City Slickers Farms number 3 :)

I cannot believe an entire week has gone by since our last visit to West Oakland. I feel like just yesterday I was standing in the bed of a pickup truck filled with sod and garbage. Anyways, today we spent our 8 hours at the first site we went to - Union Plaza. Our work entailed more aphid and powdery mildew removal, weeding!!!, raking up leaves, mulching tomato beds, and sifting compost (to separate the usable compost from stuff that needs to decompose more, and from usable mulch/straw/wood chips). Aliza and I spent most of our time in the compost sifting: dirtying our fingernails, touching gross stuff REALLY GROSS STUFF! and then forgetting and touching our hair, crushing avocado pits (they turn an awesome red as they rot), propping up and peeing behind buckets and wheelbarrows, sharing our brains, laughing, and of course shoveling, sifting, and mulching. Mulching is such a good word.


Luckily, yesterday's drenched weather did not repeat itself and the bike rides there and back were pretty enjoyable. Also, a few evenings ago I felt like going for an after-dinner bike ride - maybe cuz it was our first night off in a while - and my friend Jonno said he'd come along. So that was nice and we biked north a bit and rode along the bay, enjoying the beauty of the heavy fog on the Berkeley hills, and just the scenery in general and the end-of-day-ness. At one point we were riding along this long pier (pretending not to have read the "no biking here or whatever" sign) and I swear I would not have been surprised if the Pirates of the Caribbean ship had appeared with that creepy girl singing in the front.


Oh, and also, our supervisor/city slickers apprentice told us her top three rules: kill slugs, kill snails, share snacks.

Rainy Day!

So today was very very very very very wet! Nonetheless we did farm work outside all day sufficient to turn my feet into puddles during the morning and again in the afternoon. I mostly worked with my friend rebecca on seeding varieties of lettuce and some corn, the sweet country gentleman variety :) We also amended one of our garden beds and planted a couple rows of three different kinds of beets. Did you have any idea there was more than one kind? At one point, since I did not have a proper raincoat, I used half of a marbly blue deflated bouncy ball as a hood. All afternoon we worked on building more planter beds from hardwood pallets.


rain
water
rain water
wet socks
mud
cold


We certainly did get a lot done in terms of us being physically uncomfortable and, as my friend Aviva demonstrated at the end of the day, every time we had to leave this tent thing we were under we would stare off into space for a good 30 seconds.


Also, I love dryers (sorry)

City Slickers Farms round 2

            So yesterday Molly, Jonno, Aliza, and I headed back to West Oakland. We took a different bike route, which was nice and went past the water for a bit. Then, since I was slower than everyone else, I couldn't see them anymore so I stopped for a bit. Eventually I got back on track and luckily, the lovely Aliza had waited for me :) 
            This week our work entailed spraying and pouring emulsified fish (yea, totally disgusting) mixed with water, around some baby trees. Sarah, our supervisor/City Slickers Apprentice told us it was like a protein shake for plants. The bottle of the muddy stinky stuff says it's rich in nitrogen, and if you feed it to plants once every 3 weeks during the plants' growing season, it will give them a nutrition boost when they soak it up through their roots. Delicious!
            Then, it was back to aphid removal for a bit.
           Also, Alvin wasn't around this time :(

          After all this we headed over to a different site at Center and 16th street by the City Slickers office. Our goal here was to unload a truckload of sod into these two chicken coops. One coop was in a tiny garden on the corner. The second was in some nice guy's backyard down the block. It's really nice how people living near the garden sites offer to help out. A guy who lives near the Union Plaza site - where we were last week and yesterday morning - lets us jump over his fence and use the spigot on his house to water our plants, and some local people volunteer during working hours. Also, after jumping back over the nice guy's fence I noticed a "Beware of Dog" sign. Glad I did not see that before I entered his yard!

        It took us about 4 hours to shovel all the sod from the bed of the truck into wheelbarrows and then dump them into the chicken coops. The sod was filled with pieces of used floss, bottle caps, candy and food wrappers, pieces of glass, and many other unidentified objects. Picking out all this stuff so the chickens wouldn't die definitely slowed down the process.

       The soundtrack of the local hangout crew on the corner with their Chihuahua, billowing conversation, and swaggering personalities (make of this description what you will) enhanced the flavor of our work environment

And on the way back from the day I was actually able to keep up a bit better and we got home pretty much in time for dinner.

Jonno, Me, and Aliza after returning home

  

Grand Opening

Today we had the grand opening of our farm, and it was a success for us fellows and for those who had been planning it months before we even arrived. Among other activities there was face-painting, pickling, cob oven pizza making, music, dancing, a variety of other foods, planter bed painting, a scavenger hunt, farm tours, chicken coop visits, and a goat-petting area. Aviva and I manned the planter bed painting station where many of our visitors helped to beautify the beds with bright colors. It took about 15 minutes of hand-washing and, probably my next couple showers, to get all the acrylic off my skin!

