Produce to the People

Food Preservation Workshop Series!

2011-12-27T09:16:00.000-08:00

Hey Friends! This workshop series isn't exclusively PTTP, but the profits from the first workshop on canning JAM go to benefit PTTP! See you there!

Lauren Anderson, director of Produce to the People, and Finn Cunningham, writer of the Mental Health Cookbook, will be offering a four part workshop series this January on Jamming, Fermenting, Pickling and Sprouting. Learn traditional kitchen skills by attending one workshop, or participate in the whole series. Workshops are hands-on, most processes will be done together during the class and each class will send you home with a jar of something homemade and delicious. All classes will be taught in a home kitchen in Bernal and registration will be limited to eight students per class. To register for each class, simply click on the sliding scale amount that feels best for your budget, or register for the entire series with the sliding scale links all the way at the bottom.

See you in January!

Jam and Intro to Water Bath Canning: January 8th, 1-3pm

This workshop will teach the basics of fruit jam cooking and canning, as well as introductory water bath canning, which can be applied to many of the preservation techniques taught in later workshops (although this canning process will only be demonstrated during the jam workshop). Participants will leave with one 8oz. jar of homemade canned jam.

Sliding scale: $20, $25, or $30

(profits from this workshop go to benefit Produce to the People)

Fermentation: January 15th, 1-3pm

Come learn about the basics of fermentation and the benefits of probiotics. We'll be demonstrating how to make yogurt, kimchi and sauerkraut at home and participants will leave with a jar of kraut.

Sliding scale: $20, $25 or $30

Pickles: January 22nd, 1-3pm

This workshop will focus on vegetable pickling and will demonstrate both pickling with vinegar as well as salt brining. Participants will leave with a pint jar of vinegar pickles.

Sliding scale: $20, $25, or $30

Sprouting: January 29th, 1-3pm

Come learn about the nutritional benefits of sprouting and how to incorporate sprouts into your diet. We'll cover how to sprout beans, grains, seeds and greens and we'll be making sprouting jars to use at home.

Sliding Scale: $20, $25 or $30

To register for the entire series, click here:

Workshop Series: Sliding Scale: $80, $100, $120

Please feel free to contact us with any questions: wildoatsandnettles@gmail.com

Ice Cream to the People!

2011-06-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year... the rains (sort-of, maybe, a little bit) let up, the sun comes out, the wind no longer knocks you off your bicycle at every corner. San Francisco summer may not look like shorts and flip-flops, but it certainly looks like... ICE CREAM!

COME OUT AND CELEBRATE WITH US!

Maybe you're sending positive energy out to the summer solstice, maybe you need to do something moderately wholesome after Pride weekend, maybe you just want to support local food systems and meet other folks who do too! What better way to multi-task than by supporting a community food organization while eating delicious treats, bidding on auction goodies, and cornering the raffle?!

Ice Cream to the People!

a benefit for Produce to the People

Thursday, June 30th, 2010. 5:30-9pm

El Rio (Mission @ Precita)

$10-30 suggested donation

(no one turned away for lack of funds)

Ice Cream Social!

featuring:

Straus Family Creamery Organic Ice Cream

Bi-Rite Creamery Vegan Coconut Ice Cream

Equal Exchange Fair Trade, Organic Chocolate

locally harvested fruit compotes and homemade herb syrups by Produce to the People

Ice Cream Scooped by TEAM SCOOP!

Herbal Tarot by Karin Von

Feel Good Jamz by Gigi Didi

Silent Auction!

featuring:

Awesome Workshops!!

Bread or Bagel Baking with Sour Flour

Magical Potions with Finn Cunningham of As We Can

Home Canning Fruit Jams and Butters with Lauren Anderson of Produce to the People

Amazing Art Work!!

Gregory Bartlett (The Spare Room Project)

Brooke Budner (Little City Gardens, the Greenhorns)

Red Cruiser (Red Cruiser Etsy Shop)

Chantilly Lace Terrariums

Fabulous Goodie Baskets!!

featuring delicious preserved goods, jams, fruit butters, chutneys, pickles, herbed salts and sugars and more! As well as delightful home made bath goods, shampoo, lip balm, bath salts, and more!

Goodies by:

Captain Blankenship

Happy Girl Kitchen Co.

Her Majesty's Secret Beekeeper

Metaphor Organic

Lauren Anderson (Produce to the People, The Free Farm)

Sara Seinberg

Raffle Raffle!

featuring Gift Certificates and Books from:

Cynically Delicious

Institute for Urban Homesteading

FUSEBOX by CrushPad

The Mental Health Cookbook

Mission Pie

Ritual Coffee Roasters

The Scarlet Sage Herb Co.

We'll be updating this page as more awesome donations come in, so please check back! See you at El Rio!

2010 Annual Report

2011-03-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

Produce to the People (PttP) has made great progress in 2010 as we began our second year of operation. We saw expansion and honing in each of the four projects that interweave to form our programming as a whole. We harvested and grew over 3 tons of fresh, organic, San Francisco produce, supporting our mission to ensure access to local, nourishing food for low-income members of our community. We met many wonderful new volunteers, and worked with an amazing group of young people, creating community by working together, sharing resources, and uniting over healthy food.

As an organization still in it’s ‘seed’ phase, we have begun to focus on developing our organizational structure, and are in the process of moving out of being entirely volunteer run and into a more traditional non-profit structure. During these difficult economic times, we have managed to grow our funding, both foundation support and individual support, and are well poised to continue to grow in 2011.

Backyard Harvest Project

Harvested and distributed 4,193 lbs. of organically grown, local fruit, a 32% increase from our total in 2009.
Increased outreach and added new clients to our harvest registry
Maintained distribution partnerships with the Free Farmstand, the Julian Pantry, and Martin de Porres soup kitchen. Initiated new distribution partnerships with the Free Farm and SF General free diabetes classes.
Created a better system of tracking clients and harvests which will be further developed in 2011.
Developed a set of surveys for youth, harvest clients, and recipients of produce.

Community Gardens Project

Winter 2010- finished the build out of the St. Marks Church/Luther Towers Senior Community garden, which is now fully supported by those two communities.
Spring 2010- finished our last semester at the Mission High School Garden, supporting the Garden Advisory Class. MHS received a school greening grant from the city of San Francisco that will hire contractors to build out the garden space over the next two years.

The Free Farm (FF)

Throughout 2010, the development of the Free Farm has soared and has taken the focus of our Community Gardens Project.
Developed the farm from an empty lot into a 1/3 acre food production and education garden, hosting two volunteer workdays per week- an average of 30 volunteers per week.
Grew, harvested, and distributed over 2000 lbs of organic produce.
Hosted many work groups, including several ‘alternative spring break’ college groups, youth from Sacred Heart Prep (located one block from the farm), a monthly group from Temple Emanu-El, and many more.

Engaged in the ongoing process of creating a collective organizing structure that operates out of a partnership of 8 individuals, some associated with different non-profits, CBOs, other community oriented projects, as well as some unaffiliated community members.

Summer Youth Employment and Education Program

Hosted a group of 4 high school students for summer employment for 12 hours per week for 8 weeks through a partnership with MYEEP/SWEP.

Youth engaged in harvesting fruit, planting and harvesting vegetables, building a composting toilet at the Free Farm, and distributing food through partner project- the Free Farmstand in the Mission.

Youth visited West Oakland food justice organizations People’s Grocery and City Slicker Farms.

Youth learned how to can jam and organized a jam sale at partner business, Mission Pie.

PttP hired a Summer Program Assistant through a partnership with Lutheran Volunteer Corp and Cultivate DioCal.

Jam and Canning Project

Tripled production in 2010.

Hosted two Jam Sales through a partnership Mission Pie earning $1174 on approximately 150 jars of jam.

Developed an ongoing corporate donation exchange with Mission Pie, earning $420 on 84 jars of jam.

Financial Support

San Francisco Parks Trust Innovator Award -$1500

Rose Foundation Northern California Grassroots Fund- $3000

RSF Social Finance Seed Fund- $2000

Hosted a successful online pledge drive, raising $10,223 from private donors in 60 days.

Hosted annual Ice Cream Social fundraiser, raising over $1,500, a 60% increase from 2009.

Accepted to participate in the RSF Social Finance Food and Agriculture Focus Fund Sharing Program

Want to help organize our annual Ice Cream Social?

2011-02-22T12:55:00.001-08:00

I'm looking for a friendly volunteer that would like to help plan our annual "Ice Cream to the People" fundraiser, scheduled for June 30, 2011 at El Rio. No event planning experience required. You should be outgoing and feel comfortable talking to local businesses about Produce to the People, and asking for donations. Time commitment is flexible- minimal (1-2 hours a week) through March and April, and will increase (up to 3-5 hours a week) in May and June as we start picking up donations, publicizing the event, organizing volunteers, creating signage, etc.

Responsibilities include:

--Chatting up local businesses and makers via email, phone, and in person, for gift certificates for our raffle and items for our silent auction. Items and gift certificates have typically been focused on the local food movement in San Francisco.

--Picking up donations for raffle and silent auction, ice cream and toppings!

--Event publicity, posting event details on listservs and local event listings, posting and dropping flyers off around town

--Creating any signage and displays for the event

--Organizing volunteers for the event

--Helping out at the event (this will be minimal work, and mostly fun!)

If you're interested, please contact Lauren at producetothepeople@gmail.com, with a brief description of your interests in Produce to the People, helping with the event, any relevant experience, and your availability. Formal resumes are not necessary.

Thank you!

Support Letter for the Urban Agriculture Zoning Proposal

2011-02-17T11:21:00.000-08:00

The hearing for the Urban Agriculture Zoning Proposal is today, at 1:30pm at City Hall Room 400. More information about the proposal can be found on the SFUAA website. I strongly urge anyone invested in community and market gardens in San Francisco to go show your support (supporters are wearing green). Below is the letter I wrote and sent to the members of the planning commission in support of the proposal.

-------------------------------------------

Dear Members of the Planning Commission:

I am the director of a small non-profit, Produce to the People, a project of the San Francisco Parks Trust. I am also a founding and organizing member of the Free Farm, a 1/3 acre community garden in the Western Addition/Tenderloin that grows and distributes fresh produce for free. Through both of these projects, I have played a part in the distribution of over 9,000 lbs of locally grown fruits and vegetables to people in need in our community, provided meaningful summer employment to 9 youth, and aided in the garden education of over 60 youth, all in the last year and a half.

