Category: Uncategorized

This is a valentine to all you who are following the adventures of the Free Farm Stand.  These days the stand is mostly sharing good vibes more than sharing good produce.  During these skimpy times for produce and when things seem to run out faster, I feel really appreciative when, like this week, people show up with something to share. Robyn’s brother was driving up from L.A and  brought a sack of lemons with him to bring to the stand. An older Chinese woman brought  some lemons, someone else dropped by another  big bag of them (have you guessed it is citrus time?), and towards the end a another neighbor dropped off the most fragrant limes from his backyard tree. A total of about 42 lbs of fruit.  We also had a kale and collards from the Free Farm. And our favorite root to share right now, Yacón.

We can all learn a lesson from the recent non-violent revolutions in the past few weeks, that we the people have the power to transform our society. For example, we can create a world of sharing versus buying and selling, but we have to do it ourselves. We can make a shift from being merely consumers in a consumer oriented society, to caring for our neighbors and others in a family oriented world (where we look at strangers and neighbors as family). This may sound a bit too Lovey Dovey, but I believe for myself this is the way to live a good life.

My friend Antonio gave me a flier for a free event he will be talking at that sounded interesting “Underground Food Politics”: “With urban homesteading all the rage and backyard and vacant lot food production on the rise it appears we’re taking big steps toward encouraging self-sufficiency in the Bay Area.” They will be looking at how much of this food movement is focused on making sure everyone has access to local organic fresh food , what he calls food sovereignty and the idea of food security (and in my mind how much focus is there on making sure those in need get served) versus how much is thefood movement is focused on setting up small hip businesses that serve mainly those with money. He encouraged me to go to present my view, but these days I feel that the time for talk  is not as important as is the time for us to act. The event is on Wednesday  February 23 from 7:30pm-9:30pm at CounterPulse 1310 Mission Street at 9^th.

Talk about action, I am trying to get the Esperanza Garden (on Florida near 19^th St.) to really take off this year and grow more food for the stand. I think we have at least two “garden anchors” to help lead the garden crew this year and on Tuesday February 22 at noon until about  2pm there will be a garden cleanup and possible bed preparation. Please come out if you have the time or contact me to get more information how you can help.

Here is another thing you can go to:

Please join the San Francisco Urban Ag Alliance at the Planning Commission’s hearing to support the urban agriculture zoning proposal.  We need as much support as possible! Wear green to identify yourself as a supporter; we’ll have stickers on hand as well.  Here are the details:

Thursday, February 17th
City Hall, Room 400
1:00 PM – SFUAA supporters to meet up on steps of City Hall
1:30 PM – Hearing begins in Room 400
2:30 PM – Estimated time for our issue (could be a little earlier or later)

You are welcome to speak at the hearing but it’s not necessary, so please come whether you plan on speaking or not! For more information you can go here: http://www.sfuaa.org/. The zoning proposal would do two things:    1.   Allow gardens – both non-commercial and commercial gardens – in more parts of SF    2.   Allow people to sell the produce grown in their gardens.

I can’t say I am enthusiatic about people selling the produce they grow in their gardens, I think it is the wrong model, but still people should have the right to sell it if they want. This proposal also seems to affect people growing food and donating it, they have to follow the guidelines in the proposal.

The Free Farm is going strong and we have pretty much completed one greenhouse and the other one should be finished in a week. We will begin planting seeds probably this Wednesday.  Please  join us any Wednesday or Saturday from 10am-2pm (and the first Sunday of the month from 10am-noon).

Sunday we all caught some beautiful warm rays of the winter sun as they fell on our tables quite full with mostly vegetables and a small amount of fruit.  For me the highligh this week on the hecka local table were the avocados from trees a block away and 5 pounds of kiwis from a man I work with at Martin de Porres soup kitchen who comes to help once a month. I also loved having the bag full of Meyer lemons (23 pounds) that a neighbor dropped off. Also, some neighbor angel dropped off a jar of the most delicious local Meyer lemon jam. I get such a kick out of our bread table these days.  Every week there is something tasty to put on samples of bread.  And often, like this week, the bread table had some new items on it, like the lentils and rice, pasta, and tortillas that a food pantry had extra of and gave to me.   The line was part way down the sidewalk and we ran out of produce in about 45 minutes for the first round.

