Get Connected

This is what's going on with Urban Share this week.

• Wednesday the 14th yoga at the Free Farm. We have 10 mats that can be used if you need one. First come, first serve. Yoga begins at 9am.
• Then, Wednesday workday at the Free Farm from 10am - 2pm with a vegan lunch provided.
• Saturday, the 17th the Free Farm is holding a blessing ceremony for the garden with Lutheran Bishop Mark Holmerud, Episcopal Bishop Marc Andrus, clergy from the Free Farm and folks not-involved with the church.
• Sunday, the 18th St. Mark's workday constructing raised beds together.

Rest assured there will be plenty of pictures of religious people in their funny clothes, early morning farm yoga, and St. Mark's progress.

Til then here are some photos of what it looks like to volunteer with Welcome at Urban Share gardening events.

Join Us for Upcoming Workdays!

Every Wednesday and Saturday from 10am - 2pm come volunteer at the Free Farm.  This Wednesday help us welcome visiting Alternative Spring Breakers from Dartmouth College!  Come be a part of the excitement of food growing in San Francisco reported on recently by the Chronicle!  You bring the elbow grease, we'll bring the vegan lunch!  Hope to see you soon.

Here's a group of Alternative Spring Break students that came to help out at the farm.  You and/or your organization are certainly welcome, too!

Alternative Spring Breakers from Dartmouth at Bethlehem Lutheran

On Saturday, March 23, a group of 12 students from Dartmouth College volunteered their time to the inaugural workday at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in West Oakland as part of their Faith in Action Alternative Spring Break program. 

Above, students clear the way for the new soil in which seedlings will be planted during the next workday.

Urban Farming brought in two big truckloads of soil.  President of the church Jennifer Teer oversees the unloading.

The Dartmouth volunteers worked tirelessly shoveling and raking out over 30 cubic yards of soil and helped to finish the new mural.

By the end of the day the space was ready for planting food!

Gardening Volunteer Opportunities

Hi there! If you've got a desire to learn about gardening and food growing by getting your hands dirty, here are some places you can go!

Every Wednesday and Saturday from 10am until 2pm the Free Farm at Eddy and Gough Streets is open for folks to come work. There are all kinds of jobs to be done. This coming week we plan to do some shoveling to double dig our beds, planting more food, building our trellis for scarlet runner beans, raking and smoothing double dug beds, organizing tools in the shed, taking pictures, watering plants, running the wheelbarrow, or making a vegan lunch for yourself and the other volunteers! Sound like something you'd like to do? Either stop by in some clothes you don't mind getting a little dirty, or send me an email at thefreefarm.sf@gmail.com

Tree, a major coordinator of the Free Farm also has opportunities at different gardens listed on his site.

Happy Growing!

You Should Come to Our Workdays!

Hope you can join us!

Here are the opportunities to volunteer at our gardens in San Francisco this week:

Free Farm (at the corner of Eddy and Gough):
Wednesdays and Saturdays - 10am to 2pm (vegan lunch served at noon)
Closed during heavy rain.

St. Mark's Garden (1111 O'farrell at the back of the red brick church - small fenced lot):
This Sunday from 1-4pm - Closed during heavy rain.

DIY: Learn to double dig raised beds

This Saturday workday our group got two beds ready for planting! Tree gave us a tutorial on how to prepare them by double digging.

Step 1.) Your beds should have a 4-6" layer of compost on top to start with.














Step 2.) See Tree there in the photo below with the shovel in as deep as the shovel's head? That's as far down as you want to dig. You also only need a width of one shovel's head.














Step 3.) The soil from the first trench should be placed in a wheel barrow. That soil goes to the far end of the bed where it will be used to fill in the last trench.

















Step 4.) Stick a digging fork in the trench you just dug so the tongs are fully submerged. Wiggle the fork around to loosen up the soil. This wiggling aerates the soil allowing roots more space and increasing drainage.