I urge you to support the urban agriculture zoning proposal introduced in December (Ordinance 101537), along with a few important amendments detailed below. I strongly believe community gardens act as sites that foster not only the growth of nourishing produce, but also the connection between city dwellers and our environment, our food system, and each other. I believe in the preventative care that nutritious food affords our more vulnerable populations, who may not financially have access to it, and the benefits to our community as a whole when we are healthier. I have seen firsthand the joy and strength that comes from offering people the chance to connect with the earth, to be involved in team work, and to cultivate life in the often harsh environment of a city.

San Francisco is at the forefront of the urban agriculture movement and that we have the potential to make simple policy changes that will act as a model for other cities and towns. I support this zoning proposal for both the inception of new gardens, as well as the ability for existing gardens to sell their goods, and in turn support their projects and the hard-working people who cultivate them. This proposal supports a local food system and in turn, a local economy, both lending greatly to the vibrancy and sustainability of San Francisco as a whole.

I would urge you to support the following changes to the proposal, all of which would have hindered projects I have been a part of at one point:

1) Remove or waive the “change of use” permit fees for urban agriculture projects.

Many garden projects, including two I have been a part of in the last year, the Free Farm and the Mission High School garden, begin and continue to operate with little to no funding, supported by volunteer efforts and in-kind donations. If these currently thriving projects had faced an initial fee of $300, they may never have gotten off the ground.

2) Remove any fencing requirement.

As with the “change of use” permit fees, fencing requirements are an additional expense that many gardens may not be able to afford.

3)Allow sales of value-added products and pooled produce on site.

Value-added products and pooled produce creates the potential for increased revenue for small market garden businesses and fund raising opportunities for non-profit projects, strengthening our local economy and allowing a greater possibility for self-sustaining non-profits and CBO’s.

I appreciate your consideration and sincerely hope that you will support the proposal with the amendments outlined above.

Best regards,

Lauren Anderson

Director

Produce to the People

Bring on the Winter Citrus!

2011-01-27T10:27:00.001-08:00

LET YOUR LEMONS SHINE!

I would guess that there may be more lemon trees than any other type of fruit tree in San Francisco, and many of them fruit repeatedly all year round, but I've found that people consider them less than many other types of fruit. I will often go to pick plums or apples and find that there will also be an unassuming lemon tree on the property, heavy with fruit. I think it's because most folks don't eat raw lemons like other fresh fruit, they don't typically bite right into them, but they are easy to use in simple ways that still get you the vitamin C your body needs, especially in this winter season (despite our lack of winter weather!)

You can simply squeeze lemon into a glass of water or tea, juice them for lemonade, make a simple salad dressing with lemon juice and oil. Jaime, one of the students from our 2010 summer youth program would always grab a few lemons to squeeze over carne asada. My friend Susan, who teaches science at Mission High School (and teaches composting and seed saving in the garden! Awesome!), just told me that she takes meyer lemons (a smaller, sweeter variety) from her family orchard in to school and the students eat them with Pico de Gallo salt.

SHARE YOUR CITRUS!

Earlier this week I picked 114 lbs of oranges from a tree in Potrero. Winter citrus season is in full swing, and we want your extra fruit! I'll be sending out emails to folks who have registered citrus trees to check in and see if you have extra fruit. You can also contact me at producetothepeople@gmail.com or on our fruit tree registry by clicking here. I believe citrus fruit is a big part of winter preventative care, so please share what you've got so we can keep everyone healthy.

The Free Farm celebrates our One Year Anniversary!

2011-01-18T12:14:00.000-08:00

This past Sunday we hosted a beautiful and amazingly joyful day of service and celebration at the Free Farm in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, as well as the one year anniversary of our farm. The event was a collaboration with Temple EmanuEl, a Jewish congregation that organizes their own workday one Sunday every month to support and enjoy the farm.

We had been in discussion about our plans to build a greenhouse that would allow us to propagate seedlings and edible plants and trees, both for our farm, and also to grow plenty extra that could be given away to other community, school, and home gardens, and Temple EmanuEl generously offered to donate the funds for the greenhouse building materials so that we could raise the structure at our January 16th celebration.

We had disassembled and purchased a used hoop house frame from a nursery that had closed, and were able to get enough hoops to build a 20' x 30' hoop house for propagating plants, as well as a 20' x 18' hot house that we will use to grow warm weather vegetables, like tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplant.

We're also in the process of creating a multi-use space next to the greenhouse, which will be comprised of a much larger tool shed (made of re-purposed plywood storage vaults), a second storage space that will house a small "office" and other supplies, and a meeting space where people can gather for meetings, workshops, worship and other spiritual practices like yoga and meditation. The storage build out, as well as our greenhouse mist system and a revamped irrigation system in the garden are being funded by the San Francisco Parks Trust Innovator Award.

The event went off without a hitch, it was the largest work day we've ever hosted, and the communal spirit and life of the farm itself was palpable in the teamwork and smiles and the uplifting energy in the air. It was exciting to participate in the raising of the hoops, as 12 people, working as 1, simultaneously lifted the top section of the greenhouse and fitted it together.

There were many projects happening throughout the day, the greenhouse, the hot house, the tool shed, bench building, making potato towers, painting signs, and starting seeds. It was so inspiring to walk around and see all the different projects and people that came out. As we planned the event, we weren't really sure what to expect, but in the end we all just let go, and were able to accept that any amount of service we were able to give and any amount of progress we were able to make and all the new things we were able to teach each other were exactly the right amount, and that we can accomplish so much by working together.

It's been an amazing year at the Free Farm, and this event was important for folks like me, who need to take a step back every now and then and marvel at what we've been able to make together. Huge thanks to everyone who helped, the team leaders, the awesome kids, the folks from Temple EmanuEl and St. Paulus Church, Alena and Yasue for the delicious and energizing lunch, and the Free Farmers for a stellar first year.

Upcoming Service and Celebration Event at the Free Farm!

2011-01-10T17:54:00.000-08:00

Some Recent Press

2011-01-07T18:21:00.000-08:00

Produce to the People got a little mention as an "alternative model" to DPW's gleaning program in Urban Gleaning Program puts homegrown food to good use.

I was the "local mug" on ScoutMob this week, talking about PttP and San Francisco.

Also check out Urban agriculture: SF considers allowing sales about the new zoning proposal for community gardens, featuring our friends at Little City Gardens and Cultivate SF.

Shout outs to our Kickstarter Backers!

2010-10-23T20:19:00.000-07:00

A big THANK YOU to everyone who donated to Produce to the People via our Kickstarter pledge drive! Here's a shout out to our donors, many of which have links to cool stuff they do, projects, organizations, businesses, art work, and more... a great way to make connections with other interesting folks! Also, a big THANK YOU to all of our silent donors, you know who you are!

Alex Clausen

Alexx Campbell, Youth Culinary Arts Coordinator, Shih-Yu Lang Central YMCA

Allie!

Ambro RELAX

Anna Le Mon

Annalisa Peterson

Becky Alexander

ben o.

Bob Cauthorn

Cameron Trejo

Carrie Cangelosi

Chelsea Rae Klein

Chris Kuipers

Clayton McClintock

deborah munk

haley

Jeff Wozniak

Jodi Daniel, Owner of Tutored By A Teacher

Josh Sorenson

Judy and Paul Guttenplan

Julia L. Semple

julie come

Leslie Katz

Lisa Gansky

Mary Ritter

@mwalsh Rockstar Group

@Rosalieinc

P Joshua Griffin

Rosemary Quinn

Rowan & Hannah

sara page

Scott Claassen

Shamsher Virk

Sherry Khan

Studio Choo

Sumit Chachra

Susan Boshoven

Ted

Tracy

willow tree

Yvonne Caprini

pears!

2010-10-05T13:42:00.000-07:00

There are a few small orchards outside the city that we harvest each year, one is a pear orchard owned by a really nice family from the bay area. Again this year, it was a beautiful day and a bountiful harvest! We picked a little over 700 lbs of pears in a mere hour and a half, packed up the truck, grabbed a few figs for the road and took off!

KICKSTARTER SUCCESS!

2010-09-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

WE MADE IT!!!

We successfully raised $10,223 on our kickstarter online pledge drive.

I am so excited, amazed, overwhelmed. I'm still not sure how to express my gratitude, so I'll just start with THANK YOU.

Thank you for believing in the power of this work, and believing that a small, grassroots effort can make a difference. To the folks who pledged, folks who wrote beautiful emails to all their friends and family, folks who clogged up their blogs/facebook walls/twitter feeds on our behalf... Thank you. I feel so humbled and so empowered by the experience and everything to come.

A million times Thank You.

Green Schoolyard Conference and Garden for the Environment Anniversary THIS WEEK!

2010-09-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

Two great events happening this week!

San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance
2010 Growing Greener School Grounds Conference
Sept. 24th and 25th

"The 2010 conference will feature hands-on workshops where you can learn how to use the sun as a teaching resource, understand the basics of organic gardening, build your own planting beds, create colorful mosaics, install irrigation, and more. In addition, many workshops will cover how to connect the outdoor classroom to the education content standards at all grade levels."

More info and Registration here: http://sfgreenschools.org/conference/

Garden for the Environment
20th Anniversary Celebration
Sept. 25th, 10am-5pm

(I'll be there from 12-3 as a proud GCETP graduate, with an info and jam table for PttP and the Free Farm, and I'll be there from 3-5pm for happy hour if you just want to hang out!)

"Garden for the Environment (GFE) opened in the summer of 1990 on a centrally located one-half acre parcel owned by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. From its inception, the GFE has been a public-private partnership responsive to the changing needs of San Francisco’s landscape.

To celebrate the many accomplishments, and anticipate achievements yet to come, we have scheduled a day full of activities in the Garden for GFE enthusiasts of all ages. We would love for you to be a part of this day where we will honor the many hands and hearts that have touched this garden over the last 20 years!"

More info here: http://www.gardenfortheenvironment.org/pages/20thanniv.html

Liberty, TN

2010-09-10T09:46:00.000-07:00

We headed north after Little Rock up through Nashville to Liberty, TN to an amazing mountainside intentional community called Short Mountain Sanctuary. I mentioned in an earlier post that we were reading The Revolution will not be Microwaved by fermentation guru Sandor Elix Katz, who is also one of the permanent residents of SMS, and one of the ways I had heard of the sanctuary.

SMS is a queer faerie community, and Short Mountain as a whole houses a network of queer households. I've been thinking about what it means to build community, to create safe spaces for marginalized people and the difference between marginalized people creating their own safe spaces or engaging in spaces that have already been created. One thing that obvious in this particular community was the amount of care, love and trust people had for each other.

We arrived, as per the entire trip, late at night and a little lost. Driving the backroads of Liberty, Tennessee, confused and a little nervous in the dark, we pulled in to what we thought was SMS, wandered up to the nearest house and were greeted with offers of drinks and welcomed inside. It turned out we were in completely the wrong place, but the beautiful hospitality (and our second hand drawn map of the trip) we received got us back on track and headed in the right direction.

