Seeds of Urban Agriculture Taking Root in San Francisco

Free Farm

By Chris Carlsson
Nowtopia
May 13, 2010

From a meeting named Circle The Food Wagons: Local Food Economies with Hayes Valley Farm, Little City Gardens, The Free Farm, and Far West Fungi from The Heart of the City Farmers’ Market.

Excerpt:

Next up was the Free Farm, represented by Lauren Anderson and Case Garver, which is a new garden farm on an empty sand lot at Eddy and Gough where an old Lutheran Church burned down in 1995. After fifteen years of lying fallow and gathering garbage and debris, the collaborative effort of several non-profit organizations (including Lauren’s Produce to the People), community groups and individuals got permission from the Lutheran Church to begin an organic farm there.

One of the stalwarts of this effort is Tree, who also runs the Free Farm Stand at 23rd and Treat every Sunday, just a block from Kaliflower where he has lived off and on. Kaliflower is the venerable commune dating back to the late 1960s that sits on a big corner lot along the old railroad right-of-way at 23rd between Folsom and Shotwell. Tree and Lauren’s group and others are also involved in an effort to more regularly glean local fruit trees and other food sources that are too often neglected around the city’s backyards and sidewalks.

Case spoke to the community-building aspects of the Free Farm, how they spend a lot of time focused on wellness and checking in with each other, consensing on how the garden is designed and how it will be worked, how its produce will be distributed to folks in the neighborhood, etc. His roots are in a Jesuit religious community, and a spiritual approach is a strong presence in the Free Farm, giving its commitment to free food an almost evangelical feeling. Nevertheless, the day-to-day experience of working together, bringing a food producing garden to life in what was just a long-neglected scrabbly sand lot is a powerful material experience, regardless of what overtones are added.

See the rest of the article here.