Author: Abby Bell

Dear Farm Friends:

A last minute reminder that this coming Saturday, April 23, is our 5th Annual Earth Day BBQ.

We’ll start Farm tours and work tasks around 11 AM. As always, there will be plenty of tasks to do, including planting potatoes, carrots, beets, green beans, dry beans, and our first round of tomatoes. We’ll also, as ever, be building and turning compost, mulching paths, and taking care of the orchard.

Throughout the day we’ll have plenty of other activities, including T-shirt stenciling (please bring your own shirt!), face painting, and sign painting.

Sometime after noon we’ll fire up the grill to cook sausages, hamburgers, and veggie burgers. We’ll also have a farm-fresh, just-picked salad. We invite you to bring a side dish or a dessert to share. And this year we are encouraging people to bring their own plates and utensils to cut down on waste.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Thanks, as always, for all your work to make SF more food secure.

The Farm Team

PS: And please keep voting for us in the Organic Gardening contest at http://www.deloachcommunitygardens.com/ … Remember, you can vote for Alemany Farm EVERY DAY. So keep stuffing that ballot box.

Dear Farm Friends:

We hope that you can join us this Saturday, Mar 6 to celebrate Arbor Day.

Alemany Farm is serving as the host for the SF Department of Public Works’ 10th Annual Clean Team event. Starting at 9 AM, people will be gathering at the Farm to break into different work teams. Some groups will stay at the Farm to plant 25+ new fruit trees and work on gardening projects. Other groups will travel to Holly Court, the Alemany Housing Development, Brotherhood Way, and neighborhoods throughout Districts 9 and 11 for other gardening and clean up tasks.

In addition to work projects, there will be an eco-fair featuring local environmental and community groups. We will have game for kids. Around Noon there will be a BBQ lunch for all volunteers.

Please come and join us. … And for those of you who want to avoid the crowds, please come to our regularly scheduled workday on Sunday, Mar 7 or Monday, Mar 8.

Thanks, as always, for helping to make SF more food secure.

The Farm Team

Dear Farm Friends:

You know how when you throw a big party or a potluck and you have to clean up your house before the event, even though you know you’ll have to clean up the house after the event as well? That’s sort of the place we’re in at Alemany Farm these days.

On Saturday, March 6 we will be hosting the SF Department of Public Works’ 10th Annual Clean Team & Arbor Day Celebration. Starting at 9 AM, volunteers will plant fruit trees, work on gardening projects, spread woodchips, remove weeds, paint out graffiti, pick up litter, and beautify neighborhoods throughout Districts 9 & 11. At noon, there will be a BBQ lunch. The event will also include a green resource fair with plenty of awesome local groups, music, and fun activities.

We’re very excited to partner with SF DPW and SF Recreation and Parks Department for this event, which will attract up to 300 people. This is an important chance to show off the Farm to many people who don’t even know it exists — which is why we’re working really hard in the coming weeks to do some extra beautification.

So we’re hoping you can join us at our upcoming regularly scheduled workdays: Sunday, Feb 21; Mon, Feb 22; Sat, Feb 27; and Mon, Mar 1 as we get the place looking really beautiful. Upcoming projects will include mulching the paths in the lower garden and orchard hillside, weeding our ornmamental native gardens, planting some new natives, and orchard care. At the end of each workday, there will be plenty of collards, kale, chard and cabbages to harvest and share.

Please come out and help us clean up for the Clean Up.

… And if you’re interested in learning more about urban food production, please apply for our 2010 Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture. You can download the application at www.alemanyfarm.org. Some applicants have been unable to fill in the PDF; please feel free to fill in your responses in either a Word doc or in the body of an email.

Thanks, as always, for all of your work to make SF more food secure.

The Farm Team

Download the application here: PDF | WORD

Dear Farm Friends:

As you know, the volunteer coordinators at Alemany Farm try to use
every workday as an opportunity for skills sharing and community
education. But many people remain eager for some more structured
learning.

So we are very pleased to announce that for the second year in a row,
Friends of Alemany Farm will be offering an Apprenticeship in
Ecological Horticulture.

To apply, please complete the application (PDF | WORD) and return it to:
ecologicalhorticulture@gmail.com. We will only be able to accommodate
30 people in the class. The application deadline is March 1.

The 11-month course will take participants through the seasons,
covering key garden and orchard tasks that occur in Spring, Summer,
Autumn, and Winter. Apprentices will learn core principals of food
production such as soil fertility and composting, propagation and
planting, seasonal tree care, water-wise irrigation, plant
identification, integrated pest management, and crop planning. The
hands-on training —using our vegetable gardens, herb gardens, and
orchards — will cover several methods of sustainable horticulture.

