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The two weeks of self-promoting our work for the Bay Citizen of Tomorrow online voting contest is finally over!  I am so grateful and thankful on many levels. We came in 2^nd place with most votes (over 5,000 total voted is all the Bay Citizen web site said)) and we got a $2,500 check for the Free Farm Stand and Free Farm at a fancy award dinner last week. I am most grateful and thankful for all the support that we got from people literally all over the world voting (and more than once). All the other groups in the contest were worthy of the awards. The East Bay Children’s Book Project was the winner and got $5,000 and Loved Twice who gives out free baby clothes came in third and got $1,000. I was a little sad that SF Refresh and Megan  got less votes. I hope we work with them in future SF events this year.

The ceremony I attended with Angie was fun as it turned out (I was somewhat dreading it). It was a very formal affair, with a lot of people and reporters connected to the online newspaper the Bay Citizen. Plus there was a room full of philanthropist types and folks with money I assumed (judging from the cost of tickets).  I paced myself with the free cocktails  (I am such a newbie at bars I needed help deciding what kind of drink I should go with: I wound up with a screwdriver…It just came back to me now that I remember having that drink at a Bar Mitizvah of a cousin years and years ago). Two of those got me through most of the night. I was well lubricated and could talk and be Mister Sociable. I also lucked out that they were able to accompany my vegan diet with two small but delicious dishes.  Fortunately I didn’t have to give a speech and I met a foundation person that wants to visit us. How good can it get!

this was the salad

this was my main course

the desert with dairy I didn’t eat

On Saturday I had a real blast at the Free Farm.  Another one of my dreams is finally becoming a reality. If any of you have been reading these blogs, you might know of my vision of propagating avocado trees and giving them away at the Free Farm Stand. On Friday I went to the garden at 18^th and Rhode Island  to collect bud wood from two avocados that I helped plant there three years ago. Actually I was so happy going there and seeing all the trees we planted,  I think there are now up to 100 fruit and nut trees there in that future food forest.  They were all mostly doing really well and some had fruit and nuts on the trees. Anyway I scored some budwood from the Sir Prize and Lamb Haas trees and took it to the Free Farm on Saturday. We held a informal workshop where I demonstrated my method of budding the avocado trees I have been propagating there from seed in the greenhouse. I am really just learning to do this and have had some small successes so far (at the 18^th and Rhode Island I also saw some grafts that had taken that we had done on the sapote tree there ).  Anyway I am crossing my fingers that these buds take.

It was such a thrill today at the Free Farm Stand to give away some avocados from trees I helped plant years ago that were growing just down the street from the Free Farm Stand. Unfortunately, the people who picked the fruit didn’t know that it takes some experience knowing when to pick an avocado. Haas avocados for example, the kind we gave out, need to remain on a tree for one year before they are ready to pick.  I could tell that the ones we gave out were probably too young to pick, judging by the color and size of the fruit. I am not sure if they will ripen or  will have much flavor or be creamy or watery. Cross our fingers again.

Norma & Lolita with our hecka local produce

I was a little jealous of the  Farm Stand at the Free Farm on Saturday. I never thought of having two farm stands and my original idea was to have the Free Farm Stand located on an urban farm so people could really see the link between farm and table. It turned out the land that was available for a farm was not located in the Mission where I have been living and working since 1974. This is something I have been thinking about a lot, whether there should just be one farm stand located at the Free Farm t or try to manifest a farm in the Mission.

So when we harvested our raspberries they were so beautiful and delicious, but we really had to give them away there at the Free Farm. We couldn’t ship them to the Mission! I can’t tell you how much I love raspberries and the few plants that we put in at the community garden where the Free Farm Stand is go mainly to the kids adventurous enough to find them. We did get some of the strawberries though, enough to give people in line a little taste.

 

Talking about fruit, a woman with two kids came by with a peach tree seedling she somehow got and gave it to us. I thought it would be fun if we got her kids to pot up the seedling and it turned out to be such a beautiful experience. Pancho translated as I showed them what to do and then we took a tour of the trees we planted last week.  We left the potted tree under the shade of a sister plum tree we planted last week and I think the family had a good experience.

 

I decided to write something short this week about the Free Farm Stand so I can get it out tonight.  I am also going to do a double header by writing a short blog over at http://thefreefarm.org/. If there is anything that most stands out in my mind about the Stand this week is that I continually meet people who tell me this is their first visit and that they really appreciate our efforts. Like the universe it seems our little Free Farm stand is continually expanding. I know my gratitude and isnspiration is also continually expanding for all the people that come and all the people that volunteer or bring something to share. This week a new friend came to the Free Farm with two bags of lemons to share at the Stand and Bilkis brought lemons and oranges she picked from trees in Marin.

We got a lot of fava beans from 18th and Rhode Island garden, the first amount of produce harvested from there in a long while. When I went over there the other day to pick up the harvested beans, I was inspired to see all the trees growing there so happily. The thing is that we planted those fruit and almond trees in 2009 and now they are looking so good and starting to bear fruit and nuts. This high density fruit tree planting is what I copied in the park fruit tree planting last week, growing fruit trees more like bush/tree hybrids. Next week we may have at the stand some avocados from the trees from the garden I helped plant more than 25 years ago and it was also exciting to see that the newly planted avocado trees there were doing well and one tree (the Lamb Haas) has two avocados. The other tree (Sir Prize) doesn’t have fruit yet, but some bud wood I might cut next Friday and then on Saturday I might start budding the trees in our greenhouse that I grew from seed.

