We may be a nation of individualists, every man and woman a maverick in his or her own heart, but you'd never know it to read our recipes, so rigidly do we adhere to a generic, codified blandness in laying our how-tos.

By contrast, those stiff-upper-lip Brits kick over the traces when they start to mix and fry. Nigella Lawson, Sybil Kapoor, Tamsin Day-Lewis, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Dan Lepard, even éminences grises like Elizabeth David and Patience Gray: not for these writers the strict nothing-but-the-facts-ma'am method of American cookbooks. Across the pond, lively verbs and their adverbial companions shimmy freely in recipe methods. Even adjectives get their due. My favorite? Moreish, because whatever it is, you must have one more bite. Where Americans are folksy, British writers are droll.

Granted, I tend to read those written by authors with literary or journalistic backgrounds, who sift and measure their prose with as much diligence as they do their self-rising flour and diced courgettes. (Ah, those courgettes! Those aubergines! That black treacle! All almost the same as zucchini, eggplant, and molasses, but linguistically shifted just enough to nudge the reader into a right-hand driver's seat.)

And one of the best is Nigel Slater, whose latest work Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch was just released in an American edition by Berkeley's Ten Speed Press. This beautifully designed, chocolate-brown clothbound volume (complete with silvery place-keeping ribbon) is a celebration of the production of the slim but plant-packed garden of Slater's London townhouse. As dedicated an organic gardener as he may be, Slater makes no pretensions to urban self-sufficiency in his smallish backyard. As he writes,

"I have sown somewhat more than I have reaped. But as somewhere to watch things grow, a place to tend and nurture, to sit and eat, to drink and think, to taste and smell, and most importantly to understand the unity of growing, cooking, and eating, it is a monumental success. At least it is to me."

Slater, a longtime columnist for The Observer and the author of 10 cookbooks, is known in this country (if he's known at all) for his two most personal books, The Kitchen Diaries, a week-by-week seasonal calendar of what he was cooking and eating at home, and the childhood memoir Toast--The Story of a Boy's Hunger. His writing style is vivid and individual without being exactly personal. Reading this book is like wandering though an idiosyncratically decorated house: this lamp, this shell, this book reveals taste and history more succinctly than any long-winded curriculum vitae.

Slater can wax rhapsodic as Alice Waters about the dewy-fresh beauties of homegrown veg. But like his countryman Fergus Henderson, author of the excellent (and drily humorous) The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating, Slater has a well-honed wit and an unshakeable set of opinions about just about everything in and out of the kitchen, and he's not shy about telling us what he really thinks.

On spinach:

"When spinach is truly fresh, it squeaks as you rummage around in the pile, like the sound of wet Wellingtons on a rubber floor."

On carrots:

"Not for me the pile of buttered carrots on the plate. Too sweet, too orange, (too bloody cheerful more like it)."

On cauliflower:

"Sometimes I think it wouldn't bother me if I never saw one again."

On the box hedges surrounding his vegetable plots:

"Hedges, however neatly they frame your peas, beans, and swaying sunflowers, are also snail hotels, providing a home for hundreds of gastropods who come out at night, drink from your beer traps, then go on a drunken rampage."

Insults may be a cheap form of wit, but Slater also takes the time to point out the virtues of even his less-favorite things.

Despite the too-many snails who "have partied on [his] carefully nurtured seedlings," he's still a sucker for aesthetics. "I sometimes think the hedges would have gone long ago if it wasn't for the achingly beautiful sight of them covered in snow," he writes, and an accompanying photograph of their tidy snow-piled geometry proves his point.

Winter can also make even cauliflower worth eating. Just after slagging off this unloved brassica, he admits,"Yet I occasionally long for a simple white bowl of cauliflower cheese on a frosty day, especially when it has been made with love, and the sauce has been improved with bay and clove and the cheese is of the robust sort that makes veins on the roof of your mouth stand out." (And thank you, Nigel, for providing a new yardstick for judging cheese. "Ah, this Montgomery cheddar. Piquant, yes, but the veins on the roof of my mouth are unmoved.")

