Farming Friendships

I thought I would do something different this week. I want to write about the Free Farm Stand and the Free Farm since both projects are so connected. And both projects are a blast, though this week it was especially fun being at both places. Both projects are about making and keeping in touch with friends.

To me it is pretty amazing how much produce we have been harvesting at the Free Farm this last month. I knew we put a lot of greens into the ground at the end of last year, but I didn't realize how productive they would be. We have now grown about 9,000lbs of produce at the farm. It has actually been a bit frustrating that we have had so many greens that we haven't been able to get them all harvested yet.  Between keeping the greenhouse well stocked with new starts/seedlings and planting out things that are ready go in the ground, we have been a bit shorthanded on Saturdays when we harvest things.

Farming is a lot of work there is no doubt. My two friends at Little City Gardens talk about this on their blog (http://www.littlecitygardens.com/)  and how they are scaling back their efforts this year and focusing on growing less variety and more perennial crops. Of course they are trying to make a living farming and they sell their  stuff,  a pressure we fortunately do not have.

Farming  and growing gardens is something that is so needed in cities right now for all kinds of reasons that most of us know about. The challenge that we all seem to share is how to find time to get soil on our hands and under our fingernails and at the same time live in a city that has too high of rents and everything costs a lot.

My solution has been to create real community like churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples do.  Ideally I think we need to live together and share income, but perhaps we can start moving in that direction by moving away from engaging in commerce among each other, sharing resources, helping friends and strangers when we can. We need to build a community based around generosity and compassion.

 my two little friends who came out to farm

 perpetual chard doing great

 lettuces

 lettuce, collards, and chard oh my!

 the sweet peas planted in October are delicious

 

the labyrinth ...it needs attention

we have been using the solar oven more now that the sun is higher in the sky

Here are some pictures from the Sunday Free Farm Stand:

 the red kale was really beautiful

 super sugar snaps

 this lettuce was from Alemany Farm

 

two of our lovely volunteers with oxalis flower bouquets

Yoga is coming to the farm starting this Wednesday. One of our volunteers is going to lead those interested in getting stretched out before we begin farming.  It will start at 9am in the morning and end around 9:45am. Bring a mat if you can.

Here is a link to an inspiring video that a volunteer sent me."Gardens build community. Period". Last week I posted on the Free Farm Stand blog a TED Talk featuring Ron Finley that was was also great (I enjoy his one liners).

The Revolution will be Compost

I am excited about our compost pile  among many excitements at the Free Farm these days. Thanks to dirt to dish raw coop and Maria http://dirt-to-dish.org/juice we have been getting tons of raw juice pulp and we have been making some awesome compost. Compost is really the heart and soul of our farming efforts and I love it. I love the compost and I love the soil we are making at the Free Farm. I have been watching free online lectures on permaculture here and learning a lot. I liked the lecture on Vermicomposting and one on Soil Ecology. We should all sing praise to soil life and photosynthesis, and the wonderfulness of the carbon cycle.
 I am getting our worm bins in better shape by adding some of the pulp to feed the worms and also adding the pulp to our growing compost pile (in addition I have been adding horse manure, compost which is mostly fine wood chips from Bay View Greenwaste management, vegetable scraps for Martin de Porres Soup Kitchen, and compost from a couple of neighbors who don't have a green bin or choose to give us their scraps rather than to Recology.

 making layers

 our goal is 130 degrees

stacking it high

 I can't do justice to how beautiful our red kale
 looks... you have to see it in person

 ditto the prepetual chard

 

 more prepetual chard that looks better in person

 we have been getting some great tasting oranges

 the Lamb Haas is in flower...avocados soon?

 handsome lettuce in containers

We have been getting some great help these days though most times it seems  our help is down, but we seem to get a lot done. John from Alemany Farm may soon be working more at Alemany Farm since they now have their own greenhouse and we are trying to train some new folks in plant propagation so we can continue growing lots of seedlings (we are giving them out to gardens across the city).  Already we have hundreds of seeds planted and the seedlings are coming up. I think things are looking really beautiful probably because of this warm spring like weather.

Becca with harvest of greens

I discovered that we have a yoga teacher among us whom I think will teach a free yoga or stretching for gardeners class at our farm if we can create a space to do it.We once had the idea of building a platform but that never happened. Now we are thinking if we could get some large carpets that were bug free and clean or large gym mats we could be in business so we are trying to manifest this by getting the word out. We wouldn't mind a large deck or platform either.

We are also in need of more six packs or similar cells for starting seeds in.

Please check out our other blog at freefarmstand.org where you can see where some of our produce goes (there is also a picture there of a sweet potato from our small harvest of taters grown in a large pot in the greenhouse...another one of my excitements).