Someone came by the stand and asked about getting seedlings and I told him we are working on growing them. Our greenhouse has I think 45 flats now of different things, many of which will go to planting at the farm, and as the greenhouse gets closer to being finished we will start planting more seeds.

One piece of great news is that negotiations I think are finally over for the project I have been working on for over two years to expand the community garden in the park where the stand is and to plant more fruit trees. A notice is coming out soon to all the people that attended the meeting in October about the project and the next step will be to go to the Recreation and Park Commission in March. In April we should be putting up the fence, moving the compost bin, and planting trees. The only possible hitch in the matter may be that the volunteer contractor needs to have 2 million dollars in insurance to volunteer his labor to the city. I know he has insurance, but I don’t know if he has that much.

Pancho turned me onto a man who said”Serve all, Love all, Feed all”.  I am keeping that as my mantra as spring approaches. I also remember a man in India I met who said, “Be good, do good”. Also, how about my jingle, “Plant Good Grow Good”?

The Hecka Local table looked pretty good at the Free Farm Stand yesterday. Yacón root,, lettuce, chard, and kale from the Free Farm, more sunchokes from Berkeley, Haas avocados from Kali Garden (almost across the street from the stand), fava bean leaves from 18^th and Rhode Island, greens from the Secret Garden, including the most beautiful tree collards with purple stripping on the leaves, San Francisco oranges picked by Produce to the People, and oranges from Stanford Glean.  We also had a lot of  left-over produce from the Ferry Building farmer’s market and Noe Valley Farmer’s market, considering it is supposedly  winter time. Despite all the produce we ran out around 1:30pm! More left over farmer’s market produce showed up at around 2:30pm.

I am on the Feeling Grateful bandwagon again, though I don’t think I ever hopped off. I am so grateful for the lovely rain we had, precious water that quenched the thirst of our plants, like the bamboo and lemon tree we just transplanted at the Free Farm on Saturday. Then it was a miracle that the sky mostly cleared up for the Free Farm Stand. I am feeling grateful for all the beautiful volunteers we have that make the stand something special.

 I did bring sprouting potatoes for planting to the stand but only a few people took them.

Potatoes can be grown almost anywhere outside where there is sunlight for part of the day. At the farm we have three methods of growing them demonstrated. I know not everyone wants to be a gardener or farmer, but it is a fun and  valuable life lesson to grow some of your own food and to be connected to that mysterious and pretty amazing growing power

I am also feeling grateful for the fact that we got the plastic covering one of our newly built greenhouses and it is looking likely that we can start growing more seedlings soon. It is fun to have a dream and run with it and to see it becoming it’s own thing over time.  This dream of sort of opening a free nursery is getting ready for takeoff, though I am convinced I don’t really know what I am doing. I am just taking one step at a time. Please check out our sister blog http://thefreefarm.org/ for lots of fabulous photos from down on the farm. These days thanks to the Getup grads who are interning with us now, the blog is being updated weekly and they are doing an excellent job

For people that do want to get more into the dirt and garden air there are places to do that all over the city.

 The Esperanza garden for example, on Florida and 19^th Sts. is looking for a garden anchor, someone to open the garden at least once a week and keep it watered and weeded.  I will train anyone that would like to take over that responsibility and help grow food to give away at the stand or other possible places. Community gardens like these are the way of the future, places where neighbors can garden together (not in separate plots) and share their surplus with other neighbors in need.

On Thursday  February 17 at 1pm in City Hall room 400 the Planning Commission will hold a hearing about an Urban Agriculture zoning proposal they are going to vote on and make law.  I haven’t really studied the issue in depth , but there are a couple of things that I don’t like about the proposal that I am hoping will be changed if enough people go to the meeting or sign a petition. One silly requirement of the zoning proposal is that gardens with fencing have to be made of wood or be ornamental. The other is “change of use” permit fees for larger urban farms. The San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance (SFUAA) has a lot of information on their site and a FAQ section, plus copies of the proposal on line, and lettters to sign to fax or email in (http://www.sfuaa.org/urban-ag-zoning-proposal.html).