Herb Walk This Sat + Occupy the Farm
By The Farm Team | May 16, 2012
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 There’s a solid, if slightly outdated, overview of the controversy over the so-called Gill Tract property here, written by an Alemany Farm co-manager: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.
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Celebrate Earth Day at Alemany Farm
By The Farm Team | April 16, 2012
Dear Farm Friends:
We hope you can join us this Sunday, April 22, to celebrate Earth Day at Alemany Farm’s annual Spring BBQ.
The festivities will begin around 10:30 AM and will go until sunset. We’ll have plenty of activities for garden-lovers of all ages, including face-painting, t-shirt stenciling, and plenty of garden tasks. We’ll be planting most of our 2012 tomatoes, thinning apples, and doing some light weeding.
And if you’re more interested in just hanging out, we’ll have a great local band on hand. The Knuckle Knockers, a bluegrass band from Bernal Heights, will start strumming around noon and will play for a good part of the afternoon. Check out their music at: https://www.myspace.com/theknuckleknockers.
We’ll have Farm tours at 11 AM and 2 PM for people eager to learn more about what we do at Alemany Farm.
Then the eating begins. We’ll be roasting a pasture-raised pig and will have veggie burgers and veggie hotdogs on the grill. Please bring a salad, side dish, or dessert to share.
And please spread the word to your friends and family!
We look forward to celebrating with you at the farm this Sunday.
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Spring Planting Continues + Earth Day Celebration Apr 22
By The Farm Team | April 6, 2012
Dear Farm Friends:
We were lucky to catch some good weather last weekend and were able to get in the ground a large amount of our spring plantings: broccoli, chard, kale, collards, lettuces, chois, plus squash.
If you missed out but still want to get your hands dirty, the planting fun will be continuing for a while. This weekend we’ll be planting leeks, cucumbers and some more lettuces in the main garden, along with potatoes in our root garden. The hillside is also booming with potato, lettuce, chard and squash planting. The fruit trees are in bloom and the farm is looking beautiful.
So please mark your calendars for these upcoming community workdays:
Saturday, April 7 Noon to 5 PM
Monday, April 9, 1 PM to 5 PM
Sunday, April 15, Noon to 5 PM
Monday, April 16, 1 PM to 5 PM
And put a double-and-triple star next to Sunday, April 22, when we’ll be celebrating our Annual Earth Day BBQ.
We’ll have a potluck BBQ with plenty of items (for carnivores and vegetarians alike) on the grill plus drinks and snacks. Please bring a side dish to share. We’ll have games for kids, gardening activities for anyone who wants to do some light work, plus farm tours and hopefully a music act or two.
We hope to see you at our Earth Day party, which is always a wonderful event to mark the start of a new summer season.
Thanks for your work to make SF more food secure.
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Spring Planting at Alemany Farm + Compost Giveaway
By The Farm Team | March 31, 2012
Dear Farm Friends:
Better late than never. That’s how we at Alemany Farm feel about the recent storms that have rolled through Northern California. The late rains are complicating our spring tillage, but we’re happy for the water anyway. We took advantage of the February dry spell to start working the garden beds, which means we’re in good shape to start planting.
Please join us this Sunday, April 1 as we plant broccoli, collards, kale, chard, lettuces, chois, squash, and beans. As usual, we’ll start around Noon and wrap up around 5 PM.
And if you’ve got your own little garden patch at home, come to Alemany Farm on SATURDAY for Recology’s Great Compost Giveaway. The scraps that SF residents put in our curbside green bins are coming back to the City as high quality compost. To get your share, just come to the Farm on Saturday morning. Each person can take one 5-gallon bucket of this soil. Please remember: It’s Bring Your Own Bucket! More details are here: http://blog.recology.com.
We’d also like to enlist your help in a statewide effort to label foods containing genetically modified organisms. Sustainable food advocates are working to get an initiative on the November ballot that would require labeling for all GMO foods and prevent foods containing GMOs from being marketed as “natural.” You can learn more, and find out how to get involved, at http://www.labelgmos.org.
Please mark your calendars for these upcoming community workdays:
Sunday, April 1
Monday, April 2
Saturday, April 7
Monday, April 9
Sunday, April 15
Thanks, as always, for all of your work to make SF more food secure.
