going down to the farm and the trellis was strengthened with wire. On Saturday two more pickup trucks of compost were brought in and by the end of the day the pile was gone. Hopefully this Saturday we are getting 12 yards of manure, but I am sure we can use much, much more. Thanks to the generosity of Sunnyside Organic Nursery we got a lot of seedlings donated and we actually got one 4 x 25’ bed planted with lettuce. We have a lot more seedlings that really need to go in the ground soon, but we need the beds double dug. If the manure comes in we are ready to have a digging and moving manure party this Saturday. Sunday will be arbor day and but celebrations begin here in San Francisco on Saturday (see calendar). If you want to come by our Free Farm on Saturday we will be planting some trees as part of the celebration of trees.
Besides planting beds, more pathways got sheet mulched, a side of the hill got mulched and planted with some perennials and sunflowers, and we grafted some avocados. This is a whole story in itself. When Case and Lauren went to Sunnyside Nursery to get a donation of seedlings, there was a giant avocado tree next door. They got permission to pick the avocados and I suggested they take some scion wood. It turned out the avocados were some kind of Haas, though unfortunately they were harvested too early. It takes some experience to know when to pick an avocado. Haas avocados need to stay on a tree for a year before they are ready to pick and even then you pick them when they are hard. Ideally you want a dark green color on the Haas avocado when you pick it vs a light yellow green avocado.
Last week I sent out two grant proposals, one for a greenhouse for the site. As I was telling a friend if we get a greenhouse the revolution will really begin. What the urban ag movement needs is a big greenhouse and a lot of manure (plus some free or cheap land of course).
In the meantime some great gifts are coming in for the Free Farm: tools, lumber, and all the drip irrigation supplies we will need for a lot of the farm (thanks to a generous donation from a landscaper named Palmer who got us everything on our list for a drip system). Thanks!
The rain didn’t stop us this week, though less people showed up to get produce. We had a great selection of produce and it must be broccoli season, because we had a huge amount, including five pounds that we harvested from 18th and Rhode Island. That is the only garden I am getting produce from right now and I haven’t been putting in replacement seedlings because I haven’t had them (we are way behind in planting more seedlings).). Two women from Stanford glean came by the Free Farm on Saturday with 30 pounds of oranges and lemons they pick on campus. Lynn brought by some sprouts she grew, two neighbors came by with extra lemons from their tree, and Bernadette came by late with some Indian lettuce (otherwise known as miner’s lettuce) she picked in the Presidio Garden.
Right now I have to admit I am focusing a lot on our new Free Farm. We have a new website (http://thefreefarm.blogspot.com/ ). We continue to have these incredible work days that leave me feeling really happy. This week the other bed got planted, more work continued on a trellis over stairs that we will eventually plant with different varieties of scarlet runner beans from England, a new bed got double dug, more compost was brought in, some plans for drip were discussed, seedlings got potted up, and more pathways got sheet mulched. The best part of the workdays are all the stellar people that drop by and usually stay around to help. It is especially wonderful that neighbors are dropping by and there is such a diversity of people helping out. All ages all types of people. A week ago a neighbor who lived across the street for 35 years got evicted and was moving out (see below my rant against landlordism). He gardened in a vacant lot nearby on Franklin and Turk? He showed us photos of that garden. It was very moving to meet this guy and all the other neighbors who live nearby and who appreciate that we are turning a vacant lot into something beautiful.
lost garden
I must mention that I also had a sweet time inthe Permaculture Garden on Friday. Our Friday workdays there are always a surprise, I can usuallyy count on one person that I know to show up and help; but often a new volunteer arrives and this week it was Ildiko. She had been on my mailing list and I recognized her name, but we never met. She helped harvest a lot of the greens and broccoli and then we planted more trees together. Bilkis inventoried all our trees that we have planted and I plan to type it up. I think we have planted 70 trees of all kinds so far.
Weeping mulberry
Two Plums
Contorted JuJube
I just last week watched two movies that were very powerful and reaffirmed to me that what we are doing is the right thing. One video was The Garden and the other was Food Inc. I knew that the video The Garden was going to be intense and depressing so I was hesitant to watch it for a while. I mean who wants to see a fifteen acre piece of land in L.A. that people have been gardening in for 11 years get torn down? Actually there is a lot of beauty in the movie even though it is sad to watch. I left reminded that a lot of us are all in the same boat. Growing food on land that is we do not own. We put a lot of work and resources into the land we work on knowing that we are in a temporary position, kind of hoping that the landlord will like what we are doing and let us garden forever. Or that the economy will stay depressed and that people won’t have money to develop. I always go back in my mind to the original Diggers of England in 1649 who dug up the commons and planted corn and other crops for all to share. The lands were finally “bulldozed” or trampled and tore up by the government army to protect the landowners and their right to private property. So in this movie the land owner turned down $16 million dollars that was raised to buy the land for the people (3 times what he paid for it) just because he had the right to do what he wanted. That is not to mention the corruption of the politicians and other groups involved and how he got the land in the first place. The Diggers stood up and planted and what they did is really inspire us folks down the line in history. That is why the Free Farm Stand and the Free Farm are free. To inspire us all to move away from the concept of private property and to encourage a more brotherly/sisterly way of living our lives. Yes there are nice landlords like the one who is letting us use the land at the permaculture garden at 18th and Rhode Island or the pastor at St. Paulus Church. Yet at the same time we must remember the reality that we can learn from movies like The Garden, that private property and the right of landowners rules, at least here. That no matter how evil a landlord wants to act, and bulldoze trees and crops, and destroy things that are very sacred to a people, that is ok as far as the rules go. So we must stand up in our lives and make a very strong statement and rejection of those twisted values, at least that is my humble opinion. I know we all have to pay our bills and they say money doesn’t grow on trees. But just now I was thinking generosity does grow on trees…at least that is what it seems. Every week as I keep repeating myself here, I feel so grateful for the generosity of so many people who are making this revolution happen and that is so precious.
Food Inc. is sort of a repeat of things I have read like Michael Pollan’s fabulous book Omnivore’s Dilemma. What was new to me was seeing all the graphic images of the meat industry. I know we all have our habits and we choose what we eat, but maybe those people who like to eat bologna sandwiches should at least understand better where there food comes from. I also guess if people only ate grass fed beef or chicken meat from “humanely” treated chickens before they were slaughter it would be better for us all. Though I can’t see myself wringing chicken necks like in the video or hunting a wild boar in Sonoma and eating or serving pork sandwiches.
Please check out our new calendar as I am trying to put on there some of the fabulous events related to food growing happening in the area. Also, we are trying to manifest a lot of things now related to the Free Farm. Like bamboo poles to grow beans on, drip irrigation parts, a shed, and large containers to grow food in on the cement perimeter surrounding the farm.