Digger Farm

The Free Farm has been hoppin' with activity recently, despite it being winter time. The weather has been pretty fantastic.  On Wednesday I got to the  Free Farm early because I really wanted to plant the bare root strawberry plants that we got free. Once I got there I realized that the project was much bigger than I thought if I were to do it right.  Not only did I want to plant the new strawberries, but the old ones needed to be taken up...they loose their vigor  after 2-3 years and the way they were planted in the first place  made the hard to harvest. After thinking about the design of the new strawberry bed I came up with the idea of making a hugelkultur bed. Almost everyone I tell them about the hugelkultur idea  they say "what?".  I heard about the idea from a man named David Mudge whom I met last year at the 2012 scion wood exchange  and is involved with the who is  Martinez Permaculture Center across the bay. Looking it up online I got the basic idea of creating a raised bed with very wood material that eventually breaks down into compost. I was eager to get rid of our pile of woody materials (though we didn't have any real logs), so my idea was to use it in a hugelkultur bed: Bury it part way, add some vegetable scraps, fresh green weeds, and manure. Then put the dirt back on the pile and then on top of that add compost and then plant the strawberries. I wasn't sure how many volunteers would show up I jumped right in  It turned out a good number of people showed up, more than we have had in a while and a group of people got the job done by the end of the day (short of  actually planting the strawberries).  On Saturday again I started early, terracing the area around the raised bed we built on Wednesday. A young man showed up to help which was really great. He actually came by on Wednesday as I was opening the gate. He said he had been sleeping in the parking lot next door where the boarded up buildings were that the Occupiers occupied for a while and that he stashed his sleeping bag and a bag of clothes in the greenhouse so they wouldn't get wet (it looked like it may rain).

Here are some photos of the project:

Besides planting the strawberries on Saturday, we had our Tu B"shvat tree planting. Thanks to Congregation Emanu-El who paid for the trees and Friends of the Urban Forest working with the Department of the Environment, we put 8 trees in the ground. We had one of the largest turn-outs in a year...about 30 people showed up to help out. It was a real blast! We planted three apple trees, two Asian Pears, two plum trees, and a male and female Sea Berry.

 we cut the trees after they were planted to about

 knee high to keep them growing less tall

 how cool it is to have kids planting trees!

 this one is going to be growing flat against the wall

Our seed order arrived and I can't wait to start planting! In the coming weeks we will be planting peppers, tomatoes, basil, squash, kale, and lettuce, plus other things too. We also have potatoes to put in the ground, and trees to graft (hopefully we will do some grafting next week). It's going to be a great year so please come out some work day and join us.

Our blog over at freefarmstand.org , this week I share the  inspiration that I got from the Diggers of San Francisco (who turned me on to the 1649 Diggers of England). When we first started the farm we were thinking of names and one that came up was the Digger Farm. I still like that name and though I don't like plowing and digging up our vegetable beds too much, and I continue to be inspired by Ruth Stout who promoted the no dig garden method and Masanobu Fukuoka and his One Straw Revolution. But like this week, once in a while all the shovels come out of the shed and us Free Farmers have to dig...dig holes for trees and dig to redo a strawberry bed. So "You Diggers all stand up for glory. Stand up now." (from the song World Turned Upside Down by Leon Rosselson.)

Free Farm Forest

I missed the workday on Saturday because I attended the yearly Scion Wood Exchange held by our local chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers. I enjoy going every year just to meet old and new fruit growing friends and to pick up some scion wood to graft and root to make new trees. I also brought a fig from our tree to get help identifying it and I learned that it is Black Jack like I thought.

Planting trees is one of the best things we can do for our planet right now. A great way to feel hope for the future is by planting a tree. This coming Saturday we will be joining hearts and hands with Congregation Emanu-El and Friends of the Urban Forest and we will plant about 8 fruit trees at the farm. The workday begins the same time as usual 10am-2pm, but the tree planting and the  Tu B'shvat (New Year for the Trees)  celebration officially begins at 1pm. This Saturday it would help if you are coming for our vegan volunteer lunch at noon to let us know if possible before hand. Also, we just got more free strawberry plants and we are going to be reworking our strawberry beds starting this week. Plus I hope to get some grafting in and will show anyone that is around how I do it.

We had a lot of produce at the Sunday Free Farm Stand, mostly greens that looked delicious and peppers from the hot house.

these are kale seedlings we grew at the Fee Farm and we gave them away at the Sunday Free Farm Stand

One last bit of news, apparently the future developers of our Free Farm land have signed documents proving they have the funds to complete the project, so the next step is for an environmental impact report. The guess when we might have to leave is 1 1/2-2 years. We need an angel.  

Free Farm Frenzy

We are are all back from our vacations and the farm is now open on Saturdays and Wednesday as usual.  The greens are growing great, they sweeten up in the cold and we have lettuces under small hoops with special cloth over them, originally to keep the birds from eating them, but now keeping them warm.