The Farm Team
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Greenhouse Workdays at FreeFarm + Ecological Horticulture Applications
By The Farm Team | February 20, 2012
Dear Farm Friends:
The unseasonable sunshine and nice temperatures have us feeling like bastardizing the classic Mark Twain quote about Bay Area weather and turning it into: “The warmest summer I had ever was the winter I spent in San Francisco.”
Springtime seems to have arrived early. And while we’d just as soon have more rain, the lovely days make for perfect gardening at Alemany Farm. We’ve wrapped up most of our dormant season tree care and are now looking forward to starting our greenhouse sowings.
We’re very excited to announce that this year we are partnering with the wonderful folks at SF’s Free Farm to do our propagation. We will be sharing the greenhouse at the Free Farm for starting our early season lettuces, kale, collards, chard, along with our tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash.
If you’d like to learn more about seed starting and greenhouse management, please join us these days at the Free Farm:
Saturday, February 25, 10 AM to 2 PM at the Free Farm. Eddy @ Gough in the Western Addition.
Saturday, March 3, 10 AM to 2 PM at the Free Farm.
Saturday, March 10, 10 AM to 2 PM at the Free Farm.
These special greenhouse days are IN ADDITION to our regularly scheduled workdays at Alemany Farm:
Sunday, Feb 19, Noon to 5 PM
Monday, Feb 20, 1 PM to 5 PM
Saturday, Feb 25, Noon to 5 PM
Monday, Feb 27, 1 PM to 5 PM
Sunday, March 4, Noon to 5 PM
And last but not least: We are still taking applications for our 2012 Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture, an 11-month course that offers participants an overview of organic gardening methods. To learn more about the class, and to download an application, please visit www.alemanyfarm.org. Applications must be returned to ecologicalhorticulture@gmail.com by March 1.
Thanks, as always, for all of your work to make SF more food secure.
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Apply for Alemany Farm’s 2012 Ecological Horticulture Class!
By The Farm Team | February 3, 2012
Dear Farm Friends:
We’re excited to announce that for the fourth year in a row Alemany Farm will offer an Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture for people looking to learn more about becoming their own food producer.
The 11-month course takes participants through each of the seasons and covers all the basics of organic gardening, including:
• Overview of bio-intensive crop production and permaculture principles
• Evaluating your soil type and measuring soil fertility
• Building compost
• Seed starting and greenhouse practices
• Water-wise irrigation methods
• Integrated pest and disease management
• Basic botany and plant identification
• Crop planning
• Summer and winter tree care
The class meets the Third Saturday of every month, from 10 AM to 5 PM. The class begins in March and will wrap up in January, 2013 as we follow the horticultural calender through Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.
There is a morning skill share from instructors Jason Mark and Antonio Roman-Alcala, followed by a potluck lunch, an afternoon garden and orchard work session, and then a collective harvest of fruits and vegetables.
If you’re interested in applying, please complete this application [word doc, pdf] and return it to ecologicalhorticulture@gmail.com. The application deadline is March 1, and the first class will take place on Saturday, March 17.
There is a suggested $125 donation that helps to cover material costs at Alemany Farm. But no one is turned away for lack of funds. We look forward to receiving your application.
Thanks so much for helping to make SF more food secure.
The Farm Team.
PS: Don’t forget these upcoming Alemany Farm Workdays!
Sunday, Feb 5
Monday, Feb 6
Saturday, Feb 11
Monday, Feb 13
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Spare a Sandwich for Alemany Farm: Donate Today
By The Farm Team | December 10, 2011
Dear Farm Friends:
With the Winter Solstice and the New Year of the Gregorian calendar approaching, we at Alemany Farm are taking time to remember our many accomplishments of 2011. At the same time, we’re thinking about all the work we want to do in the coming year — work that, like it or not, will require money.
And so we’d like to ask that you make a year end gift to Alemany Farm so that we continue our mission of boosting food security and promoting ecological education.
We grew literally tons of food this year. The late rains into June and July, combined with an usually warm spring and summer, helped give us a bumper crop of fruits and vegetables. We produced at least 4,000 pounds of organic fruits and vegetables. Much of the bounty went to the volunteers (that means YOU) who keep the garden and orchards thriving and came to the more than 100 community workdays we hosted this year. From June through November, a good portion of our harvests went to households in the adjacent Alemany public housing community via a free You Pick on Wednesday afternoons that we organized. If you value our mission to boost food security, please visit http://bit.ly/i2JOxV today to make a tax-deductible donation.