The book is part gardener's handbook, with growing tips and lists of his favorite, often heirloom, varieties to grow. There are useful lists of seasonings, accompaniments, and companions for each vegetable (cauliflower loves cream, caraway, juniper, anchovies, and gin), tips on harvesting, choosing, and storing, and lastly, delicious recipes for lovely-sounding things, like A Soup the Color of Marigolds (made from carrots and yellow tomatoes); An Extremely Moist Chocolate-Beet Cake with Creme Fraiche and Poppy Seeds; and Spinach, Melted Cheese, and Lightly Burned Toast. This is a vegetable cookbook, but not a vegetarian one; while many of the recipes are purely plant-based, there are plenty of dishes made to feature or accompany a whole steamed fish or a hunk of grilled lamb. The recipes are bold-flavored and straightforward, with a Middle Eastern touch there, a hit of Thai or Indian here, and some unmistakablly British comfort food (like that aforementioned cauliflower in cheese sauce, an English school-lunch dish if every there was one). It's a lot of how we eat now: lots of plants, geared towards the seasons, not too fussy, globally inspired. Moreish, I'd say.

One of the things that makes the Bay Area such an irresistibly lovely place to live is that, by and large, we're a buoyant lot. Let those on the other coast stomp slushily to the treadmill this morning to suffer for all their bacon-and-eggnog holiday excess. We'll be out here in the Pacific sunshine, picking Meyer lemons to squeeze into our green tea and visualizing abundance--not necessarily around our midriffs, but in our lives and others'.

Too often, it seems, gastronomic New Year's resolutions are all about "don'ts"--don't love the deep-dish at Little Star or the bacon cheeseburger at Marlowe so much; don't demolish half a loaf of Outerlands' bread in one sitting unless you've walked from Russian Hill and back to get it; don't spend more at Blue Bottle than you put in your savings account every month.

Instead of focusing on cutting things out (like the freebie salumi at Adesso's twice-daily aperitivi hour or the chocolate egg creams at Sidekick in the Ferry Building, to name just a few of my own local pleasures) this year, why not focus on adding things in? Things that are fun, things that last, things that do good for your community and for the beautiful and winter-greened land we all call home.

This year, why not resolve to:

Mural and compost at Free Farm

Get Dirty, Grow Locally

A community garden plot is a great place to start, but why not share your labor and get to know your neighbors? Volunteer at one of the numerous urban farms that have sprung up around the Bay Area. Willing hands are always needed, especially in the cold, rainy, tomato-less months. And not all the jobs require heavy lifting or complete mobility; I've spend many afternoons poking seeds into flats, transplanting seedlings, and making signs.

Dig, dine, and dance! Sign up for the monthly newsletter from Pie Ranch. The country outpost of Mission Pie, this small farm is located down the coast in Davenport, just north of Santa Cruz. On the 3rd Saturday of each month, the ranch hosts a community workday, followed by a potluck supper and a barn dance with a caller.

A fun outing for families is Marin Organic's Monday afternoon Glean Team. Each week, a different organic farm in Marin lets locals pick through their already-harvested fields for not-quite-as-pretty (but just as delicious) produce. The boxes of fresh, local veggies are distributed directly to schools in Marin. Afterward, gleaners can pick a round for themselves. (You'd be surprised what kids will eat when they've picked it themselves--especially if they've gotten good & muddy in the process.)

Strawberry Jam

Can It, Brine It, Carve It

Would-be urban homesteaders have a lot of choices these days. Longing to swap out the Heinz's for your own homemade ketchup and pickles? Then the folks at Happy Girl Kitchen have a workshop for you. (And for the truly serious among you, there's "Advanced Jam," prerequisite required.)

Charmed by winter's citrus, but afraid of ending up with sticky clementine soup or Meyer-lemon jello blocks? Put yourself in the knowledgeable hands of June Taylor, the British-born queen of marmalades. No one in the Bay Area takes fruit work as seriously (or finds it as fascinating) as Taylor does. At $200 per person, her small, hands-on classes are pricey, but her intelligent, carefully structured how-tos will forever take the guesswork out of your canning.

