Getup, Raise a Greenhouse & (How to) Increase Joy!

As noted in Tree’s January 4th blog, several of us recent graduates from the Gardening and Composting Educator Training Program (GCETP aka “Getup”) are beginning our 40-hour community outreach project here at The Free Farm. We each will take turns to blog about our experiences at the Farm so you’ll get a fresh perspective each week!

Prior to my participation in GCETP, my experiences in gardening and composting took place outside of SF. As an apartment dweller in SF, I don’t have easy access to land on which to grow food. However, I can do vermicomposting in my kitchen and gardening in SF community farms.

With my interest in local food security and whole plant-based nutrition, I’m here to support The Farm’s mission to grow organic produce to give away free to the community in an effort to combat hunger, aid health and nutrition, and increase resource sharing and care for one another. It was great to re-connect with Finn (also a GCETP graduate, whom I met last June when I initially came to The Farm for a composting toilet workshop) and Tree (whom I met in the Victory Garden outside SF City Hall during the 2008 Slow Food Nation Conference).

Yesterday’s activities at the Farm included reuniting with Getup classmates (Sophie, Stanley and Zoe), harvesting and giving away over 20 pounds of produce, carrying 80-pound bag of cement mix, laying the foundation for the two 20’ x 30’ greenhouses, and enjoying a delicious vegan lunch with an awesome group of volunteers. Tree’s Nothing but Blessings cartoon inspired me to count my own blessings:

1. Resourceful construction methods

During the greenhouse construction, Griff and Page had a spirited discussion on whether cement should be mixed on the bare ground or in a wheelbarrow; we opted for the former as Griff reminded us that most people in the developing world can’t afford wheelbarrows, and it worked out great! Earlier, I worked with John using an electric-powered driller to make holes in the wood frames and buckets—so grateful that we could afford this time-saving technology.

2. Bolted lettuce

When Finn suggested that I pull out the bolted lettuce, I asked her if she could show me where to find it as I was not familiar with that variety. I could identify oak leaf, swiss chard, arugula, etc.—but what does bolted lettuce look like? Finn pointed to patches of long-stemmed lettuce with small leaves and many flowers, explaining that a lettuce has bolted when it produces seed prematurely and abandons leaf growth. Bolting happens when the weather gets too sunny for lettuce, which prefers to grow in the shade and moist soil. Finn said bolted lettuce tastes bitter so it was best to also pull out its roots and toss the entire plant to the compost pile.

3. Bitter

My project at The Farm includes nutrition education so I’d like to discuss how bitter foods support overall health. Before agriculture, our ancestors gathered native, wild greens that tasted bitter. The bitter taste is associated with a plant’s naturally occurring toxins, which are a defense mechanism to repel predators. Bitters, which are perceived as poison, stimulate organs for protection, with a beneficial effect on digestion. Edible bitters stimulate all digestive secretions and peristalsis to aid bowel transit time and nutrient assimilation.

Many of today’s health problems, caused by poor digestion, may be due to a lack of bitter flavor in the modern American diet (the bitter flavor in many natural foods is diluted in cultivation or removed in food processing). Our gut is known as our second brain because mood-related hormones and transmitters (serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, etc.) are produced not primarily in the brain, but in the gut! Therefore, bitters that act to improve our digestive health can also improve our emotions or state of mind.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, bitter increases joy, the emotion associated with summer, the fire element, and heart and small intestine functions. Bitter functions to dry dampness, drain heat, move blood and send qi (energy) down. Bitter helps one to let go of anger, or stagnant liver energy, the emotion associated with spring, so one can transition to the next phase.

Briahn Kelly-Brennan, L.Ac., who teaches Everyday Healing Foods and Herbs at CCSF, notes that most Americans today have to work at getting bitters in their diet, except in drug forms—chocolate and coffee, strong herbs which can be draining. Briahn suggests an easy and better way to get bitter taste into our diet is to eat leafy greens.

Finn was right about the bolted lettuce tasting very bitter. But instead of tossing it into the compost pile, I ate the bitter greens as raw salad to increase my joy. So let’s grow plants, eat plants (bolted or not)! I’m looking forward to the Farm’s One Year Celebration and Greenhouse Barn Raising next weekend and I hope you can join us!

More news about our big January 16th day coming up and how to help

Here is a list of things we need:

• a few team leaders for different activities which basically means leading a group of volunteers in different tasks
• a few people to be sous chefs and help the main chef cut up vegetables and such on Saturday afternoon in the Mission
• we have a list of plumbing and wiring stuff for the greenhouse if anyone has that kind of stuff hanging around
• hardware cloth  or some kind of mesh made of plastic or metal to construct the tops of greenhouse benches
• 2 x 4's
• a photographer to take pictures at the event
• carpenters and handymen or women

The previous post listed information about upcoming activities coming up. The next workdays before the event we will be mostly doing work on the greenhouses/sheds. We would love you to join us.