Robin with the chickens

Rebecca and Molly manning the cob oven pizza station

Eric assisting with the terrarium making

Aliza doing something

Happy painters

More happy people

:)))))))))

Hazon table

Evan and Rivka picking pizza toppings

:)

bike-motored smoothie maker

storytime

Executive Director Adam Berman

Ben and his popcorn machine

Oh, and Happy Father's Day

hanging out and a glimpse of some farm work

Molly, Aviva, Ben, and our lounge

...and Leila

Breakfast!

Jonno, Molly, and Aliza removing blackberry roots

Molly

Jonno

Rebecca

Evan

Aliza and Jonno

Leila

Melanie, Molly, Aviva, and Evan relaxing on carpets, which we later learned were covered in cat piss

City Slickers Farms

        So on Wednesdays three of the other Fellows (that's what we're called) and I bike over to "intern"/volunteer with City Slickers Farms in Oakland, California. It's about a 25 minute bike ride and I am still getting used to city biking, but my friends were nice and patient and we made it there eventually. Also, my bike was only $89 and it is becoming very clear why.
        Anyways, City Slicker Farms is this organization that tries to get affordable or free organic, fresh produce to people who cannot buy it anywhere.  They have a few programs, one of which involves setting up gardens in Oakland residents' backyards so that they can have a sort of subsistence style farm of their own. Hopefully the three of us will get a chance to help out in that area, but right now we are gardening at Union Plaza and, at another location, helping seeds and baby plants grow to the point where they can be ready for planting.
       The produce from the Union Plaza garden is sold or given away for free at a farmers' market on Saturdays and the plants at the second site are sold or given away to people who are members of the Backyard Garden program and to others to care for and enjoy at home.
       Oakland is actually a "food desert", meaning a "geographic area where mainstream grocery stores are either totally absent or inaccessible to low-income shoppers. Though [stores] may be located in the vicinity, they remain unavailable to low-income residents because of high prices and inadequate public transit." 
(See http://www.marketmakeovers.org/why/food-desert for more information) 


       Here is the link to the City Slickers Farms website:   http://www.cityslickerfarms.org/


     Most of my time there was spent washing aphids off of chard and lettuce, amending planter beds,  pulling out a giant berry bush covered in aphids, planting flower seeds, watering stuff, and transplanting baby plants from their tiny pots into slightly larger ones where they will grow until they are strong enough to go to new homes in the area. FYI aphids are these tiny little black, grey, and red dots on the leaves that are actually creatures eating the plants! Good news: ladybugs eat aphids (just not quickly enough). Also, there is an Oakland resident named Alvin who hangs out in the garden and seems nice. We also had to wash mildew off of some of the plants. It's this translucent whitish stuff that spread across the leaves. The reason it is bad is because it is like a screen between the sun and leaves so photosynthesis can't happen properly.


Also, the three other Fellows' names are Jonno, Aliza, and Molly. I am Tali. However, there is another Tali here (which is not such a common occurrence in my life) who is a staff member of our Urban Adamah program and it is SO CONFUSING sometimes.

Week One at Urban Adamah

So we are 12 young people getting to know each other and ourselves in an awesome two-story, two-kitchen house on a biking boulevard in Berkeley, California :) You are probably wondering why we are here, and even more so, why this is slightly worth discussing. Well, just three blocks from us between the Missouri Lounge/Bar and Black Oak Bookstore is a one-acre plot of land. Thus far abandoned, with our help, this empy lot is quickly becoming an organic, sustainable, and so far temporary, farm.


Under the professional guidance of a handful of highly competent and intelligent adults, more experienced and somewhat older than ourselves, we are building planter beds, greenhouses, and a composting system from which we hope to grow delicious, nutritious and organic veggies. Yummmmm!


The best part is that the food grown here will go free of charge to hungry people. What could be better?


Also, on June 19th we will be having a farm opening event. If you are interested please visit urbanadamah.org
There will be lots of fun workshops and food and you can see all the exciting things we are up to.


Below is a link to a youtube video that was created by those highly competent and intelligent adults, more experienced and somewhat older than ourselves, which explains how to easily create a 4' X 4' X 1.5' planter bed from a cheap hardwood pallet. Enjoy!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E91tZEo2II&feature=youtu.be


On a final note: If you ever thought that it would be insanely fun to play hide and seek in a huge house with plenty of sneaky hiding places with eleven other people late at night, you were right.