In 2011 we also increased San Franciscans’ awareness of what it takes to grow food. We hosted more than 50 field trips — from pre-schoolers to elementary school students to high school students to employee groups from PG&E and Google. No matter the age of our visitors, the newcomers to the garden got to learn about ecological horticulture, local food systems, and the importance of preserving native ecosystems. For the third year in a row we organized an 11-month course for adults eager to learn more about organic agriculture. Through our education programs we helped sow a new appreciation for urban food production.
As an all-volunteer organization, we have little overhead. But it does take money to run an urban farm. We have to pay for seeds, plants, irrigation equipment, and tools, as well as the community events we regularly hold to celebrate our community.
If everyone on this list were to donate $10 today, we would cover our budget for the next two years. Ten dollars — you can barely get an organic-local-sustainable sandwich for that much. So please visit http://bit.ly/i2JOxV today and make a tax-deductible gift.
We thank all of who have worked in the garden this year for the generous donation of your labor. We hope to see you at Alemany Farm soon.
The Farm Team.
PS: Please note our Holiday schedule
Monday, Dec 12, 1 PM to 5 PM
Sunday, Dec 18, Noon to 5 PM
Monday, Dec 19, 1 PM to 5 PM
* * * Please Note, we will be CLOSED on Dec 24, Dec 26, and Jan 1 for the Holidays • • •
Monday, Jan 2, 1 PM to 5 PM
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Alemany Farm’s Holiday Wish List
By The Farm Team | November 27, 2011
Dear Farm Friends:
We hope that each of you had a bountiful and restful Thanksgiving holiday. At Alemany Farm it’s feeling like autumn. The garlic has started to sprout, much of the winter cover crop is in, and we’re eagerly expecting the arrival of our 2012 strawberries, which we will plant this coming weekend. For the next couple of weeks we’ll be putting woodchip mulch on the paths to keep down grasses over the rainy season.
As we look back on our successful 2011 season and plan for next year, we’ve been thinking about what materials, tools, and equipment we need to keep the garden and orchards thriving. So we’ve prepared a little bit of a holiday wish list. If you — or any aspiring Santas you’re friends with — have extra tools lying around your garage or basement, we hope you’ll consider donating them to Alemany Farm. Scroll down and you’ll find the items we hope to find in our stockings, including a list of native plants.
If you have an in-kind tool or plant donation to make, please contact us at community.gardeners@gmail.com.
Of course, you can always make a monetary donation to us via our fiscal sponsor, The SF Parks Alliance. Please visit
https://sfpt.ejoinme.org/MyPages/FriendsofAlemanyFarm/tabid/249862/Default.aspx
to make your tax-deductible donation today. All donations help to pay for equipment, seeds, and plants to keep our all-volunteer garden alive.
And please mark your calendars for these regularly scheduled community workdays:
Sunday, Dec 4, Noon to 5 PM
Monday, Dec 5, 1 PM to 5 PM
Saturday, Dec 10, Noon to 5 PM
Monday, Dec 12, 1 PM to 5 PM
Sunday, Dec 18, Noon to 5 PM
Monday, Dec 19, 1 PM to 5 PM
* * * Please Note, we will be CLOSED on Dec 24, Dec 26, and Jan 1 for the Holidays • • •
Thanks, as always, for all of your work to make SF more food secure,
The Farm Team
ALEMANY FARM EQUIPMENT & MATERIALS WISH LIST:
Digging Forks (10)
Hand Pruners (10)
Rain gauge (1)
Loppers (5)
Pruning Saws (5)
Hand Trowels (20)
Pick-mattocks (5)
Shovels (5)
Axe (1) and Axe Handle (1)
Machetes (3)
File, for tool sharpening (1)
Watering wands with handles (4)
Wire brushes, for cleaning tools (5)
Nuts and bolts (of various sizes)
Easy-up/farmers’ market tent (1)
Reusable bags and/or buckets (various sizes)
Water keys (3)
Wooden stakes (36)
Rope/wire/twine/string (various strengths)
Plastic Tarps (3)
NATIVE PLANTS
Coast Tarweed
Hedge nettle
Yerba buena
Hummingbird fuchsia/
Dwarf Coyote Brush
Coyote brush
Kellogg’s yampah
Blue Dicks
Hedge nettle
Silk tassel
Blue Blossom
Ceanothus
Western sword fern
Giant Chain fern
Woodwardia
Western goldenrod
CA goldenrod
Coast Goldenrod
Canada goldenrod
Common bog rush
Spreading rush
Iris Leaved Rush
Oso Berry
Toyon
CA Buttercup
Bluewitch
Beeplant
Wild Hollyhock, checkerbloom
Blue eyed grass
Red Elderberry
Hummingbird sage
CA Blackberry
Thimbleberry
Sticky/bush monkeyflower
Alum root
Creambush/ocean spray
Douglas Iris
Coast Buckwheat
Soap plant
Farewell to Spring
Creek Dogwood
Mugwort
Coast Aster
Common Tarweed
Coastal Tarweed
Ithuriel’s spear
Sun Cups
CA Phacelia
CA Wild Cucumber
Pearly Everlasting
Mule’s Ears
Snowberry
Mexican whorled milkweed
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Herb Walk at Alemany Farm + Harvest Fest Oct 8
By The Farm Team | September 15, 2011
Dear Farm Friends:
Our typical second summer seems to have been interrupted by cool winds the past couple of days, but don’t worry: The forecast calls for more warm weather this weekend. Just perfect for ripening up more of our tomatoes (which are already bursting off the vines) and cucumbers (which we are drowning in) and apples (coming on strong). It’s a great time to be out in the gardens and orchards at Alemany Farm, where we are having some of our biggest harvests of the year.