When we finally made it to SMS, we shuffled down hill to catch the last few minutes of folks wandering off to bed after the pot luck that happened earlier in the evening, and were given a quick and dirty flashlight tour to find our way to the yurt yard and pitch our tent. We had a little hang out time with another long-time visitor of the sanctuary, got some more insight into the history of the community, listened to the cicadas, and then crashed to get some rest and explore the following morning.

In the morning we went on a short hike through the woods and picked up a few wild paw paws along the way (I LOVE paw paws), met some more residents in their amazing communal kitchen, and made our way down to the chickens and goats, and the two veggie gardens they keep. The veggie gardens at SMS are a little wild, and soft around the edges, which I like. They had a very home-garden feel to them, and like everything else at the sanctuary, had an air of quiet and modest care about them, you could tell that they were tended out of love more than out of obligation. As we saw most of the places we went, the beds were roughly in rows, what I refer to as 'farm-style', rectangles of amended and planted soil, spaced in between narrow pathways.

After picking some of the ridiculously abundant basil, we wandered on, checking out some of the other magical, handmade elements of the land: the bath house, the out houses (anyone who thinks the Free Farm composting toilet lacks privacy, should take a gander at these!), the mosaic cistern, the beautiful outdoor covered meeting area. I would love to know so much more about the development of the land, the bees, the solar panels, the water collection, the structural and personal building of a community, and each of the wonderful and welcoming people we met. But Ohio calls, so until we meet again, Short Mountain!

Little Rock, AK

2010-09-08T08:28:00.000-07:00

We drove and drove and drove through Texas and Oklahoma to get to Little Rock, AK, to see a school garden that is acting as a pilot for a USDA study on childhood obesity and the effects of food gardening in schools as a preventative health measure. I had the luck of running into a group of three folks from the Delta Garden Study at the Free Farm when I just happened to be there checking the irrigation when it wasn’t a volunteer day, and they just happened to be walking by without planning to stop at the Free Farm. They hollered down and I opened the gate so they could come check out the garden and we got into a quick chat about both of our projects. I was really interested in the work they were doing so it seemed like a great place to stop.

Chris's home garden with hot peppers and basil along the fence.

We met and stayed with Chris, who is the garden coordinator at the Delta Garden Study at Mabelvale Magnet Middle School, and another wonderfully kind soul doing amazing work. Chris is one of those people who is doing a million different awesome projects at once, handling them all flawlessly, and is incredibly modest about the whole thing. He mentioned right before we got into Little Rock that he was working on a creating an urban farm at his home, which was quite an understatement when we arrived to a beautifully cultivated farm style garden, set up for maximum food production, including things I could barely contain my envy like a hedge row of blueberry bushes across the front of the house and an asparagus jungle tall enough to meet the window of the room we slept in. Chris has been running a small CSA to friends and family this past summer, and is planning to expand in small, manageable steps over the next few years.

Isn't asparagus such a beautiful plant?

Worm bin and newly planted leeks.

The end of the summer peppers and the bare beds with recently spread cover crop seeds.

The following day we met up with Chris to head over to the School for a tour of the Delta Garden Study Project. This project is unique from many of the gardens that I’ve seen in that it is a childhood obesity study funded for a year by the USDA, and is deeply based in research and producing results. Students are measured for body mass at the beginning of the year, spend the year engaging in the garden, getting fresh air and exercise, learning about growing, cooking, and eating healthy food, and then are measured again at the end of the year. I do understand that measuring a child/teenagers body mass/weight is pretty invasive, but I think this has the potential to be a huge step in preventative health care. It’s the only youth garden that I know of that is actually quantifying the health benefits of gardening in such a rigorously scientific way.

I recently met with two amazing women at SF General who are in the beginning stages of organizing a program called HeartBeets, in which they are working to get fresh healthy food, in combination with nutrition education out to patients at the hospital. They are starting small and in exactly the right place, in the free diabetes classes offered at the hospital. This has put the preventative health care aspect of our work right at the forefront of my thinking, when honestly it usually get overshadowed by creating local food systems, fostering food security for low-no income folks, community building, youth development, etc. But all of these aspects are really rooted in cultivating the health of our community, both preventing and healing ailments and chronic illnesses with whole foods.

Getting back to the Mabelvale garden, there were a few things that really struck me about their programming and their actual garden. They had an enormous greenhouse and were building it out for vertical growing and to create living machine-style fish farming (super simply put-where you have a tank of fish, most often tilapia, under the beds where you grow veggies, the fish poop enriched water is cycled up to water the veggies and after a certain amount of time you can eat the fish if you like.) The Growing Power garden in Milwaukee, run by the amazing Will Allen, is notorious for their aquaculture and vertical gardening, and was the inspiration for the greenhouse build out at Mabelvale.

I also thought their rainwater collection barrels were set up in a smart and attractive way, with two barrels stacked on top of one another, and raised off the ground to maximize the gravity that will create the water pressure to flow to the garden. Rain barrels aren't always the most lovely part of gardens, being as they're often a giant plastic bucket or barrel of some kind. These had trellising on the side so they were a little less obtrusive, and you could grow vines up and over them for even more garden-y camouflage.

What stood out the most for me, was the community involvement at the school, and the resourceful, sustainable, organic methods that were helping this garden thrive. All the organic farming methods being utilized, the aquaculture, the rainwater harvesting, were the result of hiring a garden team, and especially a garden manager that believed in them, not a requirement of the USDA grant. Under different management the students could be learning about the benefits of petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides, while still fulfilling the requirements of the USDA.

In regards to the community, we met an enthusiastic teacher who spoke to us about the benefits the garden was already having for students who were less fluent in English, and students who came from farming backgrounds, who felt proud of the ability and knowledge they brought with them to the garden. This brought me back to this article condemning school gardening as an act of robbing immigrant students of an actual eduction and returning them to a place their parents had fought hard to help their kids escape from. I obviously disagree with this article, although I do think it's crucial for us to consider both sides, our intentions, the needs of the people we are trying to serve (in contrast with what we believe are the needs of the people we are trying to serve), and the outcomes of our work. I think that school gardening, as this teacher spoke to, has the ability to bridge gaps in students backgrounds, and for some students, offers a way for them to connect with and embrace their cultural heritage. I also believe that experiential learning that is a more effective way of understanding and retaining information and that anything that brings people together, outside, thinking and talking and using their hands, has to be positive.

Taos, NM

2010-09-07T22:20:00.000-07:00

We stopped in Taos without much of an agenda other than to check out the art community there and stay at the Abonimable SnowMansion Hostel because I had heard good things about it, including tipis, communal kitchen, hot showers, and... a community garden! We had a pretty long drive getting there from AZ and a long drive ahead of us to get to AK, so after arriving in the dark, we cooked a great dinner of fresh Prescott farmers market produce and hit the hay.

In the morning light we got to meet Moona, the lovely owner of the hostel who is an herbalist and keeps the garden there full of fresh food and healing herbs. We chatted about how wonderful it is to eat directly from the garden, to pick something and put it immediately in your mouth, and she expressed a belief that this act brings one to higher states of consciousness. She had feelings (that I share) about the importance of teaching younger generations about gardening and the nourishing and healing power of plants, that the passing on this knowledge is what keeps it alive and thriving.

We've been reading the book The Revolution will not be Microwaved, by Sandor Ellix Katz, in the car on our trip and there is a similar sentiment shared by Sandor, that the slow food movement is greatly important but will die out without stewards of the movement actually continuing food, family, and cultural traditions, like fermentation and food preservation. I wholly agree with that, and being an avid canner and fermenter myself, have been brainstorming ways to make sure I am actively propagating these skills and spreading them around.

The hostel garden was planted row style, like the Free Farm and like most of the gardens we are seeing, seemingly because it is a simple way to maximize food production with little resources (like materials to build raised beds). It was a bit smaller than the Free Farm, but as home style gardens go, was pretty huge. They also had some really nice 'bonus features' like a cob oven, some beautifully constructed scrap wood hoop style green houses, cold frames, and a water system that seemed like a greywater or rainwater collection system, but I couldn't quite figure out how it worked.

There have been amazing sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, all hot weather crops that I've been super jealous of because they're difficult to grow in abundance (if at all) in San Francisco. I've also been really loving the summer and winter squash, I love how big and pre-historic the plants look, and how you have to rummage through them to find the veggies underneath.

We also happened to run into a man named Keith wearing a "Comida No Bomba" t'shirt at a cafe about 20 feet down the road from the hostel. I got to chatting with him and it turns out he was one of the founders of Food Not Bombs. We had an interesting conversation about politics and free food distribution. Thanks for the mystical alignment, New Mexico!

Back to the car and off to Texas!

Prescott, AZ

2010-09-06T06:04:00.000-07:00

We started by taking a LONG drive down California, partly along our beautiful coast and then cut over to head into Arizona to Chino Valley and then down some serious backroads, to meet up with Randall, Leenie, Arlo and Zeno, and stay at their homey and wonderful geodesic dome house visit with their chickens, donkey, horses, goats, pot-bellied pig, home veggie garden and check out and learn about the amazing desert landscape around their home. We met Randall through our friend Page, only to realize he was also very close with our friend Pancho and was hosting Pancho during his recent ahimsa/non-violence activism against SB 1070 in Arizona. It certainly is a small world.

Leenie made us a delicious breakfast and we had great company for conversation while we ate.

Then we went on a tour of the land around their home and met a slew of amazing animals, and I was especially taken with more pallet architecture in the chicken coop that Randall had built over a dilapidated frame that was pre-existing on his property.

We checked out their home veggie garden and brainstormed ways to defeat the invasive grasses that keep coming back to choke their tomato plants. And I loved their mini orchard, it's the kind-of orchard I dream of having one day, a couple trees of a bunch of different kinds and varieties of fruits and nuts. We also saw their manure pile under which they had recently buried a horse that had passed away to compost. A whole horse! Amazing!

We followed Randall and family to the Prescott farmers market where got a bunch of beautiful local produce, some vegan tamales, and a sweet tomato chipotle jam (I can't resist buying other people's canned goods). We were hoping to get in touch with a project in Prescott called Karma Farm, a decentralized, volunteer run gardening project that enables gardens and composting around town, and hosts a free farmstand once a week. Here's their statement:

Food is the bridge that connects folks to their bio region. We all eat and live together and Karma Farm offers the space for forging new relationships with your neighbors and local flora and fauna. Karma Farm is composed of different types of community contributions from tools and seeds to compost, land, and labor. Volunteers collectively work to manage garden plots around town and promote a culture of autonomy, solidarity, and mutual aid. Both the Catalyst and Karma Farm are arms stretching out from the same being, so lets embrace this being in it's totality and collectively work for autonomy, solidarity, and mutual aid.