The Ecological Horticulture classes will start on Saturday, March 20
and will take place the third Saturday of every month at Alemany Farm.
The workshops will take place from 10 am to 5 pm, with a generous
break for a potluck lunch.

We look forward to receiving your application!

Thanks, as always, for your work to make SF more food secure.

The Farm Team

PS: Don’t forget our upcoming volunteer workdays: Saturday, Feb 13;
Monday, Feb 15; Sunday, Feb 21; Monday, Feb 22; and Saturday, Feb 27.

Dear Farm Friends:

We hope you can join us THIS Sat, Oct 24, as we celebrate our Fifth Annual Harvest Festival. The festivities will start around 11 AM and wrap up around 5 PM.

We will have plenty of food including a Somoan-style roasted organic suckling pig, veggie burgers, salads fresh from the farm, and Mission Pie desserts. But it’s potluck style, so please bring another side dish to share. Also, to reduce waste, please bring your own plates and utensils; we will have paper plates in case you forget.

Activities will include Alemany Farm t-shirt making; games for kids; bands and drumming; and garden tasks such as planting next season’s garlic.

While we celebrate a great 2009 season, we are also working with our partners to help grow new gardens in SF. The SF Parks Trust, along with Garden for the Environment, are working with the city to locate new plots of land to start community gardens. To find our more, please read the announcement below about upcoming planning meetings.

Keep it growin’,

The Farm Team

Garden City: How to find space to grow food in San Francisco
Three Part Workshop series

Have you been dreaming of starting your own urban oasis, a garden where you can grow you own food and find some piece of mind, but you don’t have any space and don’t know where to look to find some? This three part practical workshop series is for you. Attend one workshop, or all three. This workshop series is co-presented by the San Francisco Parks Trust and Garden for the Environment.

Garden City Workshop I: Finding City Land for a Garden
Date: Sunday, October 25
Time: 10 AM – 3 PM
Location: SPUR, 654 Mission Street,, San Francisco, CA 94105-4015
Cost: $15-$30 sliding scale

Pre-registration is required, and space is limited, so sign-up soon. To pre-register, please call (415)750-5110, or email julia@sfpt.org

Even though San Francisco is a very dense city, there are more open parcels of land than one would think. In this session, learn how to identify possible spaces for gardens in San Francisco, including city property, privately owned lots, school gardens, sidewalks and backyards. The basic pros and cons of each option will be explored. After a brief lunch break, workshop participants will venture out on a bicycle tour of gardens implemented in such spaces. All participants
should bring a bag lunch, water, and a bicycle.

Garden City Workshop II: Navigating Permits, Procedures and Building Community Support for your Garden
Date: Sunday, November 8
Time: 10 AM – 2 PM
Location: SPUR, 654 Mission Street,, San Francisco, CA 94105-4015
Cost: $15- $30 sliding scale

Pre-registration is required, and space is limited, so sign-up soon. To pre-register, please call (415)750-5110, or email julia@sfpt.org

After you find a potential garden site, what’s next? In this session, learn how to successfully navigate the procedures and permits relevant to your type of site. Learn how to effectively build community support for your garden project and cultivate a committed volunteer group to ensure your garden thrives. A panel of successful garden-entrepreneurs will share how they launched their projects and lessons learned in the process. All participants should bring a bag lunch.

Garden City Workshop III: Digging In: Getting your Garden Started
Date: Sunday, November 15
Time: 10 AM – 2 PM
Location: Garden for the Environment, 7th Ave. at Lawton Street, San
Francisco, CA
Cost: $15-$30 sliding scale

Pre-registration is required, and space is limited, so sign-up soon. To pre-register, please call (415)750-5110, or email julia@sfpt.org

You’ve identified a site for your garden, you’ve completed all
appropriate permits and built community support, now it’s time to dig in and create your dream garden. The day will start with a tour of the GFE where we will begin to build our garden skills toolbox. We will assess potential challenges and gain techniques for overcoming those challenges through basic garden design practices, plant considerations, irrigation systems, soil, compost systems, and much more! Don’t forget to bring a bag lunch!

Here’s a statement on the long-awaited passing of the 2008 farm bill, courtesy of the California Food and Justice Coalition.

CFJC Statement on the Passing of the 2008 Farm Bill

The farm bill passed by Congress reflects the tireless work of food justice, anti-hunger and sustainable agriculture advocates, as well as the entrenched power of the agri-business lobby in Washington DC.  The bill includes important new funding for nutrition, beginning and minority farmer, sustainable agriculture and local food system programs.  Unfortunately, it also includes a continuation of commodity programs that subsidize the production of a few crops (mostly corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton and rice) to the benefit of mega-farms and corporate agri-business, and at the greater expense of public health, the environment, farming communities worldwide.

Read the full statement here.