Prefer salami to jellies? The nose-to-tail classes in butchery and meat preservation at Fatted Calf will expose your sexy inner butcher. Get on their mailing list to sign up for a class; they sell out fast. (Classes are offered in both their Napa and their Hayes Valley locations.)

In Bernal Heights, Avedano's offers monthly "Butchery for Adults" and "Advanced Butchery" classes, as well as classes in trussing, carving, and curing.

...Then Talk About It

What do we talk about when we talk about food? Everything from the eco-sustainability of small-scale meat production to the history of heirloom apples has become food for thought lately. If you're curious as to what the Bay Area's farmers, writers, makers and thinkers are thinking about, check out the calendars at Kitchen Table Talks and 18 Reasons. Both offer an intriguing roster of thought-provoking events, talks, and panel discussions.

At Headlands Center for the Arts, performances, artists' presentations, and gallery talks are often preceded by a communal meal in the old mess hall. Sometimes, however, the meal itself is the event, as local or visiting artists and chefs come together to get inspired by the palette of the windswept, (supposedly) ghost-ridden landscape of the Marin Headlands, using mostly local and mostly organic produce, meats, and fish as their medium. Have more time than money? Volunteers are often needed to help in the kitchen, set up, serve, and clean up.

Elsewhere in Marin, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT), which works to preserve farmland in Marin while educating the public about conservation, is currently accepting volunteers for its two training sessions in January and February. The training will include trips to farmers, ranchers, and dairy farmers in the area.

...And Give Back

The holidays may be over, but the need at local food banks, soup kitchens, and food pantries remains just as strong. Find out when, where, and how to help, now that the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas volunteer crush has subsided.

Food, glorious, food. It's that time of year people: Bay Area Bites brings you the best in food news for 2010.

In this two-part package, we look at the national trends and topics that sizzled over the past 12 months and serve up some local flavor on the side.

Feel free to weigh in with your own edible highlights from the year that was. In no particular order:

1. Food Safety

From previous years we've learned that what we eat can make us sick (tainted peanut butter, beef gone bad, and salmonella-laced spinach ring any bells?).

This year's food alerts: A massive egg recall and lingering questions about health risks associated with Gulf seafood.

Thankfully, late in the year Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act to protect consumers from food products hiding harmful poisons or pathogens like E. coli and salmonella, a food policy coup that greatly strengthens the Food and Drug Administration's ability to keep unsafe food off supermarket shelves and restaurant plates by expanding the agency's recall abilities and access to records.

Local angle: Bay Area-based media consultant Naomi Starkman kept the spotlight on potentially dangerous foods for sale in reports on Civil Eats and Huffington Post, including a story about a Consumers' Report study that found packaged salad laden with fecal bacteria.

2. D.I.Y. Food

Age-old practices such as canning, jamming, foraging, fermenting, growing and gleaning are suddenly new (and cool) again. Chickens are the au courant backyard animal of choice. And classes in the Domestic Arts all the rage.

The New York Times Magazine traveled west to take pretty pictures of urban homesteaders from the Bay Area, The Washington Post chronicled the canning trend long strong here, and Vogue got down and dirty with city farmer Novella Carpenter, who donned a pink cardigan in a concession to fashion for a photo shoot with the stylish mag's scribe Hamish Bowles. (Carpenter seemed to pop up everywhere last year, including on KQED.)

Local angle: In addition to Novella Carpenter's Ghost Town Farm in Oakland, the Bay Area D.I.Y. brigade created a kind of cottage industry, hawking their homemade wares at venues like SF Underground Market (Underground Market on BAB) and East Bay Underground Market, as well as the Pop-Up General Store.

And they wrote about it too; notable D.I.Y. books this year included Rachel Saunders' tome The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook, Napa forager Connie Green's The Wild Table (featured on The California Report), and D.I.Y. Delicious by Vanessa Barrington. Online, San Francisco's Sean Timberlake launched Punk Domestics, a curated space for D.I.Y.-driven cyber self-publishers.

Classes in baking, brewing, beekeeping, bottling, animal husbandry and more were in high demand at venues like 18 Reasons, Urban Kitchen SF, the Institute of Urban Homesteading, and BioFuel Oasis, a worker-owned cooperative begun by Carpenter and friends.