Randall pointed us in the direction of a woman involved in the Catalyst InfoShop, the community space affiliated with Karma Farm, who drew us a map of how to get there. When we got to the shop, it was closed, but an incredibly nice woman named Aurora saw us lurking outside and not only let us in, but took us on a tour of some of the different Karma Farm sites around town, and then let us make coffee in their community kitchen and use their internet before we headed out on our way.

We started our tour by leaving the infoshop and heading to a nearby cellar to see their seed and herb drying area. This space seemed to define the nature of the project, a little accessible space, a little inventive creativity, some makeshift supplies, some dedicated volunteer investment, and they had created an amazing decentralized network of different parts of the farm.

We moved on from there to a dry garden that KF had set up at a nearby school, and then the school had mostly taken over. I'm not especially familiar with dry farming, and although I've been learning more about it, it still admittedly baffles me sometimes. But there we were, in the middle of the desert, looking at bright red peppers that hadn't been watered.

From here we went to see the goats, tucked on a small hill next to an art gallery. A volunteer walks the goats twice a day and I assume will do the milking once they start producing milk. Aurora said they're still working out what to do with the milk, but it seems that they're leaning towards making cheese.

We then moved to what I thought was the most amazing part of the project, the compost area. Off to the side of the road, next to an empty lot, they had set up a multi bin system for community composting, where people could drop off their food waste, cover it with straw, and a volunteer came by and turned the active pile once a week. Prescott, like most cities in the US, doesn't have municipal compost like we do in SF, so creating a space for people to dump their food waste without having to maintain their own compost pile is a beautiful way to both divert unnecessary landfill waste (and greenhouse gasses), build community around an action that anyone can take part in, and feed the gardens the project supports. The structures were simple, made from pallets, and had colorful signs describing what could be composted, how to do it, and where to put it.

Our last stop was a home garden with crazy tomatillos, tomatoes and peppers, all the hot weather veggies that I'm so jealous of (although we have been having a really good run with little tomatoes under the hot house at the Free Farm).

We headed back to the Infoshop, and I added "start a community library" to the long list of ideas and projects that I keep tucked away in the back of my brain. This trip has really engaged a lot of the things I’ve been thinking about in working with Produce to the People, it’s magnified some questions, alleviated (although not necessarily answered) others, and is starting to tie things together in a more concrete, more cohesive way. Coming into our second year of programming, after having focused on and sorted through some of the initial program structure in our first year, I am now sitting with a lot of questions.

This leg of our journey was definitely a lesson in community. From meeting Randall through Free Farm friends and having him and his beautiful family welcome us into their home (even though we arrived way past everyone's bedtime!) to having a hand-drawn map to the Infoshop, to having Aurora give us the grand tour when they weren't even open that day, to the ways that the Karma farm and the Catalyst Infoshop are tying their community together by creating a network of small, simple actions.

Thanks Arizona. While I definitely do not agree with your legislation as of late, it's good for me to remember that there are great factions of people that governing bodies do not speak for, and can not quiet. Small revolutions by actual people are making huge differences. Keep it up!

Cross Country Inspiration

2010-09-03T12:06:00.000-07:00

Hey Folks, It's Lauren here!

I'm currently traveling across the country with Case, our summer program assistant, as he heads home to Columbus, OH after finishing up his year of service with LVC. We thought this was a great opportunity to check out a small, small taste of other urban agriculture, food justice, and just good old fashioned home food gardening that's going on outside of the amazing little bubble of action in the bay area. Case is planning to continue gardening and food justice work in the heartland, and feeling excited and nervous about dealing with seasons that involve more drastic changes than "rain" and "not rain", so we're going to do a quick run through and see how other folks make it happen.

We're blazing a trail down to Arizona and New Mexico, jumping Oklahoma and Texas on our way to Arkansas, and then making a left and heading north. Our stops are based on people we've met, friends of friends, or people we heard were cool that were willing to entertain us. This is a random grouping at best, but I have the feeling there will be amazing ties between places, projects, and people, and that things will lead to other things, and I can't wait to see how it will all pan out.

Ice Cream to the People!

2010-08-17T13:44:00.000-07:00

Ice Cream to the People!

a benefit for Produce to the People

Thursday, August 26th, 2010. 5-9pm

El Rio (Mission @ Precita)

$10-30 suggested donation

(no one turned away for lack of funds)

Ice Cream Social!

featuring:

Straus Family Creamery Organic Ice Cream

Maggie Mudd's Vegan Ice Cream

Equal Exchange Fair Trade, Organic Chocolate

locally harvested fruit compotes and homemade herb syrups by Produce to the People

Ice Cream Scooped by TEAM SCOOP!

Feel Good Jamz by Gigi Didi

Silent Auction!

featuring:

Awesome Private Workshops!!

Homebrewing Beer with Master Brewer Jim Boyd

Fermentation 101 with Finn Cunningham of Source Press

Home Canning Fruit Jams and Butters with Lauren Anderson of Produce to the People and The Free Farm

Amazing work by Local Artists!!

Gregory Bartlett (The Spare Room Project)

Brooke Budner (Little City Gardens, the Greenhorns)

Chelsea Rae Klein (Descry Magazine, Through the Lens Project)

Zoey Kroll (Edible Office, Hayes Valley Farm)

Fabulous Goodie Baskets!!

featuring delicious preserved goods, jams, fruit butters, chutneys, pickles, herbed salts and sugars and more! As well as delightful home made bath goods, shampoo, lip balm, bath salts, and more!

Goodies by:

Captain Blankenship

The Farmentors (Hayes Valley Farm)

Happy Girl Kitchen Co.

The Institute of Urban Homesteading

Lauren Anderson (Produce to the People, The Free Farm)

Slow Jams

Tree (The Free Farmstand, The Free Farm)

Witches' Sabbat and On the Hunt

Raffle Raffle!

featuring Gift Certificates from:

The Cowgirl Creamery

Cynically Delicious Cupcakes

The Front Porch

FUSEBOX by CrushPad

Magnolia Pub and Brewery

Mission Pie

Not Just Flowers

The Scarlet Sage Herb Co.

Spork

Can't make it to the event, but still want to support Produce to the People?

Check out our pledge drive on Kickstarter!

Kickstarter!

2010-08-03T15:31:00.000-07:00

We're so excited to announce that our Kickstarter pledge drive has finally launched! We really like kickstarter.com as a fundraising venue because it fosters creative projects, and creates a venue for a wide range of donors, honoring small to large donation amounts. We have a bunch of awesome handmade goodies offered as rewards for donations, and will be posting updates as we go. Our drive runs for 60 days (ending on September 29th) and we are trying to raise $10,000, which would be a huge step for us in terms of creating a sustainable framework for Produce to the People.

We need your help! Fundraising through Kickstarter is all or nothing, meaning that if we don't make our goal, we don't get any of the pledge money. So please check it out and make a pledge if you're able. And most importantly, please PASS IT ON, far and wide! Please forward this email along to your friends, family and anyone you know that might be interested, post a link on your facebook, twitter, etc. The link is as follows:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1216293948/produce-to-the-people-community-through-food.

We are definitely trying to raise funds through this campaign, but we are also trying to raise awareness, meet new people who are interested in food justice, gleaning and gardening, local food systems, and youth and community development, so please help us make connections and garner support! We really appreciate you taking the time to check it out and send it along, this has been a few months in the making and we're thrilled to see it active, and will be even more thrilled to see the progress!

Field Trip to People's Grocery and City Slicker Farms

2010-07-27T13:35:00.000-07:00

This past Friday I went on a field trip to the East Bay with 4 of Produce to the People's summer youth program workers to visit People's Grocery and City Slicker Farms. We chose to go to these two great organizations because they understand how the food on our tables is all part of a larger story of power.

Our first stop was one of People's Grocery gardens at their 55th street garden. We met up with Jason who told us all about the history of People's Grocery, their gardens, where their food goes, and why they do what they do. We heard about how City Slickers works to build a more ethical, sustainable, people-oriented, and locally based food economy by creating a grocery store in a part of town where there is severely limited access to healthy food and their Grub Box CSA program. This approach tips the balance of power back to the people that the food industry serves, rather than the current model that is largely directed from the top which creates problems too numerous to fit in this blog post. I definitely encourage you to dive into learning more about that!

Next stop was City Slicker Farms where we met up with a farm apprentice, Molly at their Secret Garden location! If our talk at People's Grocery centered around the intersections of food, politics, and power, our City Slicker tour gave us a good dose of the nuts and bolts of growing food in urban Oakland.

We saw beds of chard, kale, collards, beets, and turnips, all laid out intentionally to grow the most food in the smallest amount of space. We also learned about how they built their soil using double digging, and fun methods to keep away pests.

They're also a garden that has a strong sense of community. That evening there was going to be a barbeque with volunteers.

Thank you so much to Jason, Molly, City Slicker Farms and People's Grocery for having us and showing us such a great time! It was amazing to see how in other cities the love of food is bringing people together, creating communities. How do does community come together over food in your life?

Kickstarter Rewards!

2010-07-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

Here are a few images of some of the rewards offered through our pledge drive on Kickstarter. Please check out our kickstarter page, make a donation if you can, and help us spread the word about Produce to the People and the pledge drive to your friends! We believe this fundraiser is about pooling resources and making connections, so if everyone who believes in food justice and the work we're doing, could pass this along to 5 or 10 or 20 friends, it would greatly help us get the word out. Thanks so much!

Produce to the People buttons

hand made tote bags

Jam! made from locally harvested fruit and herbs and organic sugar

Produce to the People on Edible SF

2010-07-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

Check out this article on Edible SF about some pockets of the Urban Agriculture movement happening in San Francisco, with a section featuring Produce to the People and some ideas about non-profit finances.

PttP Youth, Plums Forever, and the Free Farm!

2010-07-20T12:56:00.001-07:00

Our current summer youth program continues to be awesome! Jaime, Isaac and Jason are doing an amazing job harvesting fruit, just last Friday we harvested over 200 lbs of plums in a few hours! A special moment for me was that Jaime took the initiative to spread the word about PttP outside of work and met someone with a plum tree that we could harvest. I think this speaks greatly to the bridges we can make in our community just by talking about what we're doing and how we can support each other.

A million thanks to everyone who has opened their homes and gardens so farm and shared their bounty, diverted waste, and helped get fresh food to folks in need in our community.

