The Free Farm: Winter Green

I have been feeling a little lonely these days at the Free Farm as we seem to have less volunteers these days. Though some of the loss of volunteers recently has been the weather. I am hoping that we pick up some more consistent volunteers that can help lead others that come and want to help. As you may now, we applied for a grant to help us put on a year long course in Urban Food Production that will help us train people to farm. Even if we do not get the grant I am thinking about how to pull off such a free course.

One of the best things about the farm is that one can work in the greenhouse or hothouse even if it is raining (having some waterproof shoes or boots would be good in the greenhouse because it gets pretty wet on the floor when it rains a lot).

Damon our wonderful neighbor who is also a great volunteer, gave me his used fisherman rain gear and last week I had a blast working on the farm and harvesting greens in the rain. His outfit really works well!

John our hero, who is one of the key people at Alemany Farm, has been so helpful getting our greenhouse up to speed, and as a result we have been turning out tons of seedlings that get planted everywhere and I feel really proud that we have been able to help so many gardeners in the city get free seedlings. I am crossing our fingers that John will be back next year, I guess it depends if his farm can get a greenhouse set up at Alemany. That would be best for them, though there might be political issues involved. We are now slowing down our seedling production for now and I want to start growing trays of greens and lettuce in the greenhouse, and maybe even some sunflower greens.

Here are some pictures of the farm today. Again I can't say enough about how good I feel about our work at the Free Farm. Our crew is fantastic though a bit small at times and we have a lot of work to do to become a mightier group. Though we have accomplished a lot, and we have now grown over 8,000 pounds of produce!