New Years Update

I just got back in town today from a too short retreat I took in the mountains. I am feeling refreshed and have new energy for the coming year at the Free Farm (and the Free Farm Stand too).

I want to first of all thank everyone from my heart to all you who have made our new farm so successful our first year. Not only did we grow over a ton of food literally, but I feel like we have made so many new friends and met  many of our neighbors who live near the farm. Things are really feeling beautiful these days. Also, I continue to be grateful to St. Paulus Church for lending the use of their property (plus water and electricity) to grow food to feed those in need.

The New Year is already looking like it's going to be off the charts in terms of making more connections and growing more produce. Here are some highlights and dates to keep in mind:

Sunday January 16th from 10am- about 4pm is our big Greenhouse Barn raising event that we are working on with Temple Emanu-El. Every year they have a volunteer event in honor of Martin Luther King Jr Service day (which this year is on a Monday but our event will be the day before). They have decided to help us build a greenhouse on that Sunday. It will also be a celebration of 1 year of our Free Farm. Besides building a greenhouse, we will be also building a shed and a multipurpose space, have a lunch, some guest speakers, workshops and activities for kids and adults, labyrinth walks, and possibly some music.

To help us prepare for the event we will be focusing a lot  on doing some construction work at our next workdays Wednesday Jan 5, a special workday Thursday January 6th, and Saturday January 8th. All workdays are from10am-2pm. Also, on Saturday January 15th we will also be at the Farm getting ready for the big day.

I have been getting excited about the things living in our soil and how we can work with the microbiology to help us be more effective growing produce in a sustainable way without fertilizers. I hope to be making some compost extract as soon as our greenhouse is built and up and running (we also will be growing a lot of start/seedlings for the farm and to give away).

On January 19th we will be hosting 12 students from the Jewish Community High School of the Bay.

Also, in January we will be having some new interns come on board who come from the Getup class at Garden for the environment

In April we are going to be involved in a city wide event called SF Refresh (The mission of SF Refresh is to create opportunities for San Franciscans to receive free whole body care in community gardens throughout the city. There website is http://sfrefresh.blogspot.com/). I am personally very excited about this because personally my mental health is directly related to how much I am in the garden or farm.

We are also working on making it easier for people to get involved with our farm project. We now have a rough list of roles and tasks that are available. Roles being jobs that involve being a leader or coordinator of some aspect of the Free Farm and task involve just helping out with some job.  For example we now have a calendar coordinator (Finn) and we have tasks like making a vegan lunch once a month for our volunteer crew.

 We are actually looking for people in the month of January to sign up on our calendar to prepare a lunch in January (or sign up to make a lunch once a month on a regular day...either Saturdays or Wednesdays). If you are interested please contact Finn wildoatsandnettles@gmail.com.

I encourage  everyone to come out and visit us in the new year. Also, if you show up at the Free Farm in the next  week I will have my latest cartoon that I will be handing out. I also will soon have fliers for our event and people can come by the farm to pick one up or contact me.

Here are some of the last photos I took last year at the Free Farm:
 

our last strawberry harvest

the last of the trombone squash

delicious Empanada from a neighbor made with squash she got from our Saturday Free Farm Stand...unfortunately not vegan and probably with some chicken flavor in it, but a beautiful gesture of sharing

our neighbor who made the Empanada

WINTER CLOSINGS

Just wanted to take this opportunity to say a quick thank you to all of our amazing and dedicated volunteers. We are so grateful for your help and support, for sharing your time, your abilities, your knowledge, and your stories. Thank you to St. Paulus for so graciously supporting this project with your land and resources. And thank you to the land itself for the beautiful bounty we've been able to produce through the magical soil and all the creatures housed in it, the recently abundant rain, the sun that warms us and keeps everything in motion, and even the ridiculous wind that seems to mostly just knock things over.

We will be taking a little down time for holidays and rest over the next two months, please note the following closings:

The Free Farm will be closed on November 24th (Wed).

We will also be closed the last two weeks of December, on December 22 (Wed.), December 25th (Sat.), December 29th (Wed.) and January 1 (Sat.). We will re-open for our regular Wed and Sat volunteer days on January 5th.

We will also be having a special Sunday workday and greenhouse raising on January 16th, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. More to follow. Please come out and join the festivities!

The Free Farm receives SFPT Innovator Award!

The Free Farm was one of the proud recipients of the 2010 San Francisco Parks Trust Innovator Award! We received $1500 in funds dedicated to building better tool storage and developing and installing a more extensive irrigation system. We're excited to move forward with this infrastructure so we can more efficiently operate the farm, and more easily host volunteers and lead groups and workshops.

Thanks SFPT, and congrats to the other Innovator Awards recipients!