And it should be perfect weather for an special herb walk at the Farm. Please join us this Sunday, September 18 when herbalist Katie Delwiche will host a farm walk during which she will identify the medicinal herbs found at Alemany Farm and discuss their uses. The walk will begin at 10 am and will last for about 90 minutes. There will be a potluck lunch after the herb walk, followed by our usual workday. We hope you can join us for this unique event! For more details, please contact Richard at rkinsf@gmail.com.
Also: Mark your calendar for our Seventh Annual Alemany Farm Harvest Festival!
When: Saturday, October 8, 11 AM - 5 PM
Where: Alemany Farm, 700 Alemany Blvd, SF, CA.
Who: YOU plus dozens of other gardeners, friends, family and neighbors
What: Farm tours … games for kids … T-shirt making … face painting … bike powered hayrides … garden and orchard tasks … music … and a BBQ potluck.
Please spread the word far and wide.
And don’t forget about these upcoming workdays:
Sunday, Sept 18
Monday, Sept 19
Saturday, Sept 24
Monday, Sept 26
Sunday, Oct 2
Monday, Oct 3
Thanks, as always, for all of your work to make SF more food secure.
The Farm Team
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VOTE for Alemany Farm!
By The Farm Team | July 18, 2011
Dear Farm Friends:
It’s high summer, and at Alemany Farm we’re enjoying all the fruits of summer: plums and strawberries, yes, but also loads of green beans, potatoes, carrots, beets, squash, and basil. The garden is popping at the seams, and it’s a great time to come out and enjoy a few hours working in the sun.
Even though we’re an all volunteer-run organization, we do have some costs: seeds, starts, irrigation equipment, tools. So we’re really hoping that we are among the winners of the De Loach Vineyards and Organic Gardening contest for the most innovative community gardens and urban farms in the country.
Please visit http://www.deloachcommunitygardens.com/ today and vote for Alemany Farm!! We are the garden in the upper left hand corner. As you can see below, we are battling for fifth place, so we really need your vote!
http://www.deloachcommunitygardens.com/
9179 Long Beach Organic
7278 Center for Growing People
6990 Three Brothers Garden
4839 Ocean View Farms
4126 Alemany Farm
4107 Magnuson Community Garden
2069 The Last Organic Outpost
1728 Seattle Community Farm
1488 East 13th Community Garden
1086 The Peterson Garden Project
894 Boca Raton Community Garden
864 Roots in the City
243 Hayes Valley Farm
167 Solano Canyon Community Garden
So visit http://www.deloachcommunitygardens.com/ and vote for us!
Also, please mark your calendars for these upcoming workdays:
Monday, July 18
Saturday, July 23
Monday, July 25
Saturday, July 30
Finally, please check out Eco-SF’s upcoming urban farming fair, “Roots to Fruits,” happening this coming weekend at the School of the Arts. Pam Pierce (author of Golden Gate Gardening) will be hosting a workshop on gardening in the City’s different micro climates; there will be workshops on fruit tree care; and trainings on urban animal husbandry. Get the details at:
http://www.eco-sf.org
Thanks, as always, for all your work to make SF more food secure. Hope to see you in the garden soon.
The Farm Team
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