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Also this past week, we got to spend a little more time at the Free Farm, helping with the harvest, and putting some much needed attention towards the composting toilet. Jason and Jaime are naturally adept builders (and demolition-ers) and put a lot of work in prying apart pallet wood an repurposing it to skin the outhouse (which had been studded out by PttP's handy carpenter program assistant Case, and our good friend and dedicated Free Farmer, Steve).

The outhouse is about 1/3 covered at this point, and is looking rustic and beautiful. You can come help or check it out on Wednesday and Saturday workdays, and as always, can find out more about the Free Farm and the collective of folks that organize it at www.thefreefarm.org.

Jam Sale at Mission Pie!

2010-07-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

Saturday, July 31st, Produce to the People is having a jam sale! Our friends at Mission Pie have generously allowed us to set up shop at their great location at 25th and Mission. We'll be there from 11am until 3pm. Come up and get a jar or two of your favorite jam made with fruit picked by our awesome summer youth workers.

Fruits of Our Labor: Summer Youth Program Harvests

2010-07-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

For the past two weeks Produce to the People has harvested backyard fruit trees with two of our Summer Youth Program workers, Jaime and Isaac. In such a short amount of time we've already managed to pick close to 400 pounds of plums and lemons, bringing our total near 950 pounds so far!

From the pictures alone, the generosity of the neighbors opening their doors to share their abundance with the wider community is obvious. I hope I never take for granted how amazing people ranging from perfect strangers to good friends are. Regularly the folks whose home's we're harvesting even go so far as to offer us tea and conversation while we work. It's unexpected gestures like that that transform an afternoon from a job into a community building experience.

I like to think of our work as one cog in the larger machinery of generosity in San Francisco. People share their fruit with us, and then we have the opportunity to take that fruit to be handed out at The Free Farm, The Free Farm Stand, The Martin de Porres Center, the Julian Pantry, and other great places.

Thanks to Gold Bar Wednesdays and all of our friends!

2010-07-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

We had a great time at the Triple Crown last night, got to see a bunch of friends that we haven't seen a little while, and made a couple hundred bucks for the youth program! Thanks to Erin and Robin from Gold Bar, the Triple Crown for hosting, and everyone who came out to event!

We {heart} summer fruit harvests!!!

2010-06-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

We're super excited about the summertime harvests starting up. We've already begun harvesting left over winter fruits and even summer plums!

Make sure to check out the newest blog post from our friend Tree of the Free Farm Stand about Fruit Picking Time.

Gold Bar Wednesday Fundraiser!

2010-06-15T16:04:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!

On June 30th, 5:30pm - 10:00pm Produce to the People will be the beneficiary of a Gold Bar Wednesday fundraiser at The Triple Crown. Here's a link to a google map of the locale!

Here's the deal: Gold Bar sets up the event with the bar so that for every person that walks in the door, $5 is donated directly to Produce to the People. You don't have to stay long, and you don't even have to drink, just walk in the door, and Bam! you've just donated $5 to Produce to the People.

We'll use that money for all kinds of expenses. Expenses like Canning Jars for jams and preserves made from locally gleaned fruit, an aluminum orchard ladder, fixing up our bike cart to haul fruit, harvest tools, and insurance that lets us do our Summer Youth Employment and Education Program.

Can't wait to see you there!

Composting Toilet Construction at the Free Farm.

2010-06-10T13:27:00.000-07:00

The past few Wednesday workdays Steve and I have been building an outhouse for a composting toilet for the Free Farm. It's been a crash course in simple construction that I've really enjoyed so far. I'll make sure to put up some pictures soon showing our construction process, and the finished product in time for a free composting toilet workshop June 19th at the Free Farm. Details below!

As many of you know, the Free Farm has no toilet or sewer connection. Laura Allen, of Greywater Action, will help us solve this problem by plumbing a composting toilet to be used by volunteers. Come help and learn about ecological toilets, that use no water and return nutrients to the earth. We'll finish construction on a urine-diverting composting toilet, discuss health and safety, codes and regulations, the benefits of composting toilets, and how to maintain a well-functioning toilet.

Date: June 19th
Time: 1pm - 4pm.
Cost: Free.

RSVP: Please send a brief email with the number of people coming to help Laura plan: info@greywateraction.org

Progress at the Free Farm

2010-05-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

The post in March about progress at the Free Farm had great "then" and "now" pictures. Things haven't slowed down since then. I would even say that the Free Farm is in a new phase since March. We've been growing and harvesting fabulous crops to distribute. I love the picture above of Pancho talking to people and giving away food! Check out the rest of the pictures we've gathered as the harvests keep rolling in.

Produce to the People!

Field Trip to Pie Ranch with Mission High School Students

2010-05-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

Hi, this is Case, new summer program assistant with Produce to the People. In my very first week of work I was lucky enough to visit Pie Ranch. Both PttP and Pie Ranch work at Mission High School with the students building and maintaining a food producing garden. It was a great chance to meet the people who have been working to make food growing a part of young people's lives in San Francisco. It was also a good opportunity to get out of the city and onto a well run farm.

During the visit we fed cows, picked strawberries by the handful, collected eggs, and ate delicious meals prepared by Mission High students in Pie Ranch's outdoor kitchen. There were also educational class sessions for the students led by Pie Ranch's farming apprentices. The apprentices devote a year to learning about sustainable agriculture and social justice. I kind of think our two organizations sound like kindred spirits.

Our new summer program assistant!

2010-05-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

I'm super excited to introduce our summer program assistant, Case Garver. He's an Ohio transplant through the Lutheran Volunteer Corps, has just finished up working with the poverty response organization, Welcome, and has been on The Free Farm team from the beginning. He's quickly become an integral part of the urban agriculture and food justice communities in San Francisco, and we're really grateful to have his support this summer.

He is splitting his time this summer between Produce to the People, and our friend and partner organization, Cultivate DioCal. Here at PttP we'll be working together organizing the summer harvest season, hosting our second annual youth employment and education program, and continuing to help out at the Free Farm and The Mission High School garden. Case has also already set to work organizing some really great events this summer, and is giving some much appreciated attention to some of the less fun spreadsheets and databases that keep PttP up and running.

In talking with Case about what brought him to the food justice movement in San Francisco and why he wanted to work with Produce to the People, he had the following to say:

The heartbreakingly basic aims of food justice work is what draws me to it. No one should go hungry. Yet, plenty of people do. There is more than enough food, much of it going to waste. The mission of Produce to the People resonates deeply with me because it rejects the "scarcity of resources" mentality legitimizing so many injustices. Instead, Produce to the People has a philosophy of sharing the abundance that already exists in our own backyards. I know that PttP understands the enormous value of distributing local, organic produce to underserved populations, but there's a deeper level of justice here than just pulling fruit from the waste stream. That deeper layer of justice is what MLK called "a revolution of values". It means the people involved in the process, all of them, and their well-being, is more important than the "things" that we create.

Local Food Economies at CounterPulse

2010-05-12T10:49:00.001-07:00

Come check out the local food economies talk at CounterPulse tonight at 7:30pm. I'll be there representing the Free Farm, and a bunch of other really great projects will be there as well.

Stanford Glean and Fruit as Resistance!

2010-04-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

Photo by Adam Cole

There was an article in the Stanford Daily a day or two ago about Stanford Glean, a really amazing group of fruit pickers that was initially organized by a friend, fellow Free Farmer, Stanford professor, and totally amazing guy, Page Chamberlain, and has really taken off to the point where it is largely student driven at this point. From what I understand, the task was to form a project as an act of civil disobedience, and thus Stanford Glean was born. This semester they are bucking the system by guerilla gardening on campus. It would be quite an understatement to say that I am impressed and inspired by the work that they're doing and the way that they are thinking about it.

I've been asking myself a lot of questions lately about why do this work, what are the benefits of challenging such monolithic problems with such grassroots efforts, what are the pressure points that can open a channel of progress, what do these intangible phrases that we keep using to describe our work, like "food justice" and "systemic change" actually look like? I think more and more that the answers are just in the asking of the questions, that if we keep asking, we will create change by understanding the small steps we take and how those do steadily move us forward as long as we keep at it.

I have always thought of the gleaning and gardening work that Produce to the People does as an act of resistance, resistance against an industrialized, consumptive, unethical, unsustainable (I could go on....) food system, resistance against the crippling lack of consideration for the needs of poor and homeless people, people struggling with disabilities, mental illness and addiction, and an economic system that holds people in a constant state of struggle, resistance against the breakdown of connection by socio-economic status, age, and cultural background, resistance against people living in isolation.

It's a small, subtle, community and home-based resistance, but that is how I see the dismantling of these larger systems that we have created that don't actually care for us or tend to our needs as real cities made of real communities of real people. Individual people, embracing what they love, what they feel capable of, what they feel confident in, and sharing their capabilities as a resource.

Just some thoughts, and I'll leave you with a quote from Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Yes, that's a heart-shaped potato from the Julian Pantry

The making of an Urban Farm

2010-03-23T10:09:00.001-07:00

this pic is from the ever awesome Cristina Ibarra

I am consistently amazed by the progress at The Free Farm, the work is moving so fast I think I've almost been taking for granted how much we've been able to accomplish in a few short months. A few weeks ago, Tree put up a really wonderful post on the Free Farmstand site about appreciation, and it really hit home with me. I feel really grateful to be a part of this project, for the partnership and hard work that has created and sustains it, and for the friends I've made and the inspiring new people I've met in the process. A big giant thank you to everyone who has been a part of it and everyone to come along the way!
I thought it seemed like a good time to post some "then" and "now" photos of our progress so far. The "then" photos reflect what the lot looked like before we started work in mid-January (yes of this year! as in 3 months ago!), and the "now" photos are from the workday this past Wednesday. I wish I had pulled off the row cover on all the farm style beds because they are all really starting to pop with vegetables. Next post, I guess! Enjoy and thank you!

The Free Farm is in the headlines!

2010-03-23T07:46:00.000-07:00

Check out this great article in the SF Chronicle about The Free Farm!

My favorite quote from Tree: "Doing things for free encourages people to share," Tree said. "It encourages people to be community, to be family. It provides people the chance to be generous with each other."

Spreading the potential of urban gleaning and gardening AND PttP Tasmania!

2010-03-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

I have been doing my best to keep up with the small handful of inspiring folks that have been contacting me about starting their own version of Produce to the People in their local community, whether it be a gleaning group, or a community garden, or a youth program, or a combination of any of the above. So far I admittedly mostly just tell the story of how PttP got started since it is still a fledgling project, offer how we currently are doing the things we are, some ideas about what has really been successful and what has really not worked so good, and then do my best to answer questions. It is important to me to be as forthcoming and transparent with way things operate as I can, because while I have no interest in starting other PttP's myself, I do have a great interest in helping other folks start their iteration of this work in a way that is local, grassroots, and in tune with the needs of the community that they live in.