Innovator Awards :: $20,000 for park projects Innovator Awards honor Park Partners and other community-based organizations that are committed to improving their neighborhoods, parks or recreational programming in sustainable, forward-thinking ways. Awards are between $500 and $2000 for the purchase of equipment or site-improvements that will help increase park usership and strengthen programs. This year we awarded more than $20,000 to local groups. Bay Area Ridge Trail, Lake Merced Measured Mile Project Friends of Boeddeker Park, Tai Chi program GreenTrust SF, 22nd Street bulb-out Korean American Senior Services, Inc., Golden Gate Park Volunteer Program Le Conte Mini Park, tree planting MacCanDo Tenderloin Youth Track Club Pennsylvania Gardens Project, 18th and Pennsylvania Garden Produce to the People, Free Farm project Progress Park SF Lawn Bowling Club SF Urban Riders, Upper Noe Youth Mountain Bike Program Sutro Stewards, Rotary Meadow Habitat Restoration Sunnyside Neighborhood Association, Circular Avenue greening Visitacion Valley Greenway, Leland Avenue Improvement Project

Congratulations to the Free Farm!!!

The Free Farm has been selected, along with 6 other fabulous organizations to participate in the first round of fund sharing from the RSF Philanthropic Services Food and Agriculture Focus Area Fund! Beginning in January, the selected organizations will meet to learn about each other's work and determine how best to collaboratively use $50,000!

Here's the announcement from RSF.

We are truly honored to collaborate with these fabulous organizations:

Marin Organic is an association of organic food producers in Marin County who strive to continually improve farming practices in Marin; to promote the ethical, creative and patient enterprise of sustainable organic agriculture; and to encourage a preference for locally produced food. They requested funding to assess alternatives to current animal harvesting options; to create a sustainable apprenticeship and mentoring program for organic farmers; and to improve transportation from rural areas in Marin to the urban hubs of San Francisco and Oakland.

Movement Generation brings together key Bay Area leaders of grassroots, racial, economic and environmental justice organizations. As a collective group these leaders work to develop shared goals, strategies, and collaborative campaigns around environmental and food security initiatives to meet the needs of low-income communities of color. They have requested funding for support of their permaculture and food-systems course tailored towards grassroots organizers in communities of color. This course invokes traditional knowledge of land-based peoples and provides organizers with a methodology to resist systems of oppression through the creation of community resiliency.

Partners for Sustainable Pollination is working to help the health of honey bees and other pollinators by increasing bee forage plantings and promoting more sustainable agricultural practices. This organization requested funding to print educational materials and hire additional staff in order to expand their impact and outreach in the Bay Area.

People's Grocery works to improve the health and economy of West Oakland through a local food system. Their vision is for a just food system in West Oakland and for all people. They requested funding for one of their projects, the California Hotel, which has a working greenhouse, active volunteer program and weekly visits from community members who become connected with People’s Grocery from their visibility at this hotel. They are seeking funding to grow their program at the Cal Hotel, which they feel is a perfect microcosm for achieving new outcomes in movement building and improving resident health through food.

Pie Ranch is a unique food system education and advocacy non-profit and a thriving, sustainable farm with the goal of bringing together urban and rural citizens to promote sustainable farming, create a healthier food system, and protect our natural environment. They requested funding in order to support the salary of the Urban Youth Development Coordinator who has launched a new partnership with the John O’Connell High School. Through this partnership, approximately 115-130 students will experience hands on education through visiting and working on the farm. This experience is then linked with class lessons in community supported agriculture, food entrepreneurship, resource and energy conservation, land stewardship, and community and environmental ethics.

San Francisco Waldorf School (SFWS) has partnered with The Little Sisters of the Poor and Laguna Honda Hospital to combine biodynamic agricultural education for their students with service to these two residential communities. On each site, SFWS operates a small urban farm which students visit and work on weekly. They requested funds for gardening supplies and materials to help increase food production in the existing space, thereby increasing the size of the food donation that is made to each partner organization. In addition, they will seek training in horticultural therapy to deliver meaningful agricultural programming to improve the lives of their underserved host communities.

The Little Farm that Could

It has been a busy end of summer with a new crop of  volunteers, many  Stanford students,  plus we have been harvesting pumpkins, green beans, collards, cherry tomatoes, and giant squashes. We have harvested over 2,000lbs since we started harvesting in April and this is only our first year. If you go to http://freefarmstand.org there is more written there about the Free Farm with more photos.

There are rumblings about building a greenhouse/sacred space and working with Temple Emanu-el to have a day of service on Martin Luther King Day January 14 next year  where we would have a barn raising to erect a structure we build ahead of this date. This is very exciting news and I look forward to see how things develop.

Our first cover crop of fava beans have popped up as we move through this Indian summer. Leanne the muralist who did our beautiful murals dropped by  and wants to paint more starting in November. We will need donations of house paint (white and primary colors). Lots to do, got to get out into the field.