Step 5.) Now that the soil in the first trench has been loosened up you can begin digging the second trench right beside the first; same depth, same width. The soil from the second trench (including the 4-6" of compost on top) gets put into the first trench. You're just moving dirt from hole #2 into hole #1. Easy as that.

Just keep following this pattern of digging out a trench, working the fork into the dug-out space and then digging another trench right beside it and putting the second trench's dirt into the first. Do this all the way down the line. Mixing nutrient rich compost in with your soil helps build the soil structure, making the beds a hospitable area for food growing.















After raking the beds even our beds look like this.

Work With us at the Free Farm this Saturday

The Free Farm is quickly moving from an abandoned, neglected lot, to a well-loved, full-scale farm. Come be a part of our growing community of farmers this Saturday from 10am - 2pm. We'll be getting our beds prepared with manure and compost, laying down wood chips to finish our loading ramp, continuing cleaning the lot, and watering our strawberry plants! To work at the farm you'll need to wear some work clothes, including closed-toed shoes, and be ready to sign our volunteer liability and photo release form. We'll provide the delicious vegan lunch! See you then!

Plants in the Ground at Free Farm!

This past Saturday marked the first planted bed of food at the Free Farm!  We have three adorable terraced beds of strawberries on a slope overlooking the farm.  

We started with some compost from the dump

then dug out the side 

of the hill to create a plane, or terrace, mixing in the compost.

We used rocks from the original St. Paulus Lutheran church structure to shore up the bed

Planting seedlings in 

the new beds 

And this is what you

 end up with.  Strawberries in the ground!

Rainy Workday

This past Saturday the 23rd we had our weekly 10am - 2pm workday. I saw some familiar faces and met new friends too. As we establish our presence at the site by showing up regularly, weed-whacking, and organizing supplies people living nearby will stroll in to talk about the project and even come back to lend a hand.

The weather's been rainy on and off for the past two weeks. From the beginning of the day a steady mist fell on the farm. It wasn't heavy enough to warrant packing it in, so we loaded shovelful-after-shovelful of dirt into wheelbarrows, careful footing on the gravel decline, delivering our earthy cargo to the low-side of the lot to build a ramp for access into the larger farm. Scraping dirt to level a hill near the entrance of the lot will provide space for a demonstration garden to show folks what can be grown seasonally, and we can teach how to do it.

We broke for an early lunch generously provided by Tree, served up by Page. It's worth paying attention to how a gesture like thinking a head to make a meal for volunteers can communicate genuine appreciation and care. Believe me, on a cold, drizzly day of shoveling dirt, warm soup is no small thing. Thanks, Tree!

While the precipitation was only annoying at first it picked up and left me and the other volunteers drenched! The dirt we were moving to create an access ramp turned to lead in our wheelbarrows. Before finally giving in to the rain, Page and I staked out two long planting beds giving the area the look of a real garden, while Pastor Megan relentlessly tamped the loose soil into solid ramp-form. When the rain began to drive and hope that it might just pass left us, we all scrambled to put our supplies back in the shed, lock down the wheelbarrows, and tidy up before getting out. It was around the time that the last shovels and rakes were safely returned to their places that the clouds burned off and the sun finally broke out. Figures.

For all our effort, we did successfully complete leveling the hill up front for a demonstration garden and our ramp is looking good! Our next step is to stake out the rest of the lot for planting beds and get truckloads of manure brought in to amend the soil. Turns out the soil in this part of town is sand. My hope is that by this upcoming Saturday we'll be working manure into the soil to make it suitable for growing food. I've never been this excited by horse poop. If you or any of your friends have access to material we can use for stakes I'd appreciate it greatly if you could send it along. Or, if you want a part in turning a vacant lot into a food-growing space come out and join us at Eddy and Gough from 10am - 2pm this Saturday!

Our Saturday the 16th Workday!

Hello Friends of the Garden!

This last Saturday workday was quite a day. Not getting rained out was a big plus! We started early with two volunteers coming in before the official 10 o'clock start time. That's a serious go-getter attitude.