I have been in contact most regularly with a woman named Penelope, who was super excited to start a similar project in Tasmania, and just heard from her recently that they received a government grant and are up and running! Very exciting! They are calling themselves Produce to the People Tasmania (after asking my permission, which I admittedly had some initial reservations about which I am doing my best to break myself of. In thinking through where this discomfort was stemming from and realizing it was largely based in succumbing to creating an identity based in private ownership, I felt a bit yucky, so I agreed to share the name. I might be naive, but really, what's in a name?) Anyway! Check out their blog, they are doing some seriously awesome work!

Another article about gleaning

2010-03-04T23:58:00.001-08:00

Just saw this article about gleaning groups in Sacramento, Portland and San Jose! So great! I feel so inspired when I hear that a person or a group of neighbors or an organization is doing this in their local area. It really keeps me going to know that so many folks believe in the importance of this work, of creating access to healthy local food, of sharing, of supporting their community, of working together. I admittedly feel overwhelmed sometimes, like there is so much good work to be done, how will we ever get to it all? But then I hear about other folks, and I know we will get to it all by sharing the load.

Keep fighting the good fight, gleaners!

PttP on Daily Candy + Gleaning info zine with Source Press!

2010-03-04T07:51:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Daily Candy for the little blurb about our backyard harvest program! It has created quite a buzz, and reached a lot of folks outside of San Francisco that want to glean fruit and give it away. I had previously talked to a person here and there that wanted to start similar programs either gleaning or gardening in their local area, but a good handful got ahold of me just now, and I am thinking about putting together an info packet to help with the basics of starting such a program. We are really lucky to have such a thriving and generous garden community in the bay area, and I had the help and advice of many brilliant and dedicated folks getting PttP off the ground, so I would be really honored to be able to pass any ideas I've garnered along the way to make it easier for other folks to harness their local fruit and get it to people who can make good use of it.

And the ever-awesome Sorrel of Source Press has offered to help put out the info packet, so it will be zine style, and I'm super excited to work with her on it. She just finished her Mental Health Cookbook, which, of course, is amazing. If you're in the bay area, there's a release party at the Secret Garden on Sunday April 4th from 11-1pm, more info on the Source website. If you've never been to the Secret Garden, you could get a triple whammy that day because you could hang out there, get a zine, and hit the Free Farm Stand around the corner right after.

All very exciting!

Stay tuned about the info zine, or get ahold of me if you'd like to know when it will be available. Also, get ready to be patient because I've got a little too much on my plate right now, so it'll be a minute before I can really devote the energy to that project that it needs. But if you need help with ideas about starting a gleaning group in the meantime, please send an email.

First community workday at the St. Mark's Garden

2010-03-03T16:02:00.000-08:00

I talk a bunch about the Mission High School Garden and the Free Farm, but it's time to give a new and well overdue shout out, because PttP has also been working with a really awesome and dedicated group of gardeners from the St. Marks Church and neighboring Martin Luther Tower senior community to start a food garden on a patch of land behind St. Marks. We have been hard at work doing the organizing (in a partnership with Urban Share) for several months and this weekend finally got to DIG IN!

I would love to say that gardens just happen when someone shows up with a shovel, some seeds, and a watering can, but really and truly, there is often a lot of paperwork and legwork, collecting supplies, borrowing tools, asking for donations, and many many conversations and ideas that come first. Don't let that ruin that magic for you, there is plenty of shoveling at some point, and this Sunday was the day for it! We are starting out clearing the space, which means weeding, raking, cleaning up, and making notes of the light and the layout to move forward. This garden is going to be partially raised bed at both standing and sitting height, in addition to a few double dug beds directly in the soil, to make it friendly for folks of all different ability levels.

There is another workday coming up next Sunday, March 7th from 1-4pm (the church is on O'Farrell and Franklin St.s) if you're interested in coming by to help out or check out the space!

Avocados! and Seedlings! at Sunnyside Organics!

2010-02-27T17:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we went out to Richmond to the amazing new Sunnyside Organics nursery. They were hosting a volunteer day for non-profits where you could trade a few hours of labor for a few trays of their cast-off seedlings, so we went and helped amend and till some soil for a new garden that their planting outside one of their greenhouses (until the skies opened up and drenched us!)

I wish I had taken a camera to the workday because the space was magical, they are rebuilding a long row of old greenhouses, including repurposing all the old piping to build new tables, sifting tons of rubble from the previous owners out of the soil surrounding the buildings so they can plant in it, and getting their regular nursery operation running there. Pilar, who runs Sunnyside and is pretty much the nicest person ever, has all kinds of great and weird plans for all the different greenhouses, like breeding beneficial insects.

And we got a ton of seedlings to plant at the Free Farm and give away to some other gardens (I don't think Mission High or St. Marks will be ready to plant in time for this batch, but I went with Case who organizes Urban Share and I think they'll make quick use of them)

And bonus of all bonuses, there were two huge fruiting avocado trees on site that we harvested from in the pouring rain! We scavenged about 85 lbs of fruit before we were soaked to the bone, and then we snipped off a big bunch of fruiting wood to graft onto some saplings. Tree did a grafting demo today at the Free Farm workday where he taught a big bunch of people how to graft fruiting wood onto a tree grown from an avocado pit. Keep your fingers crossed that the grafts take!

Mission District Citrus

2010-02-16T10:21:00.000-08:00

One of the beautiful things out our mediterranean climate here in San Francisco is that we can have bearing fruit trees almost all year round. In the dreariest, wettest winter days, our citrus trees shine like little bursts of sunshine, staving off the cold season, and producing abundant amounts of fruit even in tight quarters. There are days when I walk down the street and think San Francisco must be in the running for meyer lemon capitol of the world, and our oranges aren't too shabby either. We've had a couple really nice excursions out in the Mission District recently, picking beautiful meyers, satsuma mandarins, and some really sweet oranges that I'm still not sure of the variety.

Harvests definitely slow during citrus season, I think since citrus hangs on the tree for a bit and is sort of self contained when it does fall, it doesn't create the urgency that a plum tree, heavy with fruit and threatening to create a slick of partially fermented mush all over the yard, can instill in people. But please, don't hold tight to your citrus! There are many folks in the city that can make good use of that healthy dose of vitamin C. Drop us a line or give a call and we'll happily come out and pick even the thickest skinned lemons!

New City Farm and Garden Collective!

2010-01-22T22:07:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that The Free Farm, a collective garden project that Produce to the People is helping organize, design, and build in collaboration with a handful of other really amazing community orgs and fantastic volunteers, is up and running! Here's a few pics and more info...

The Free Farm is an urban farm on the corner of Gough and Eddy Streets in San Francisco, CA. Our goal is to grow organic produce, foster garden education, and build community. The food grown is offered to the community for free in an effort to combat hunger, aid health and nutrition, and increase resource sharing and care for one another.

Currently the farm is open to the public on workdays, Saturdays and Wednesdays from 10am to 2pm (closed during heavy rain). Everyone is welcome, there are many tasks for people of all skill levels and physical abilities (please note that the site has limited wheelchair access at this time.)

The Free Farm is organized by a collaboration of San Francisco food justice, community gardening and poverty response organizations in conjunction with the hard work of many dedicated volunteers. The land is generously donated by St. Paulus Lutheran Church.

While our primary focus is on the growth and distribution of local organic produce, we are also deeply invested in creating a model of successful community partnership. Please find out more about our partners below.

St. Paulus Lutheran Church
The Free Farm Stand
WELCOME

Produce to the People
Cultivate DioCal
Stanford Glean
The Community Garden at Holy Innocents Church
Source Press

news and sentiment from the Scion Exchange

2010-01-22T22:04:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was the California Rare Fruit Growers Scion Wood Exchange in Berkeley. I got there early with Tree, and our friend and fellow tree enthusiast, Sara, so we could set up a little info table for PttP, the Free Farm Stand and the Free Farm. This also meant we got first dibs on some of the scions, before the chaos, yes CHAOS, that is not an overstatement, ensued.

I had no idea so many people were so excited about grafting fruit trees. I mean, it really was the place to be if you had any interest in it, there were tons of varieties of just about everything, and there was root stock for sale and onsite grafting onto said rootstock, plus little demo workshops, and of course tables with great folks like Greywater Action, the Permaculture Guild, and Alemany Farm. It was quite a scene.

I got a handful of scion wood, not too much because I know I'll never get to it all, but I'm excited to work on my grafting technique in our tiny mini orchard at home as well as a few friends gardens. I also felt really inspired by two women that were at the last CRFG meeting I went to who have been guerilla grafting fruiting wood onto some of the flowering plum trees that are rampant around San Francisco.

Everything together made me think about utilizing pre-existing resources and our ability to create abundance with a little ingenuity, time, and capable hands. It made me really embrace dormancy and growth cycles and the calm that I feel when it starts to rain and the energy that I feel when the rains pass. Like the dormant season and the prime time to graft, the scion exchange happens once a year, so if you missed it this year, you'll have to wait til next winter, but trust me, it'll be worth the wait.

CRFG Annual Scion Wood Exchange this Saturday!

2010-01-13T14:50:00.000-08:00

This Saturday, Jan 16th, is the California Rare Fruit Growers Annual Scion Exchange. I'll be there sharing a table with Tree giving out info about Produce to the People and The Free Farmstand. I'll also be scooping up some scion wood to do some grafting onto my fruit trees, as I'm fairly new to grafting and really excited to practice and hopefully get a little more variety going in my little home garden. Should be pretty fun for both experienced and novice grafters.

Holiday Jammin'!

2009-12-14T21:32:00.000-08:00

We hosted our second ever Produce to the People benefit JAM SALE at the warm and wonderful Mission Pie this past Saturday and despite the rain, we had a nice turn out! Some new faces, and some good friends, and some folks who enjoyed the jam from the last sale so much that they braved the looming downpour to pick some up!

We had about ten varieties of jam of jam this time, all made with local fruit and herbs, and organic and fair-trade sugars. We also had some hand stenciled and sewn tote bags and some hand punched buttons with great phrases like "fruit trees are love", "homegrown tastes best" and "share your harvest".

Big thanks to Gregory Bartlett, Chantal O'Keeffe, Chelsea Rae Klein, and Little Vila for helping set up and talk jam with all the great folks that came by. Thanks to Mei Ling Hui and Courtney Lee for stopping by to say hi and talk about gardens and fruit trees. And as always, undying gratitude to Mission Pie for the great work you do with youth and local food, and for always supporting our efforts to do similarly great work.

Holiday Jam Sale this Saturday!

