Dear Farm Friends:
A few weeks of warm weather, some dedicated snail abatement efforts, and plenty of hard work have the gardens and orchards at Alemany Farm looking as good as ever. The muscle we’ve put into our native plant and riparian restoration efforts over the past couple of years is starting to pay off as the lupine, irises and sticky monkey flowers take off into full bloom. The apple trees are in flowering and the peaches and plums have already set fruit. The garden is a beautiful place to be these days.
If you want to join in the fun — and take your share of the harvests of lettuces, greens, strawberries, garlic scapes, kale, collards, chard, beets, and the first squash of the season — then come out to one of our regular workdays.
Here’s the upcoming schedule:
Sunday, May 20: Noon to 5 PM, with an emphasis on native plant restoration
Monday, May 21: 1 PM to 5 PM
Saturday, May 26: Noon to 5 PM
Monday, May 28: 1 PM to 5 PM
Sunday, June 3: Noon to 5 PM
Also, we’re happy to announce that this Saturday, May 19 we’re joining with the SF Parks Alliance for “Love Your Parks Day”!
We’ll start the day at Noon with a guided herb walk with herbalist Kathryn Delwiche. After the tour, Kathryn will give a hands-on demonstration of how to make refreshing drinks and other treats from herbs. There will be a big garden salad for everyone to share, and also kids art activities to keep smaller farmers busy. We’ll finish up the day by planting some herbs in the garden. RSVP requested, but not required: please visit www.loveyourparksday.org.
Also, we’d like to give a shout out to our comrades-in-farms at Occupy the Farm who have been trying to ensure that UC Berkeley will not turn the last bit of Class 1 Agricultural soil in the East Bay into a baseball field. There’s a solid, if slightly outdated, overview of the controversy over the so-called Gill Tract property here, written by an Alemany Farm co-manager:
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/occupy_2.0/
You can find the latest update here, from the SF Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/14/BAUF1OHMS8.DTL
We would like to encourage you all to support the preservation of this site by signing onto this petition at Change.org: http://www.change.org/petitions/support-occupy-the-farm-tell-the-university-that-farmland-is-for-farming
Please add your voice to those saying that farmland should be used for farming.
Hope to see you at Alemany Farm soon!
Thanks, as always, for all of your work to make SF more food secure.