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04 August 2011
Last year, during my first visit to the farm, I was inspired by a tour led by one of the younger volunteers. My 7-year-old tour guide explained “lasagna farming” and the benefits of layering cardboard as mulch as we passed the neatly stacked mounds of them. He warned me of the consequences of eating the wrong kind of mushroom and showed me the fava bean he had planted amidst a sea of thousands of them. “How on earth did you remember that that was the exact one you had planted?” I asked. He shrugged his shoulders,“It’s just an instinctual thing, I guess.”
So that year, when Zoey asked if I would do a cake for the first Interdependence Day celebration at the farm, I tried to conceive of a cake that would incorporate all of the things that go into building a farm into this cake. From collecting seeds and planting them, preparing the soil and stacking the mulch, tending to the gardens daily and watching them grow, then finally taking from it and sharing it with others. A farm cake was made. With vegetable juice dye, cookie crumb dirt, marzipan vegetables, chocolate covered pretzel fencing. And it sure was hard work cutting into it, but when you finally did, it was a delicious layered surprise – an offering of nourishment and pleasure, a reward for all that hard work, a job so well done.
Get your face painted and your crown adorned with flowers this Saturday, when Hayes Valley Farmers set up a Farm Foto Studio for 
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