3. Food Politics

In an era of identity politics and culture wars, food fights join the fray. What you eat (and what you choose not to consume) speaks volumes about your political persuasions. First Lady Michelle Obama, dubbed America's foodie-in-chief by The Atlantic, talked about ending obesity and increasing activity with her Let's Move initiative. She also championed growing food and farmers' markets -- and brought to her kitchen top chefs like Sam Kass. On the other hand, Rush Limbaugh mounted a modern-day Twinkie defense (this time citing the fact that a man lost weight on a diet consisting mostly of the infamous junk food as evidence that all nutrition science is bogus). Sarah Palin showed up at a Pennsylvania school bearing cookies and dished up s'mores at a diner in a calculated countermove to a Michelle Obama dessert comment. Professional rager Glenn Beck even weighed in. Sigh...

The task of putting the food wars in context fell to ex-Washington Post writer Jane Black, who has moved to Huntington, West Virginia with new husband editor Brent Cunningham to see what happens to the community's eating habits now that celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has skipped town.

Local angle: Taking the happy out of Happy Meals: Outgoing SF Mayor Gavin Newsom vetoed a Board of Supervisors ban on plastic toys in fast-food meals. But the supes struck back, ensuring that no child in the city will be tempted to eat junk food simply to get their hands on a cheap trinket that will likely break before you can say Big Mac.

4. School Food

For the majority of schoolchildren around the country school lunch sucks. Big time.

But change is coming. This year, Jamie Oliver brought his Food Revolution to the States, an anonymous teacher chronicled what she ate every day in her school cafeteria in her blog Fed Up With Lunch, and President Obama signed into law the much-anticipated Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The legislation bans some junk food, and gives a small, though historically significant, six-cent increase per child per lunch (the first such boost in the reimbursement rate in 30 years), and there may be more lunch money tucked inside the bill to boot.

Local angle: Veteran school food reformer Alice Waters claimed victory for her Edible Schoolyard model following the results of a study on Berkeley's School Lunch Initiative from University of California at Berkeley researchers.

5. Street Food

Fueled by Twitter feeds, gourmet grub on the go continued to attract a growing following around the country as food trucks hit the streets in increasingly more legitimate ways, boasting inspired names and bright colors, to wit The Best Wurst in Austin, Big Gay Ice Cream Truck in New York City, and Chairman Bao in San Francisco.

Food trucks went a step further in size, too, with the introduction of bustaurants, stripped former public transit buses reconfigured as a mobile kitchen, and, in some cases, even offering eat-in seating. In L.A. the double decker Worldfare dished up ethnic eats, while closer to home Le Truc in San Francisco served up gastro-pub fare, and Diamond Lil debuted to a small crowd and a camera crew.

Los Angeles officials announced it may regulate mobile carts, a move that could see other cities follow suit.

Local angle: With mild-mannered accountant Matt Cohen at the helm, the mobile food fest Off the Grid launched in Fort Mason and sprouted several neighborhood locations, including Golden Gate Park, McCoppin Hub, Civic Center, and UN Plaza. Officials in San Francisco passed reforms making it easier and cheaper for mobile vendors to serve street eats, while in the East Bay the city of Emeryville saw pushback from local brick-and-mortar businesses and Berkeley residents bemoaned missing out on most of the mobile food fun (for now).

Check BAB tomorrow for the rest of the best of 2010 food news.

In 2009, urban farming, like punk in 1991, broke. While San Franciscans have been raising chickens in backyard coops and tending verdant patio gardens for decades, the trend has now sprouted up in the city's mainstream, expanding from the realm of co-ops and collectives to the mayor's cluttered desk: In July, Gavin Newsom issued an executive directive aiming to reshape how city residents make food choices, and now, eight months later, neighborhoods and communities are beginning to taste the (literal) fruits of City Hall's efforts in the form of initiatives like public vegetable gardens and mobile produce markets. In recent years, urban farmers have started seeing their flora and fauna as something more than sustainable, super-local eats. They're hyper-aware of how their work can impact their surroundings, and intrigued by what larger ripples they might make. Thus, their missions are evolving, moving in inspired directions towards a brand of community-conscious agri-activism.

