A 3.5 Acre Organic Farm in San Francisco?!
That's right! Alemany Farm has been growing tons of free produce for the Bay Area community for 13 years. No seriously, in 2016 our total crop yield was 11 tons (that's 22,000 pounds for the math-phobic) of organic fruits and veggies. Over the years we’ve grown to become San Francisco’s largest urban farm and second-most popular volunteer site (we see you Golden Gate Park!), all thanks to the efforts of dedicated community members, and a core group of volunteers, the Friends of Alemany Farm(FoAF).
California agriculture is unique in that farmers can plant year-round, and Alemany Farm is no exception. After a summer season full of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and more plums than we knew what to do with (thanks to one ambitious tree that produced over 500 pounds of plums!), we're excited for the cooler days of fall.
Where Do We Grow From Here?
Fall is a natural time to reflect and gather the community. We just wrapped up our Fall Workshop series, where participants learned how to plan a winter garden, make pickles, build healthy soil, keep bees, and cook using a solar oven; and though we harvest every week at the farm, we'll be throwing our annual Harvest Festival on 10/21. We'll have live music, farm tours, a pot luck BBQ (featuring a whole roast pig!), and we'll even do a little farm work for those who want to get their hands dirty. If you're in the Bay Area we hope you'll join us!
We want to keep the farm growing, and explore new methods to increase our productivity. By backing this campaign you'll help grow food for your neighbors, as well as help us offer more opportunities for community engagement in the form of more public workdays, workshops, internships, and community events.
Enter, Abby, Farm Manager Extraordinaire!
The all-volunteer Friends of Alemany Farm have grown the farm as much as we can. To help us both maintain our current operations and expand into the areas mentioned above, we put out the call to hire our first paid farm manager, and boy did we find one!
Meet Abby Bell!
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Abby is a San Francisco native, farmer, gardener, food justice activist, and educator with over 14 years of experience working within the food system. Before taking the job as Alemany Farm Manager, she got her degree from UC Santa Cruz in Community Studies focused on sustainable urban food systems. Abby then taught produce-based cooking classes at Willard Middle school in South Berkeley followed by two years working on a diversified organic vegetable farm. In 2007 AbbyCo-founded "Food, What?!" - a farm-based youth empowerment and food justice organization in Santa Cruz county where she worked for 10 years as the Farm, Program, and Culinary Manager.
The Breakdown:
Here's how donations to this campaign will be distributed:
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- Many of the new programs we're working on will be facilitated by Abby, so we're raising money to help fund her salary for the year.
- Though all of our workshops are run by volunteers, each have materials costs; this money will help us offer more workshops.
- We'd like to formalize our internship program to include educational materials, college credit, and potentially a modest stipend for our interns. The world needs more farmers, you can help that happen!
- After all of the rain last winter, we had a mudslide on the farm that wiped out over two dozen fruit trees. We've got some replanting to do!
- Last but not least, the majority of our crops start as seeds in the greenhouse, so raising money for seeds, potting soil, and greenhouse maintenance will help keep the farm vibrant.
Take a look at our perks and pick one that looks good to you. If you can't make any of those donations, every little bit helps, and we appreciate donations of any amount. If you're not in a place to be able to make any donations, you can still help by sharing a link to the campaign with your friends and networks!
Thank you all for your support, let's grow Alemany Farm together!
— Friends of Alemany Farm