2009-12-08T23:02:00.000-08:00

Produce to the People featured on the NEED blog

2009-11-13T09:12:00.000-08:00

We have received some lovely press from some lovely people, but I was really taken with this article written by Lauren Fischer on the NEED (a humanitarian magazine) blog. I really appreciate Lauren's ability to pull coherent quotes out of my rambling diatribes, and love all the shout outs to other organizations that we work with. It's been ever apparent to me lately how great it is to have solid partnerships with people who are tirelessly supportive and reliable.

I also was inspired by talking to Lauren about a community composting program that she has been thinking about organizing with the folks in her building. How great would it be if all apartment buildings had that?

MHS goes to Little City Gardens

2009-10-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

The Mission High School gardeners took a walking field trip over to Little City Gardens the other day to check out the amazing work happening there, get ideas of how to get the most growing power out of a small space, and talk about small, community-minded business and entrepreneurship with the amazing farmer/owners Brooke Budner and Caitlyn Galloway.

We got a tour of the garden where they grow mostly an artisanal salad mix and herbs for a local restaurant and have a CSA in the works. We also got to check out their seed starting area with totally brilliant half bike hoops to hold up row cover, and got to smell fennel and take some prickly chayote squash back for our garden (chayote are a beautiful vining squash native to central or south america depending on who you talk to, that grow really well in the warmer parts of San Francisco. You can grow a new plant from a ripe fruit (which you can get at the farmers market and even some local grocery stores when it's in season) by letting it sit in the dark until it sprouts, then burying it on it's side (sprout side up!) half way up in potting soil until it develops enough roots to be transplanted)

I thought this was a great trip on many levels, but especially because of how much Brooke and Caitlyn are managing to do with a fairly small space that is nearly right around the corner from the high school, and because I think it's really important for the students to see urban gardening not just as a non-profit and educational endeavor, but also as an important addition to our local economy, and a positive source of entrepreneurship, grassroots business and potential employment.

give a fig!

2009-10-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

It's finally getting around to fig season in San Francisco! Figs are another tree that grows quite happily in our climate and there are quite a handful of old and established, hugely abundant trees tucked away around here. I find that fig trees have more pest issues than some other fruit trees, the birds, possums, raccoons and rats, all seem to have field days in the fig trees, and are highly in tune with the ripening of the fruit. With that said, I've harvested a beautiful tree in Potrero twice now, and have made quite a decent harvest despite the fact that the resident told me that I've been sharing it with a family of about seven raccoons!

This most recent harvest, I had the help from two amazing and inspired ladies, Anja and Charissa, who are doing research on projects that they consider to be beyond urban agriculture. I was honored to be on their radar, and we had a chat over some Mission Pie, and then they graciously volunteered their time and tree climbing skills to help harvest. They came by my home garden afterwards and I loaded them up with scarlet runner beans, african blue basil, apple quince butter, plum rose petal jam, and a bottle of ipa homebrew. I really get overwhelmed with the food sharing sometimes, and just can't stop myself!

Figs are quite quick to become mush, and while most of them will make it to the Free Farm Stand, I did make a pretty substantial batch of fig jam with home fermented red wine vinegar, which will definitely be out for the next jam sale. And the figgy ends all go in our compost, which has been hotter than ever! Those microorganisms sure do have a sweet tooth!

Placerville apple sensation!

2009-10-11T16:23:00.000-07:00

I just can't say enough that we meet some of the nicest, most generous folks doing this work. After our incredible score of some of the most delicious pears I've ever tasted, I didn't think we could match that bounty for some time, but right away I had a call in to Camilla, an amazing woman from San Francisco, who has a house with a small apple orchard on Apple Hill in Placerville. Erin landed in SF by way of western Massachusetts and had been having major fall in New England blues, so it took little convincing to get a harvest partner on this outing.

It was a beautiful day and Camilla's land was quite magical. We set out picking early, starting out with some super sweet golden delicious. Shortly after we got going, my friends from the Free Farm Stand and the Julian Pantry, Page, Margaret, Caleb and Lyn arrived, which was so much fun to have a big group of San Francisco food activists out in the country picking delicious and abundant fruit!

It was really wonderful to sit down to lunch with everyone and have amazing vegan cauliflower and lentil soup that Camilla so generously made for us all. Sitting down to eat great food with great company is really one of my most absolute joys.

After lunch, Erin and I moved on to the red delicious and winesap apples, also incredibly sweet and juicy. After we had filled the car with apples, we picked a handful of the concord grapes along the fence and then sat in two stray adirondak that we stumbled on walking through the side orchard. Lovely!

Clearlake pear extravaganza!

2009-10-05T23:18:00.000-07:00

I had the good fortune of meeting a really nice man named Ed with a pear orchard up in Clearlake through the folks over at Neighborhood Fruit. Erin, Greg and I jumped on the chance to hightail it out of the city for fruit pickin' and a camping trip by the lake.

We arrived in the afternoon, and the orchard was huge! Ed is working on going organic after purchasing the land from some conventional growers, which takes a few years of actually growing organic before you can get certified, so he has been growing his 8 acres of pears with no spray since 2007. Needless to say, we had a field day, stuffed the station wagon to the gills with beautiful and delicious pears, almost 800 lbs!

Here at Produce to the People, we know the importance of testing your product. Strictly research, of course! We gleaned the red and bartlett pears from the side of the orchard that had already been harvested (but still had quite a bounty left hanging). The bosc were about to be harvested the following week, so they were in abundance. I think it was the common consensus that the red pears were the flavor champions.

Off to pitch the tent and kick back by the campfire! (I know that looks like the ocean, but it's the lake! No joke, it was rowdy!)

All the beautiful photos in this post were taken by the fabulous and talented Gregory Bartlett. See more of his art work at: www.gregorybartlett.net

Produce to the People featured on Design Sponge!

2009-10-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

I'm so honored to have PttP and my humble little garden featured on Design Sponge! Thanks to Lia and Studio Choo for the lovely article, you guys are the best!

Food, Inc.

2009-09-30T01:22:00.001-07:00

If you're in San Francisco, Food Inc. is playing at The Roxie through October 6th. Go see it!

OMG...PTTP runs on WVO!

2009-09-15T17:34:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't seen us chugging along, Produce to the People cruises about town toting fruit in a 1983 banana creme pie yellow Mercedes station wagon. We have been fueling up with biodiesel at Dogpatch Biofuels and Biofuel Oasis, but finally made the plunge and did the waste vegetable oil conversion. Now we're running on recycled grease from a local sushi restaurant, woo woo!

yay yay, paw paws

2009-09-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

I am OBSESSED with pawpaws. I'm not really sure when this obsession began, but over a year ago at least, which is a bit bizarre considering the first time I have ever eaten, or held in my hand, or even seen a pawpaw was a few days ago on a hike in Virginia.

Pawpaws are the largest edible fruit native to North America, but, like loquats, they don't travel well so most folks, even those who live where they grow abundantly, have never eaten one because you can't buy them at the super market. They're sweet and rich and taste something like banana papaya custard. I managed to smuggle about 15 fruits out of the woods, and probably would have filled my whole backpack had my folks not had a bit better sense (or a more acute fear of park rangers) than I do. Either way I have a whole bunch of pawpaw seeds now, being cold stratified in the fridge, and I'll let you know if they sprout!

Lauren is back!

2009-09-09T17:33:00.000-07:00

Vacation was awesome. I'm back, let's pick some fruit!

Lauren is on vacation!

2009-08-25T01:15:00.000-07:00

yes, that's me. dead man's float. in the river.

I'm on vacation until Sept. 9th and will be sporadically responding to email, but the lovely Erin Kohl from SF Glean will be harvesting in my absence, so drop me a line if you've got fruit and I'll pass your info along to her. Peace out!

PttP Summer Youth Program 2009 comes to a close :(

2009-08-16T00:50:00.000-07:00

Our amazing summer youth employment and education program 2009 is coming to a close, and while I'm going to miss the awesome students something terrible, I feel really grateful for getting to know them, and so proud of the work we were able to accomplish this summer in just a handful of weeks. We harvested and distributed 1,497 lbs of local (predominantly from San Francisco) produce, fostered relationships with four distribution sites, took part in the building and/or maintenance of six community gardens, canned 65 jars of homemade jam, met lots of new folks in our community, and each made five new friends.

Thanks so much to Brenaja, Burton, Kevin, Kristine and Yuwen for putting up with a nutty boss, an ever fluctuating schedule, and a new challenge at every turn. You guys will do great things, I just know it.

Apple a Day

2009-08-15T00:49:00.000-07:00

photo by Kristine Tubig

Plum season is on it's way out, which means its time for apples!

Kevin picking apples in Bernal Heights.

photo by Cristina Ibarra

Some PttP apples on the local produce table at the Free Farm Stand.

photo by Cristina Ibarra

Little one at the Free Farm Stand enjoying apple season!

Mission Pie Garden

2009-08-08T00:49:00.000-07:00

Earlier today the PttP youth crew helped plant a new sidewalk garden outside of Mission Pie on the corner of 25th and Mission St.s. There have been more and more sidewalks popping up around the Mission, which is super exciting, some made by community projects like Mission Greenbelt Gardens, some by neighbors, some by residents and some by businesses. Some of these gardens are under the radar despite happening right out in the open, meaning that they haven't gone through any permitting or requirements to legally install a sidewalk garden, and some, like the Mission Pie garden, have gone through rigorous designing and adjusting and re-adjusting of plans to get to a place where the garden could legally happen.

Most of these gardens feature native plants, great for our local ecosystem, supporting our local wildlife and beneficial insects, and thrive with little maintenance and little extra watering once established. Most legal sidewalk gardens do not feature food plants because it is quite complicated to pass fruit trees especially through this permitting process (despite Newsom's desire for us all to grow food and especially fruit trees on unused public land). Mission Pie worked long and hard to get some food plants through this process and managed to succeed with full size almond and linden trees, dwarf meyer lemon trees, raspberry canes, strawberry and lavender plants.

Karen Heisler (who co-owns and operates Mission Pie with Krystin Rubin) giving everyone the run through of the days activities. Karen is also a co-director of Pie Ranch and we have been working together to help build the food garden at Mission High School. Also, off to the right is Catherine Butler of Urban Edibles!

The steadfast PttP gardening crew (from L): Kristine, Yuwen, Lauren, Burton, Brenaja, and Kevin (who mostly got cut off in this picture)

Kevin helped dig a really deep hole and plant a full size linden tree.

Burton planted a couple meyer lemon trees and some raspberry canes.

Kevin and Brenaja top dressing newly planted lavendar with compost.

One of the most important parts of a hard day of gardening work is hanging out on the pick up truck when the work is done.

