Mission Mission

Every Sunday, the Free Farm Stand sets up shop at Treat Commons and offers a beautiful array of produce to low-income and tight-budgeted folks from the neighborhood. It’s run by Tree, who also writes the Free Farm Stand blog. Over the weekend, the woman on the left had a bright idea:

Fillipa suggested I put up a sign in the neighborhood saying that I am available to pick people’s fruit trees. She knows of two neighbors with fruit trees that don’t get picked. I think I will do that and let people know that the farm stand will take any fruit as well as pick it.

Link. So if your fruit tree is sitting unattended, get in touch with Tree via the blog, or visit the Free Farm Stand at the Treat Commons Community Garden (at 23rd and Treat) every Sunday from 1-3pm.

Previously on Mission Mission:

Who Wants to be an Urban Farming Intern?

Treat Street Treats

Over at the Free Farm Stand, Tree extends an invitation to one and all to maybe go blackberry picking this weekend:

The black berries on Bernal Hill are ripening and I was thinking of checking them out in more detail and possibly picking them if they are ripe enough on Saturday possibly in the morning. Please contact me if you are interested. I will also harvest plums and loquats in the Secret Garden the same day.

Link. In the same post, Tree also has some interesting things to say about a possible communication breakdown within San Francisco’s urban gardening community. Like why shouldn’t behemoths like Slow Food Nation join with smaller projects like Free Farm Stand or Graze the Roof to form an all-encompassing sustainability superbeast?

Photo by Top-O-Towner.

Previously on Mission Mission:

Who Wants to be an Urban Farming Intern?

Treat Street Treats

A herd/troupe/gaggle – whatever you call a big mass of bikers on a mission – made it over the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco last night, to give a talk at the Mission District Sports Basement about what they’re out to do. It’s a good thing: on bicycle, traveling from Vancouver to Tijuana down the entire Pacific Coast of the United States to raise money for microfinancing through Kiva. The basement of Sports Basement was speckled with stars of the microfinancing movement, including the folks who created Kiva, one of the founders of Global Agents for Change, and the Mission District’s own Jess Arnett! The bikers are staying in the Mission for a few days – keep an eye out for people with unreasonably huge thigh muscles – and will be participating in Critical Mass this Friday. They head south on Saturday (San Francisco bikers are welcome to join them for a day or two, if you feel like a challenge).

Since you’re on the internet already, take a look at what GAFC and Kiva are doing. The concepts behind these groups are pretty fabulous, and the microfinancing movement is becoming big news. This is the sort of trend that makes the internet a source of democratic power, and is a potential venue for action that can have help equalize the messed-up global distribution of wealth. Don’t mind the global distribution of wealth? Feel free to point someone towards kiva.org next time they start complaining about it. We live in San Francisco. It’ll happen.

Over at the Free Farm Stand, Tree is floating the idea of taking on an intern:

I like the way City Slicker Farm in West Oakland has interns that help run their program. I am thinking of trying to get cheap inflatable water park a grant to pay a stipend to an intern or apprentice that would help grow food for the farm stand and to learn urban farming at the same time.

Any takers? It’s prime summer internship time, after all.

Link to more on the intern idea, as well as a complete wrap-up of yesterday’s Free Farm Stand festivities.

Link to West Oakland’s City Slicker Farms.

Previously on Mission Mission:

Treat Street Treats

The Board of Supervisors are pretty close to making a city-wide solar incentives program a reality. They  kind of approved it yesterday, which is great, but they still need to *really* approve it next week. Mission Mission pal (and solar energy booster) Sonia says:

this is really exciting, and actually somewhat unexpected. if you get a chance to call your sup (ammiano for us mission folk) in the next couple of days, that would be awesome!

If you’re into the city giving you $6000 to install some panels, contact Tom, thank him for the kind of, and ask nicely for the real thing.

Photo by jfraser

Sunset Magazine’s Idea House has a for sale sign out front. After talking to the man with the keys, I learned it is not the main house that is on the market, but the smaller apartment attached to this amazing house. He offered to show it to me, apparently mistaking my jeans for a cocktail dress. So, if anyone is willing to loan me, say a million dollars (it is listed at $995,000), I will be saving a bundle on heating and water bills – I should be able to repay you sometime in the next couple hundred years.

Perks: windmill, solar panels, blue kitchen, front row parque acuatico hinchable seats for Garfield Square soccer games.