A lot of our gathered materials had been left near the front of the site making our space look haphazard. We hauled the lumber, pallets, and odds n' ends down to be sorted, stacked, and organized. It wasn't long before our helter skelter piles of materials started looking like they were supposed to be there. This lot has been left unattended for years so getting it in shape can be a big job; trash has collected, weeds have sprung up all over, but we're starting to show the space the love it deserves. This is the part in the movie where the nerdy abandoned lot with box frame glasses, using a pencil to hold its hair in a bun gets a make over. "Oh my God, St. Paulus, you're simply breathtaking!" The lot really is beautiful. We've run a gas-powered weed eater through the area which not only makes the grounds look better kempt but those small clippings can also be layer with manure to mature it, leading to food for plants! Even manure's gotta grow up some time.

A lot of sweat and time was spent in creating a foot-path ramp to allow easier access into the large farm space. We loaded down wheelbarrows with dirt from the site and slowly built up our ramp. There's more work to be done there, but in one day we got so far! We have a two-fold plan for the ramp. First, we take dirt from a large hill and use that dirt to create the ramp. Second, while removing the dirt we level off the hill in order to make a clean area for a demonstration garden near the front. In the future we'll show folks in the demo garden what can be grown at certain times of the year and use it as an opportunity for gardening education. I think everyone in the project is excited to share our knowledge, experience, failures, and successes with others interested in growing their own food in the city.

Pastor Megan spent a lot of time finishing a beautiful tool shed to house our tools in! Hooray for not having to carry things from an overcrowded Pastor's office to garden and back! That was seriously cramping my style. After this Saturday workday the shed is sporting a sassy new coat of light blue paint. We're trying to teach this gray San Francisco sky what it should be doing. Doesn't seem to be listening.

Throughout the day there were lots of folks walking past stopping in to talk. You wouldn't believe how many gardeners there are in one block of the city. There are plenty of helping hands to be found. Four volunteers on Saturday (including yours truly) were Lutheran Volunteer Corps members (Thanks Margaret, Troy and Katie!), two volunteers were from just down the street, two more volunteers heard about the workday through Tree, and two more volunteers heard about the workday through Pastor Megan. Word gets around!

That's the news from the farm this week. I hope to see you out there Saturday from 10am -
2pm! Don't forget to bring a friend!

Volunteers Needed: Saturday January 23, 2010

Our next garden workday at the St. Paulus Lot (corner of Gough and Eddy) will be on Saturday January 23, from 10am-2pm. In fact, we work at the garden every Saturday during this time. Garden workdays are canceled when it is raining. Please wear close toed shoes and pants and be prepared to sign a waiver to work in the site. Bring a sack lunch (we will be bringing food on future workdays. Note: This is a vegan and non-smoking site.

Soon we will be adding a second work day at St. Paulus during the week, to enable more community members to get involved with our work at the site.

This week we will be continuing to clean and clear the space. We will be moving our planting materials and be beginning to plant the beginning of February. At our Saturday workdays, we have activities available for all ages and ranging from heavy amounts of physical labor to lite.

Over the next couple of weeks we will begin building a mound garden labyrinth at the St. Paulus lot. If you are interested in working on the labyrinth, please contact Pastor Megan: megan@welcomeministry.org

Donations Needed

Our garden projects are beginning to take bloom (not literally) - but we are in need of a number of items before we can begin planting. Here is our current list of needs:

- Lumber (pressure treated and natural, 2x4's, pallets and plywood)

- Succulent clippings
-Chicken Wire
-Cardboard
-Nails
-Staple Gun
-Miscellaneous carpentry tools

- Battery powered power tools

- Manure

- String stakes

-Wood chips

- Seeds and seedlings: plants including trees and berries

- Garden tools: hand trowels, pitch fork, u-bar (digging fork), shovels, rakes, hoes.

-Gloves

- Wheel barrow and accompanying wheels.
-Wooden wine boxes

Of course, we are always looking for volunteers as well. Get in touch with Pete at petefeltman@gmail.com.