Gold Bar Wednesday Fundraiser!

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.

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

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

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!

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

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!

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