Having a president keen on arugula and a first lady tilling soil outside the White House helps, but the movement has found creative, diverse expression locally. Brooke Budner and Caitlyn Galloway run Little City Gardens, a miniature Mission District farm and salad greens business. The founders see their project as "an experiment in the economic viability of small-scale urban market-gardening," a working model for a career path they'd like to see become more common in America. The greens are fantastic -- as knows anyone who has crunched down on a Bar Tartine salad -- but producing good food for people who care is only a facet of the over-arching goal; it's about the people too -- which probably has something to do with the ongoing success of their Kickstarter-funded expansion campaign. Since 1994, Alemany Farm has gone by a few different handles, but the 4.5 acre South Mission garden, tucked away along the intersection of two major highways, staffed largely by volunteers and neighborhood residents, remains committed to growing food and creating jobs for citizens in low-income communities. Craigslist -- you know, that site we used to use for finding jobs -- is a cornucopia of produce. Its farm and garden classifieds always bristle with city farmers looking to unload excess hauls -- whether they be bunnies, bok choy, or Meyer lemons. Novella Carpenter has raised turkeys, goats, pigs, bees, chickens, geese and rabbits in the backyard of her house in Oakland -- everything "short of a cow," she professed in a February 2009 interview with the aptly named Twilight Greenaway of Culinate. Along the way, Carpenter has never identified her efforts as a model to be followed exactly; her farm comes across like a more personal journey. Nonetheless, she chronicled the tending of her plot and its furred, feathered and winged inhabitants in the acclaimed memoir Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. Published over the summer, her book presents the sorts of funny-sad lessons rookie urban ranchers might want to take into account: how to fatten a hog on donated restaurant scraps, for example, or how to scale a barbed-wire fence to try and rescue an errant turkey from bloodthirsty dogs. Note the "try" in that last clause.

Newsom likely won't suffer so many slashes and scrapes. A March 23 S.F. Chronicle article outlined his plan of attack:

"Urban agriculture is about far more than growing vegetables on an empty lot...It's about revitalizing and transforming unused public spaces, connecting city residents with their neighborhoods in a new way and promoting healthier eating and living for everyone."

To this end, he's had all city departments look out for fallow land with garden potential. The Mission and Noe Valley public library branches have planted plots and held gardening classes for kids. Seven more branches may shortly follow suit. Last week, the city began building a new garden at a Department of Public Works-owned steam powerhouse at McAllister and Larkin. The farm's bounty will feed volunteers. The Department of Education-sponsored Urban Gleaning Program will teach interested San Franciscans how to plant fruit trees. While many did already, now all farmers' markets must accept food stamps as payment. Subsequently, food stamp purchases at city farmers' markets increased 85% last year, a sign that people will eat well and responsibly when they can afford to do so. And that's just for starters, it seems.

Say what you will about his no-doughnuts policy at civic meetings; the mayor might be on to something here.

Newsom thinks urban farms make life better for residents of a city's communities because they render our surroundings more beautiful and bring people together in the interest of a common goal -- a grassroots movement with actual roots. Quoted in the story's last paragraph, the mayor's "greening director" Astrid Haryati bridged the gap between Newsom's stance and the sorts of mission statements d.i.y. farmers actually kick around:

"It's not only about feeding mouths...It's about feeding the soul and feeding the pride of San Francisco urban dwellers."

The idea that relationships between gardeners might blossom along with the blighted spaces they plant is a compelling one -- that a vital, green space symbolizes a vibrant community -- but words like "soul" and "pride" carry a complexity their usage only occasionally signifies. Food does nurture us on a variety of levels, providing sustenance and pleasure, conjuring up memories of family, routines and valued moments in time: the tomato salad Mom started making every August, family trips to pick blueberries at a farm outside of town. What can a garden really do? It's true that greenery makes people happy -- whether it takes the form of a full-blown farm, or just a few plants on the windowsill of an apartment kitchen. A week or so ago, a friend posted a picture on Facebook -- a photograph of a shocking chartreuse moss snake swelling up and curling around the bottom of a parking meter. He added a caption: "Among the trash laden sheets of concrete in downtown Oakland, one can still manage to find a hint of beauty."