Thanks Mission Pie for the delicious picnic lunch out on the sidewalk for all the volunteers! And thanks PttP youth for all the hard work!

The Secret Garden

2009-08-07T00:48:00.000-07:00

There is an intimate and wonderful garden tucked away in secret space between the back gardens of four houses in the Mission, quite appropriately called The Secret Garden or El Jardin Secreto. Clara, who I had initially met through the Free Farmstand (have you noticed how many people connect over the Free Farmstand? Come by if you want to meet gardeners, or food makers, or canners, or just really nice people looking for good food or to share good food, Sundays, 1-3, Parque Ninos Unidos/Treat Commons, Treat and 23rd) has recently taken up the task of getting this garden back into shape.

We have been doing our best to keep up with the incredibly tall loquat tree, and the handful of cherry plum trees that are making and ripening fruit so much faster than we can manage to pick. Really, these cherry plums are out of control! We have been to the garden several times already and stand to go several more times (I'm pretty sure the PttP youth have had their fill of cherry plums and now understand way too well about local, seasonal food, and why it's important to share!)
The garden is beautiful though, and quite an oasis in the city, and hey, there's even a swing for break time!

18th and Rhode Island Permaculture Garden

2009-08-01T23:45:00.000-07:00

We had a small group for the youth workday the other day, so Burton, Brenaja, and I left the Mission to check out the 18th and Rhode Island Permaculture garden. We met up with our good friend, Tree, of the Free Farmstand, and set to work, starting seeds, especially leafy greens, and harvesting potato towers.

This was a great task for us because we had just started potato towers at the Mission High School garden and I think doing the harvest was helpful to understand the process of the planting (although I admittedly have had much more success growing potatoes in the ground than in towers. But in tight city quarters, towers are a really good alternative to the ground space potatoes take up).

We also got to partake in the shared lunch that Tree had made for all the garden volunteers, which I think is a really lovely experience in and of itself, and one that we have been thinking about and experiencing in different capacities in the different gardening, gleaning and food dispersal that the youth program has been doing so far this summer. Sometimes it's sharing groceries, or produce, and sometimes it's sharing warm and delicious mung dal and rice with the people you've spent all morning working together with, sweating and getting your hands dirty. All are a little different but all are quite beautiful ways to share and be united over the simple, fundamental need for food.

All of these great photos are courtesy of our good friend and lovely lady of the Free Farmstand, Cristina Ibarra.

Plum Season part II

2009-08-01T00:48:00.000-07:00

Plum season has been holding strong, so much so that when we talk about our harvest schedule for the day, I get a resounding, ugh! plums again!? from the PttP youth. It's been an amazing crash course in local seasonal food, one that has left our teenagers dreaming of fall apples. Even my excitement for plums is waning, but I still think they're beautiful, and that part of their beauty is the combination of variety, abundance, and versatility.

Kevin (top), Burton and Brenaja (bottom), picking cherry plums at the Secret Garden. These trees are crazy prolific!

Our spread at the Free Farm Stand (photos by Bill McLeod)

I made a vegan plum blackberry (with berries from Bernal Hill) pie for our youth program picnic. We make it a point to properly honor and celebrate the food we harvest and share!

The Free Farm Stand is 'our' farm stand

2009-07-30T00:46:00.000-07:00

Kristine, Burton and Brenaja helping out at the hyper-local table at the Free Farm Stand

(photo by Bill McLeod)

Pancho and Kevin hanging out by the produce in Parque Ninos Unidos

(photo by Cristina Ibarra)

There are some things that just feel great to be a part of, they're just genuine efforts from good and true people and the Free Farm Stand is one of these things, organized by a magical man named Tree, who is one of these people.

Folks coming through to get their groceries

(photo by Cristina Ibarra)

The PttP youth and I have been helping out at the FFS more often than the other sites, and the young folks have started to refer to it as "our farm stand", which is exactly the sentiment I'm trying to convey. Tree has done a beautiful job organizing it, it feels homey and inclusive, a place to meet people over good food and share ideas and recipes. A lot of folks that come are regulars and it's apparent that it's not just a place people come to, but a community they're a part of.

Kevin stocking the bread table and offering Pancho some homemade salsa

Sharing is really the center of what makes the free farm stand so special and why we feel so deeply akin to this particular food distribution site, because that is what we're trying to do through our backyard harvests, enable people to share, to even out scarcity with excess.

Yay local!

(photo by Cristina Ibarra)

It's also especially important to us that Tree makes it a point to showcase the food grown in San Francisco, and picked by regular local folks like us. Hyper local food gets to shine on one table, and farmers market excess occupies the other table. It's the best of both worlds, "homegrown" food from gardens around town, and local farm food from great small farms like Green Gulch and Happy Boy.

Tree! Strike a pose!

(photo by Cristina Ibarra)

Tree is also deeply dedicated the food gardening community in SF, especially in the Mission District, and he keeps a weekly blog that is both inspiring and informative, with a list of gardening opportunities throughout the week.

Burton, me and Tree checking out the honeycomb from the bees in Tree's garden

(photo by Kevin Estrada)

The Julian Pantry

2009-07-26T00:48:00.000-07:00

Another one of the really lovely places that we donate and distribute our produce through is the Julian Pantry at St. John's Church on 15th St. and Julian St. We went recently to help out with their Saturday pantry, which has a really nice communal vibe to it. Everyone who helps eats breakfast together beforehand, and before people line up for their groceries, there's a bagel and pastry snack time that happens in the courtyard.

We brought plums with us to share and Page, a professor from Stanford who I met recently at the Free Farm Stand brought a bunch of grapefruit he gleaned from the Stanford campus. So wonderful!

Yuwen shucking corn!

Burton helping folks with their celery.

Kristine helping Brenaja refill the pasta.

And Kevin found a heart shaped potato!

Jam Sale was a success!

2009-07-19T19:16:00.000-07:00

The jam sale at Mission Pie was awesome! We sold out of all of our jam (about 65 jars!) not even halfway through our scheduled day. Kristine and Brenaja were superstars, wooing people in with jam tastes on bread we had made the day before, and then helping folks pick out exactly the right jam for their tastes.

Thanks so much to everyone that came out and bought jam to support Produce to the People! Thanks to Kristine, Brenaja, Kevin, Yuwen and Burton (sorry, Burton and Yuwen that you had the second shift and we finished so early!) for all your hard work making jam and bread! And thanks to Mission Pie for being so generous to host us and have a benefit plum tart day in our honor, and for all the great local food work and fostering of young folks that you do!

Jam and Bread

2009-07-18T00:47:00.000-07:00

We really like to make use of everything here at Produce to the People, so we've been saving overripe fruit from our harvesting excursions and freezing it, and now we're ready to a whole bunch of jam! We also made zucchini bread from the zucchini's that we got to partake in from the harvest at Alemany Farm, and whole wheat bread for folks to taste the jam at our upcoming jam sale fundraiser at Mission Pie.

Kevin, Brenaja, Kristine, and Burton pitting mirabelle plums and cleaning rose petals.

Kristine moving the bread dough to knead it and let it rise.

photo by Brenaja Cates

Kevin mixing up the zucchini bread.

Apricot Lavender and Plum Blackberry Jam bubbling away on the stove.

Brenaja stirring up the Plum Rose Petal Jam.

Water bath canner.

Finished Apricot Lavender Jam

Finished Plum Rose Petal Jam.

Benefit Day and Jam Sale at Mission Pie

2009-07-16T08:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday, July 18th (that's this upcoming Saturday!), 8am-10pm at Mission Pie, 2901 Mission St. (corner of Mission St. and 25th St.)

Jam Sale out front from 11am-5pm (or until all the jam is gone!)

Please join us and our very good friends at Mission Pie to celebrate San Francisco's sweet and juicy plum season, which is currently in full swing. A portion of the sale of every plum frangipane tart on Saturday, July 18th goes to benefit Produce to the People. This is a win win fundraiser because you can come out, support the great work being done by BOTH PttP and Mission Pie, and eat some of the most delicious sweet treats in the city!

PttP will be representing out front with a table of locally harvested, handmade jams for sale for only $5 each. All the fruit has been picked by Produce to the People in and around San Francisco, and canned with love by the amazing high school students in our Summer 2009 Youth Employment and Education Program. All the jams are made with organic backyard fruit and organic, fair trade sugars. They are perfect for your morning toast, on top of a bowl of ice cream, and also make great gifts!

You can also stop by just to meet some of our awesome youth, hear more about what we do, or register your garden for harvest! And as always, more information about Produce to the People can be found on our website: www.producetothepeople.org .

Please pass the word on to your friends in the bay area, hope to see you there!

Loquat Love

2009-07-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

I had never heard of loquats before San Francisco, but now I can't get enough! They're another well kept secret due to the workings of the U.S. food industry that doesn't value produce that doesn't ship well. Their loss is our gain, because they grow like wild in our climate! The trees are native to Japan, and one of the brilliant gardening students at Mission High who grew up in Guatemala tells me the grow all over the place there too. Don't mistake them for the bronze loquats which are also very popular in SF but don't produce fruit. You can tell the difference because the non-fruiting trees have read leaves at the center of each bunch that reach upwards toward the sky.

Picking some low fruit off a small tree.

Loquats grow in small bunches so the easiest way to pick them off a tall tree is to cut the whole bunch and have folks holding a sheet or tarp under you to catch the fruit as it falls.

Teamwork!

Mission Greenbelt Gardens

2009-07-12T00:47:00.000-07:00

I've had the joy of meeting a lot of really excellent people through gardening and art and community work, and sometimes those people overlap all of those categories in a serendipitous and lovely sort of way. One of the multi-talented folks that I've been lucky enough to cross paths with is Amber Hasselbring of Mission Greenbelt Gardens.

Amber is an artist, native plant enthusiast and sidewalk gardener, and combines all three through the Mission Greenbelt Project, which is working towards linking green spaces through the Mission District with California native sidewalk gardens. I love this project because it is so important on so many different levels, sidewalk gardens are great for our watershed, and native gardens are both beautiful and low maintenance, but also attract native beneficial critters that manage pests and pollinate other plants (like our food gardens!)

We had just picked Amber's backyard plums the week before when she had mentioned there was a work day at the sidewalk garden that wraps around Mission Pool, so we said, "Great! What time should we be there?"

photo by Brenaja Cates

Kevin becoming one with the plants.

photo by Brenaja Cates

Sticky monkey flower!

photo by Brenaja Cates

Betsy Davis and Burton liberating the corner plants. Betsy is an awesome SF gardener and arborist that introduced me to Amber. Yay for community and yay for women gardeners!

Burton, Amber and Brenaja dumping those pesky weeds over the fence!