The Breakfast Club

Written by Margaretha Haughwout | 19 June 2010

Coming to one's senses with the breakfast club

Jay asked me to write the blurb for the breakfast club, at which point I had to ask him what the breakfast club was. He said the breakfast club is a riff on farmers who rise to do the necessary daily chores before they have breakfast, but since we're in an urban setting, and since we might not do the chores before breakfast, we are sort of like those eighties slackers who found transformation sitting in Saturday detention.

What made the breakfast club the breakfast club was the fact that they were in trouble. I was in some trouble when I started watering this spring as well. It was a vague kind of trouble, a knowing that life didn't have to be so hard. The teenager in me was rebelling against a life that was expected of me, but which I did not want to live. When it turned out that Emilio—I mean, Rob Joyce—was going away for a while and wouldn't be able to water, I found myself in detention, I mean on the farm. I hope that some day all detentions can be focused on the careful offering of water to young things.

Needless to say I've figured a lot out in the past few months, about my life and where I want to go. I attribute it to the calm of being surrounded by leaves rustling in the breeze, the feeling of cool water, and the smell of mulch that comes with spending several hours on the farm every day. The sounds of the city are buffered by the wind and all those non-human living things. Also, one can hear children become elated and exclaim about "the farm" as they are wheeled by. Suddenly I am very conscious of not getting water on the man who sleeps on the sidewalk below the favas, whose home orbits Hayes Valley Farm.

For the past couple of months, Ally I mean Jenn, Emilio/Rob and I have been doing the watering. There is a lot to care for and water these days. There are the seedlings of brassica, mustard, lettuce, tomato, marigold, beans, tree kale, there are the grafted fruit and nut trees of the freeway food forest, the berms on the on and off ramps that boast nitrogen fixing fava beans and new zealand red clover, the shade garden.... There are other members of the breakfast club too: Judd—I mean, Jay—keeps planting more seeds and raising the seedlings with the "Show Me Your Starts" crew, and there's a bunch of others who have helped turn the compost, plant seedlings, scatter rock dust, and clean up the site.

Karl Marx, in his critique of capitalism said that people want to work, but capitalism robs that natural desire in people because work is abstracted from the true meaning that emerges from an orientation of sustainable local production and emergent community. I'd like to think that this breakfast club consists of anyone who has ever avoided certain work and in the process found crazy beautiful meaning in the simplest of tasks. Gets one to wonder who is caring for who. Is it breakfast clubbers that care for the seemingly fragile green things, or them for us?

Love, Molly

Photo by Zoey Kroll, June 6, 2010

Chronicle covers the Farm

Written by Jay Rosenberg | 16 June 2010

In case you missed it, the San Francisco Chronicle's John King wrote a great article about the farm on Tuesday.

Crops dot fallow S.F. spots until backhoes come
by John King, San Francisco Chronicle (Tuesday, June 15, 2010)

There's a bumper crop of fava beans this year in San Francisco's Hayes Valley.

The vegetable's thick stalks fill planter beds on one side of Octavia Boulevard, and cloak a steep slope between abandoned freeway ramps on the other. Plenty else is popping up - tomatoes, squash, peas - but 40 pounds of the soil-replenishing favas already have been harvested.

They also prove there's a way to revive empty city lots - even ones where buildings are scheduled to rise.

I first wrote about the need for such interim landscapes last summer, as the development boom-turned-bust left several San Francisco neighborhoods with a gap-toothed terrain where buildings once stood, replaced by chain-link fences that enclose asphalt or dirt.

Most are still there, looking tattered as ever, but the scene along Octavia Boulevard shows blight can be turned to bounty. All you need is open-minded neighbors, wise owners and creative people willing to try something different.

In other words, nothing happens by chance.

Read the rest of the article: http://www.sfgate.com/




Photos by John Sebastian Russo / The Chronicle

Attack of the Aphids

Written by Angela Goebel | 09 June 2010

I was a bit concerned when I saw a large swatch of black aphids on the fava. The bean pods had popped out overnight and looked ready to eat. Nummy. Meanwhile, aphids had arrived to suck the life out of the fava. Oh no! And they were not the lime green aphids that lazily sip the sap out of plants. They were a menacing horde of black aphids, posed to raid and feast on the fava.

“Chris, there are black aphids on the fava,” I said, half statement, half question. I was not sure if he had noticed this yet.  Also, I had never seen black aphids before, so I was hoping I was not making an insect faux pas. And finally, what was to be done about all these aphids?? Surely Chris would know.

Apparently, nothing was to be done.

“Yeah, I saw,” he replied as he sifted through mulch. “There were black aphids at 18th and Rhode Island last month. A conventional farmer would try to eliminate the aphids, remove them from the ecosystem. But in permaculture, we have a longer view of things. They let the aphids be at 18th and Rhode Island. Three or four weeks later, ladybugs arrived and laid eggs. Now, there’s an abundance of ladybugs. Does that answer your question?”

Yes, it did. Only one week later, a trickle of ladybugs landed on the fava and began to propagate. I happily reported to Chris that I had seen the ladybugs, just as he had predicted. “Isn’t nature amazing?” he said, “It will find its own balance.”

Photo by Angela Goebel, June 6, 2010

Upcoming at Hayes Valley Farm

Written by Jay Rosenberg | 07 June 2010

Upcoming Work Parties

Thursdays, 2:30-6:30pm
Sundays, 12:30-4:30pm


Upcoming Events

Tube Duel - Sunday, June 20, 3:00pm
Father's Day Portraits - Sunday, June 20, 3:00pm
Magic Mondays - Mondays, 10am-4pm

Upcoming Classes

Growing Food with Antonio Roman-Alcala - Sundays, 11:30am
Kitchen Garden Workshop -  Tuesday, June 8, 6:30-8pm
Permaculture Design Certificate Teacher Training - Monday, June 14, 10am

Cardboard Duels on Father's Day

Written by Chris Burley | 04 June 2010

Water, cardboard armor and costumes are highly encouraged

Come one come all to the first San Francisco Cardboard Tube Fighting League event of the summer. This year through a special collaboration, the CTFL tournament will be held at Hayes Valley Farm.

Come in your best cardboard attire, bring food, stay after for the picnic/bar-b-que/potluck, meet fun and peculiar people, and vie for a chance to win a legendary cardboard sword. Also, meet the King and Queen of the cardboard realms, see cardboard dragons, and take a look around the fantastic urban farm project that is the Hayes Valley Farm. Learn more about the event.

Photo: "Kids Dueling" from The Cardboard Tube Fighting League of San Francisco

Honey Bees are at the Farm

Written by Karen Peteros | 01 June 2010

If you’ve been to the Farm during this past month, you know that things are buzzing in yet one more way. We now have hives of honey bees on site! Earlier last month month, Chris Burley added a green hive to the site, and San Francisco Bee-Cause (SFBC) moved the first two of six colorful hives to the site. SFBC is a new non-profit (http://www.sfbeecause.org), a Farm partner, and will be offering bee and beekeeping related workshops and classes at the Farm. The first workshop "Intro to Beekeeping" will be on Sunday, June 6.

You are welcome to watch the bees come and go from their hives, but don’t stand in front of a hive or otherwise block the bees’ various flight paths (e.g., their “bee lines”).

Read more...

More Articles...