On the surface, feeding the soul sounds cheesier than a knob of Gorgonzola. It's a cliche you heard in college co-op kitchens, usually when you were about to steal a flat of eggs to take back to your slovenly apartment. Soul-feeding is not for everyone. Characterized as such, it's not for me. I hated gardening when I was a kid. I'd rather shop at Rainbow, Bi Rite, and farmers' markets than sow seeds myself -- much less decapitate a duck in my bathtub, Carpenter-style. I do not have a green thumb, or a desire to initiate intimate attachments to animals I intend to slaughter. A few months ago, my dad gave me a tomato plant and I completely forgot about it. It sat on the back deck, soaking in a handsome view -- the McDonald's at 24th and Mission, that dance studio above the cheap Chinese place, and a few willowy palm trees for inspiration. The pot flooded when the rains came; the plant withered when they did not. Still, despite my negligence, in late March, two very, very small yet well-shaped red heirloom tomatoes appeared on the end of one brown vine. I was outside drinking a beer when I noticed. I yanked them off the plant, and ran into the house, screaming to my girlfriend: "We grew tomatoes, and we didn't even try!"

Just a mile from the skyscrapers of downtown Pasadena lies a tiny plot of land that has become the heart of an urban homesteading movement. The raised beds of the Dervaes family farm cover 1/10 of an acre. Imagine the area from a football field's goal line to the very first 10-yard mark, or if you're an average suburban homeowner, scan your backyard. Now, imagine harvesting 3 tons of organic food from this short span of soil every year.

Robert McFall's documentary, Homegrown, is an intimate family portrait that reveals both the visionary inspiration and the resolute dedication required to grow one's own food. For Jules and his adult children, Justin, Anais, and Jordanne, the Dervaes farm began as an experiment to see how much of their own food they could grow. A natural extension of the father's experience during the back-to-the-land heyday of the 60s and 70s, their gardens soon led to living off-the-grid. They catch rainwater and recycle grey water, keep animals for manure and collect oil from nearby restaurants to produce their own biofuel. They order hand-cranked appliances from Amish catalogs. They put up their own green beans and illuminate their home with a self-reliant mix of olive oil lamps, biodiesel lamps, homemade candles, daylighting and the occasional fluorescent bulb.

Jules speaks of how we can save the world by taking care of our six inches of topsoil. Like farming, living off the grid began as a political statement and personal challenge. It has since grown into an integral part of their working farm. His children have absorbed his lessons and, like him, have chosen to make it a way of life.

The film includes the usual scenes of the family picking and eating ripe tomatoes from their garden--a trope of any story remotely related to sustainable agriculture. What distinguishes the kitchen and dining room scenes in Homegrown is the image of the Dervaes repeating this meal day in, day out. In a country where one's teen years are simply an extended, fight-filled countdown to the freedom of flight, it's astonishing to see all three grown children living and working so closely, so contentedly alongside their father. Organic, locally based, and ecologically sound agriculture requires huge amounts of labor. We often forget the "family" half of the equation in family farming. Watching older and younger generations working together is a reminder that there are still deeper cultural changes required for a truly sustainable society.

After a meal at their table, we're invited to sit in on one of the family's operational meetings. Here, the reality of business collides with the purity of the Dervaes' ideals. An extended discussion about accepting advertisements on their website highlights the challenges of making real-world decisions while pursuing deeply philosophical and political goals. With over 4,000 visitors each day, PathToFreedom.com could bring in significant income. The opportunity to make an additional $10,000 a month on a farm that grosses under $40,000 a year cannot be dismissed, and the debate marks a milestone for the family.

Jules fears that once they walk the path of easy money, they'll never return to the hard work of farming. His children, the ones who design, code and maintain the website, believe ads are a minor concession: why shouldn't they benefit financially from the enormous amount of experience gained through their own hard work and offered so long for free? The thought of ads, even for supportive seed companies they favor, visibly pains Jules. The younger generation is respectful enough to allow their father to override, for now, their willingness to take on a bit more of capitalism's gloss as their homestead matures into a profitable business.