We have trays of lettuce in the greenhouse that we plan to harvest soon as baby salad mix. The peppers in the hothouse from last year are still  growing (we just harvested more of them)and we also  harvested a lot of lettuce from there too.
I have pulled out the seed catalogs and soon we will be ordering seed for the coming new year.

Thanks to a generous $2,500 grant from the Bill Graham Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund, the Free Farm and the Free Farm Stand will have some money to buy seeds and supplies for our projects this year. We have also gotten a little money from private donors which we are so grateful for too. We continue to believe in the idea of "free" as in not engaging in the selling of produce and seedlings and we only buy when we can't get something for free. It is a challenge these days when the idea of gentle and kind capitalism keeps popping up everywhere and is very popular. Today I even saw the return of the phrase right livelihood mentioned in a plug for a presentation on "Permaculture Business Innovation" by a man  whom I respect a lot Kevin Bayuk.  If we want to adopt permaculture in our lives I would argue that the patterns I see in nature have nothing to do with a system of commerce and linear exchange, do monkeys barter  bananas with each other? Maybe they do and I don't know about it. The patterns in nature are ones of awe and mystery and miraculous and divine.We just have to live our lives with faith and not worry about getting something for everything we give, which to me is the basis of our current system of living our lives and doing business.

We do rely more on volunteers more than on money and for a few months we have seen our numbers drop. Is it because of the weather or we have become less popular over time (the thrill is gone phenomena with new projects)? I know people are scrambling just to get by and people often only volunteer if they are unemployed and need something to do.

I  hope this year we are able to bring back the volunteer labor force, because as our soil keeps growing the plants will keep growing. We especially are in the need for more people that can take on leadership tasks. We have a lot of areas that could use a person or a team to steward or anchor: the container garden, the herb labrynith, the vegetable beds, the permanent plantings (we are planing on planting more permanent crops in the future and creating more of a "food forest" on site, the greenhouse and plant propagation, and  flower production.

I have been thinking that what our farm lacks right now that might help us manifest more of what we need at the farm is a farm alter. This is a shout out request for people with any spare deities around that they can put on our altar, yet to be created, please we can use them. The Free Farm supports all forms of worship and we especially give thanks to our pollinators, birds, and micro-organisms in the soil. And the volunteers and guests who drop by.  They are all holy!

This coming Saturday I won't be at the farm but attending this fun event:


Golden Gate CRFG 25th Annual 2013 Fruit Wood
Scion Exchange:
DATE: Saturday, January 19, 2013
TIME: 12:00 Exchange opens to CRFG
members and the public
12:15 & 12:50 Grafting demonstrations
12:30 Custom rootstock grafting begins
2:00 Plant drawing
3:00 Exchange closes
3:00 - 4:00 Exchange cleanup
LOCATION: Ed Roberts Campus
3075 Adeline Street
Berkeley, CA
(at the Ashby BART station)
Donation Requested
(to help pay for the room): $4/person


If anyone wants to go with me I would love some company and plus I am bringing some plants to share and some materials to pass out about our projects (I could use some help carrying stuff on Bart since I would prefer not to drive).

On Saturday January 26 we will be having a special tree planting event in conjunction with Friends of the Urban Forest and Congregation Emanu-El. We will be celebrating the Jewish holiday, Tu B’Shvat or the New Year for the Trees. The main tree planting will begin at 1pm, but other farm activities begin at 10am. If you plan to come to our vegan lunch that day please RSVP at our email address and let us know so we can make enough.

Hawks and Fungus Among Us

Things are growing slowly at the Free Farm with less day light and cooler weather. In the greenhouse we are not planting as many starts, but last Saturday we planted many trays of lettuce, an experiment in growing trays of baby lettuce greens.

We had a nice turn out of volunteers last week, including a group of teens from Environmental Traveling Companions (ETC...http://www.etctrips.org/). ETC  "opens the beauty and challenge of the great outdoors to people with disabilities and disadvantaged youth. Every year, more than 2,000 people join ETC to raft whitewater rivers, ski alpine meadows, kayak the waters of the Golden Gate and Tomales Bay, and build leadership skills. "  They also have visits to farms and last year they stumbled upon us and volunteered then.

We also had some other visitors, members of our congregation I like to think.
Early in the morning I was checking out all the mushrooms of different kinds at the farm (I would love it if we could find someone to helps us identify these beautiful creatures).

As I was looking on the ground at mushrooms someone from the sidewalk above asked me if that was m bird. I didn't know what he was talking about, but I looked behind me and up to see one of long term members of our church without walls, Mr. or Mrs. Red Tail Hawk :

Soon it took off headed for the flagpole and it opened it's huge wingspan right in front of me.

Here are some photos of the garden on 18th and Rhode Island that I worked at when it first got going. I visited there on Interdependence Day (12-12-12)

White Sapote tree

with fruit!