I also brought some surplus favas from my shady garden. It is amazing that those plants will grow in almost total shade and eventually produce fava beans. I planted those in November or December and harvested them the other day, so that is about 5 months or more to get beans. What a miracle! There was so much produce this week, the van was totally filled mostly with fresh left-over produce from the farmer’s market! Is summer here already? We also gave away the rest of our summer seedlings, but hopefully we will have more to give away in the weeks to come

I am looking forward to checking out my friend Antonio’s new movie In Search of Good Food. …a tour of “California’s Emerging Sustainable Food System. It is a double feature with the film the Greenhorns. Thursday and Friday May 19^th and May 20^th 6-10pm at Recology 900 7^th St. cross Street Berry.

The Free Farm Stand could really use a person with a good eye for art that has a camera to take photos for weekly writings here. Alas, this week I misplaced our camera and didn’t take any photos. Blogs without art can get pretty boring! Talking about photographers and art and a person with a great eye, I have been enjoying the 2,000 photos of trees (and bushes) my friend Bob downloaded onto  my computer. You can see them or download them on his artSharing site here: http://plantpersonalities.com/share.html. Can you tell by  now that I just love trees and the miracle they are?  Bob told me these are all trees and bushes that  connected with him in some way and that is why he photographed them. And while talking about trees, here is another link a friend sent me who know this man Jack Gescheidt who started the TreeSpirit Project (http://www.treespiritproject.com/Mission.html ). Jack captures fantabulous photos of amazing trees with naked people in them. He sells his prints and donates some of the profits to non-profit environmental groups. Finally  talking about naked people, unfortunately  (or fortunately) I just missed getting an email on Saturday, our workday at the Free Farm, telling methat it was World Naked Gardening Day http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43018053/ns/today-today_people/.

 

Our special Mother’s Day Farm Stand and Fruit Tree planting was what I would call a big success. Honestly I didn’t really have any ideas in mind as to how the day might go, I just put some effort into making sure the basics were covered and I showed up at around 10:30am to start setting things up.  I knew we had a great selection of produce to start the day.  The van was totally packed with it. We had 60 pounds of produce from the Free Farm and a lot of it went to the Sunday Free Farm Stand.

The tree planting got off to a good start when a person I just met named John came by to help plant fruit trees (he turned out to be the partner of  Sarah and they recently just joined our community  garden) . He brought his own shovel and a file to keep it sharp and I thought this is the kind of man that wins my heart. The he started digging holes which was no easy task, the soil being pretty compacted. Later others, mostly women and kids, started digging holes and then planting fruit trees: one avocado tree (Lamb Haas which is a cross between Haas and Gwen), one Osborn Prolific Fig (that I rooted from a twig a year or so ago), three kinds of mulberries, one plum, and two apple trees.

Our student friends from Stanford brought 90 pounds of citrus they gleaned from campus (clementines, lemons, and oranges) and helped give out seedlings and food that a few of us made for the celebration. It was a beautiful day and it really felt like a family affair.  We also got a lot of mothers visiting, including two friends that just had babies.  I kept thinking that it will be wonderful that these newborns might have a chance to come to this park when they get older and get an opportunity to eat fresh fruit from their neighborhood. I see this tree planting as an inspirational and motivational message for all those in our city that want to see us going more green and sustainable and addressing the real issue of hunger and food insecurity in San Francisco. I would like to see others planting and maintaining a small number of fruit trees in every park in the city as a baby step towards this goal.  What I have learned is that we can’t count on the city politicians to make this happen, neighbors have to organize on a grass roots level to get anything done that is outside the box, like the idea of Community Orchards.

Below are some photos and a great video made by Lila, a new friend and mom that came by. There is one shot in the video where I am showing off a fantastic photo of a bee that my friend and fellow gardener Ruben took and mounted for me and signed by friends at the stand.  How blessed can a person feel!  I came home feeling pretty good about much finishing this project, though I  can see adding some flowers in between the trees at some point and maybe some bushes with edible fruit.

I also felt a little like a politician who distributed food, kissed babies, and then asked people to vote. In this case I was really asking people to go online to http://www.baycitizen.org/citizenoftomorrow/ and vote for the Free Farm Stand and Free Farm.  I discovered a lot of people had not heard about this contest, though others have said they were voting everyday. I am really grateful  and continuously thankful for all the positive support we have gotten, not just from everyone that has been voting, but from all the people helping us run the stand and the farm. Though I will be glad when the voting process is over (May 16^th) and I will be truly OK with whomever wins.

The other day I got a sad update from Sharing Gardens in Oregon  (http://www.alpinegarden.blogspot.com/) that they lost the use of the land they just built their new greenhouse on and also they got turned down for a grant they applied for. It sounds like they are doing some deep reflection on what they are doing . They face the challenge we all share as people who are dedicated to doing things for free and on the model of sharing, how to support the effort, not only monetarily, but sustainably.  How do we get a crew of people for this kind of work over the long haul?  For those that believe in the idea that we should love our neighbors and do good onto others, that the world’s resources were created for all of us to share and be for the benefit of all, it is a question on how to do that in the shell of a society that is based on private property and everyone looking out for themselves. I don’t have many answers, but I get inspired by the people like Sharing Gardens and others who are trying to figure this out and experimenting in beautiful projects. I think they all deserve our support and encouragement.