It's obvious that there will be many more meetings and delicately balanced debates about the future of the farm. Building their client list, gathering a strong community of supporters, making wise choices, growing their business as purely and sustainably as the delicate lettuces they harvest, and establishing new homesteads in turn for each of the children--it will be a lifetime of growing and learning for the Devaes family. Homegrown is a privileged gaze onto that rare, difficult journey.

UPCOMING SCREENINGS

Mill Valley Film Festival

Sunday, October 11, 1:00 PM
CinéArts at Sequoia
25 Throckmorton Ave.
Mill Valley, CA 94941
Map

Tuesday, October 13, 6:45 PM
Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center
1118 Fourth Street
San Rafael, CA 94901
Map

San Francisco Documentary Film Festival

Saturday, October 17, 7:00 PM
Thursday, October 22, 9:15 PM
The Roxie Theater
3117 16th Street
San Francisco, CA
(415)-863-1087
Map

Farm City
Novella Carpenter took over an empty lot next to her apartment in Oakland's gritty Ghost Town neighborhood, and over the years turned it into a lush garden and farm complete with bees, chickens, rabbits and even pigs. Urban farms are popping up in even the most cramped corners of densely populated cities, fueled by a desire for good food and a closer relationship with what we eat. Carpenter joins Forum to talk about her new book, "Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer."

Host: Dave Iverson

Guest: Novella Carpenter, journalist, urban farmer and author of "Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer"

Explore and buy the book "Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer" at Amazon.com

Farm City News: Novella Carpenter's blog

Listen to story and view a slideshow of Oakland's Ghost Town Farm on The California Report: Urban Farming in Oakland

Farms...in Berkeley? Well, dairy cows may not be drinking lattes on Shattuck Avenue, but there are working urban farms in the Bay Area. So if you're garden-deprived or just longing to get dirty without leaving town, here are a few opportunities to dig in, learn, and taste what's growing in your city's backyards.

On Tuesday, Oakland's City Slicker Farms is hosting a BBQ and a showing of the movie "Fresh" at Fitzgerald and Union Plaza Parks (34th and Peralta in West Oakland). Come on down, meet your neighbors, and find out how City Slickers is going to turn part of the park into a new community farm. Can't make it on Tuesday? Check their website for volunteer hours at one of their half-dozen community farms, all dedicated to growing affordable produce for West Oakland.

Graze the Roof is Glide Memorial Church's innovative community-gardening project. The church's rooftop garden focuses on hydroponic and container gardening, and hosts community workdays every weekend and workshops throughout the month.

What could be a better mitzvah, or good deed, than growing food for those in need? That's the philosophy between Congregation Emanu-el's The Pe'ah Garden in Colma. This garden in, yes, a cemetery (hey, it's Colma. What did you expect?) is planted, maintained, and harvested by congregation members and volunteers, with the bulk of the harvest going to the San Francisco Food Bank. Jonathan Silverman, who coordinates the garden volunteers, also teaches ongoing gardening workshops throughout the year.

The nice folks at the Garden for the Environment in the Inner Sunset are compost evangelists. Put your soggy leftovers into the green bin, sure, but carrot peels, wilty lettuce leaves, grass clippings and more --anything that's strictly plant matter--can get turned into a fabulous soil booster right there in your own backyard. (Or even under the sink, if you get a wormbox working). Composting workshops are always on the class roster, or you can come to one of the twice-weekly workdays (Wed 10am-2pm; Sat 10am-4pm) and get a more impromptu lesson as you fork, turn, and rebuild the garden's three ever-evolving piles. Since this is an educational demonstration garden, not a farm, the amount of fruit and veggies produced here is small, but depending on the season, helpful workers should go home with at least a salad's worth of greens. Plus, there's often Arizmendi pizza to share after the morning's work.

Play hooky Monday afternoon and join the Marin Organic Glean Team, a new project from Marin Organic. Every Monday from 4-6pm, volunteers gather at a different local organic farm to "glean," or pick what's left over after the day's commercial harvest is done. This second harvest is then donated to local school lunch programs. And of course, volunteers get some too. This Monday, the gleaners are converging on Paradise Valley Produce in Bolinas.

