Lights, camera, action! Starring The Free Farm!

2010 GCETP graduate Stanley sent this report and photos of yesterday’s workday and filming at The Free Farm:

Hello, This is Stanley, a SF Garden for the Environment GCETP volunteer transplant to the Free Farm!

Today, 17 volunteers showed up to help harvest over 35 pounds of tree collards, mint, kale, rainbow chard, snap peas, salad greens and favas. The stand hosted 18 customers, many of whom were interviewed about their experiences at the Free Farm by Isabel Santis and Sarah Swymeler from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and Claudia Medina and Leah Temper, independent documentarians making a film about emerging economies based on sharing communities.

Claudia Medina and Leah Temper are making a documentary about alternative economies Leaf of the day: RAINBOW CHARD, beauty constantly revealed at the Free Farm!

Isabel Santis and Sarah Swymeler from CIIS--film for a class project Harvesters, led by Hannah, cut down a full bed of favas for the stand and the compost pile. Wondering about the mechanics of nitrogen fixing crops, I came across an excellent explanation by Wiley of City Sown: http://citysown.org/2010/02/24/nitrogen-fixing-for-dummies/

Our beautiful tree collards were given support by Ricardo and Pancho, who dug holes and secured the plants to metal posts with bamboo cross bars.

Public service announcement:

Dear friends,

On Monday the 28th of March we are screening our short documentary Life After Growth at the Noisebridge Hacker Space, 2169 Mission St, San Francisco at 9 pm. Please join us for the 25 minute screening and a talk after about how we can rethink/reshape/reclaim the economy. Here is a short description of the film, which is a work in progress. We have been filming in the Bay area this week for the next phase of our project, which aims to document the diversity of new economic cultures emerging. After the screening we hope to share input and ideas on how this is happening. Hope to see you there.

Leah Temper & Claudia Medina

http://vimeo.com/10871269

IT'S TIME TO RECLAIM THE ECONOMY The economic crash of 2008 revealed not only the frailty and vulnerability of the economic system, it also showed the false basis that the growth economy is built on – the financial bubble grows bigger and crashes bigger, but we don't seem to be getting any happier. To the contrary, we suffer from greater job insecurity and environmental chaos threatens. The prescription from the mainstream economists is more growth – but is this just taking more of what ails us?

Has growth become uneconomic? Is there another way? This film is part of an ongoing project to document the rise of a new movement – calling not for more economic growth, but LESS. The degrowth movement, or "mouvement por le decroissance", argues that through a voluntary reduction of the economy we can work less, consume less and live better, fuller lives. Many have been pointing out that our current economic system is leading us to an environmental and social catastrophe. "Life After Growth" begins to point to the people and communities who are looking for ways out. These are the pioneers who are rethinking the role of economics in our lives, and are engaging in different types of economic activity, right now. The D word is still taboo in many circles – politicians are loath to go against the growth orthodoxy that our society is based on. But everywhere people are engaging in degrowth type activity - the beginning of a wave that is laying the groundwork for a post-capitalist future... Because it's not the size of the economy that counts, it's how you use it!

contact: lifeaftergrowth@gmail.com