If you've ever buzzed down 280 to the airport, you've passed what's probably San Francisco's largest urban farm. It's very easy to miss, but it's there: the Alemany Farm, at the southern edge of Bernal Heights. Like most urban farms, it's also an educational non-profit, working with kids and teens from the surrounding public housing along with energetic volunteers. There's a lot growing here, from strawberries, carrots, and collards to green beans, broccoli, kale, lettuce, tomatoes, flowers, fruit trees, squash, wild blackberries, and more. Workdays (alternate Saturday and Sundays, plus Monday afternoons) end with a harvest, and the haul is divided up between workers.

When my friend Natalie asked me if I had any plans for Easter weekend, I was mildly embarrassed to admit that I hadn't. I just hadn't given it much thought this year.

"Well, you do now," she said. "Want to help plant a farm?"

Plant a farm. I couldn't think of a good reason not to. I welcomed the excuse to get outside and do something interesting, something for free. Something more than a little dirty.

It had been a while since I've weeded, hoed, or lugged 4 cubic yards of soil, but I was game for it. I just wasn't sure what I was going to wear. I haven't owned a pair of overalls since the 1980's.

It seems Natalie has gotten herself involved with an organization called MyFarm-- a business that specializes in decentralized urban farming. It's a Community Supported Agriculture organization with heavy emphasis on community. In fact, every herb and vegetable grown comes directly from community members' backyards. Want to know where your mustard greens are really coming from? Well then, go ask your neighbor. With 71 MyFarms planted at the time of this posting, you are likely to know someone who's got one.

When we arrived at the site, we were introduced around to the various MyFarm staff members and volunteers, one of whom came all the way from Santa Cruz to help.

Fortunately, there were a good many people volunteering for the day's planting. With lots of farmhands, well, on hand, the work was swift and enjoyable. I was especially grateful for our numbers when it came time to move the small mountain of soil from a gigantic pile dumped in the driveway to the garden awaiting it in the back-- through the garage, one bucket at a time. At times I pretended I as though I were an ant-- a cog in a great earth-moving machine, but without the ability to lift 25 times my own body weight or smell things through antennae. Of course, in the unseasonable warm April weather, it sometimes felt as though a large bully were holding a magnifying glass over me, trying to set me on fire.

The next time you see me, please feel free to compliment me on my newly-found shoulder muscles and red, red neck.

I was rather stunned by how smoothly everything went. From start to finish, the garden was weeded, top-soiled, dug, irrigated, and planted in less than five hours.

We were a well organized, well-oiled, and well-hydrated team-- the couple hosting the garden kept a blender of filtered water filled for us at all times. I was certain the water was placed in a blender because it was made of non-breakable materials, but I couldn't look at it without thinking that whenever I took a sip, I was drinking a water smoothie.

It was a great day spent outside. I highly recommend it to anyone with a strong back and a good attitude.

And I don't care that someone can't spell Kohlrabi, I'm just glad someone is actually planting it. In an effort to add my own special skills to the endeavor, my pleas for matching font styles on the planting tags went unheeded.

Until the next time, that is.

How MyFarm Works:

MyFarm's Vision (from the website):

At MyFarm it is our mission to make growing food and growing community one in the same. We believe in the power of the individual. But we believe true power comes from working together towards a better future for all.

We want to offer everyone in our community a chance to participate in achieving greater personal sustainability by installing local organic gardens, selling organic vegetables to neighbors and continually seeking ways for others to lend their ideas, their time and their hands to our growing organization.

Interested in hosting a farm?

Their complete list of services include:

* Initial garden set up and weekly follow up to keep your space growing.
* Organic techniques to grow nutrient rich vegetables.
* CSA style pickup a weekly box of very local edibles from a nearby neighbor.
* Permaculture techniques implemented to beautify in a sustainable way.
* Garden design consultations and networking with high quality suppliers.
* Local food feasts with chefs featuring foods from your backyard

Sign up today to host your own garden or volunteer your time-- the kohlrabi and your neighbors will thank you.