I started talking to a San Francisco delivery guy the other day and noticed these individually wrapped burrito things on the floor of the open delivery van. When I inquired about them, he swiped them up  and said “these were today’s school lunch for San Francisco.” He also said, while his company does not deliver to the prison, rumor has it that the same food is delivered there.

The issue of school food is a long standing and challenging one. At the same time, fast food companies strategically place themselves closest to schools. Students who find school food unappealing will spend the day hungry then stop at a McDonalds on their way home. The least we can ask of the fast food megacorporations is to be responsible in how they represent themselves and what they sell. This is why the healthy meal ordinance in San Francisco is so important.

The ordinance is one vote away (Supervisor Dufty) from being passed. Supervisor Dufty has stated that he uses media to judge public opinion, so it is important to let your voice be heard! Here is a article we need to make comments on or just click on a thumb vote to support positive comments and make negative ones unpopular. Even this simple action will make a difference.

I love October. I love the shift in weather and light. I also love that this is a time in Mexican tradition when we observe our ancestors. After marrying the handsome Mr. Pallana, I had the great fortune of learning that Hindus also practice ancestor-worship this time of year. They call their own ancestor-worship, Pitri-Paksha. It is a period of 15 days set aside to reflect on the contributions their forefathers made to their present life, and the cultural norms, traditions and values they set for us in order to make our lives better. In Mexico, rituals celebrating the deaths of ancestors have been observed by indigenous civilizations perhaps for as long as 2,500–3,000 years. This year, I finally got my act together enough to build an altar in time for Dia de Los Muertos! Constructing the altar gave me pause to go through photos, think about best foods to offer (my women were such hard judges in the kitchen!), and reflect on what gifts might please my family. Pan de Muertos is definitely on the menu.

Check out this great photo of one of my grandfathers. He is rockin the overalls with the bike! He’d be considered such a hipster today.

Guided by my need to preserve my heritage and traditional food ways of my family, I have learned to grow food simultaneously with working on my genealogy. It has been a quest in understanding roots.

In doing this, I have unearthed some wonderful history and knowledge of my family. For instance, below is another grandfather. He  came from a farming family in Mexcio where they farmed for generations on a little rancho. The two women at his side are my great and great-great grandmothers (his daughter and wife). They have amazing stories of serving as midwives and herbalists to their town.

Knowing this puts values and anecdotes of my family into perspective. It gives a depth to my actions in planting, harvesting and preparing the food that we eat. It also gives me a way to dialogue with my ancestors.

If you are an urban farmer/food grower/livestock raiser in the Bay Area, please contact me to be in the Urban Farmer Directory! I am working on it now. You can find out more about the directory below:

Help me raise funds for the Bay Area Urban Farmer Directory! Please check it out and spread the word! Click here to view.

Also, if you are in the East Bay and have something to sell next Wednesday, October 27th (4PM-7PM), the Ghost Town Farm pop up general store is open to local urban farmers, find out more here.

After ten days of drying, we decided to start an inaugural fire in the new clay oven. For anyone interested, I listed materials, source and cost (click here). If you have access to a truck and some time to poke around for “urbanite” and free sand, your own costs could be $100, or even less. The firebricks are the only real specialty material you’ll pay for (~$30).

The Dinner

FRIDAY

6:30 p.m. I find Dipak chatting with a friend instead of having started the fire required to preheat the oven. A gentle reminder prompts him into action. Our guests are due to arrive in less than an hour.

6:45 p.m. A quick check in the situation reveals that Dipak had rolled an outdoor grill next to the clay oven where he had lit a charcoal chimney. The coal would serve as the starter for the wood. I hadn’t read this as a possibility for starting a clay oven fire but he was leading the fire so my raised eyebrow and I quietly worked on food prep. Once the coals were hot, he placed them in the oven, pushed them to the back and started feeding pine wood into the glowing coals. This was a rather smoky affair which made looking into the oven hard without tearing up pretty bad.

7:30 p.m. Our first guest arrives and we toast to a glowing fire with a red Cote du Rhone. Our housemate, Marcel, arrives and he and Dipak begin first conferring, then debating, the best method to get the oven to temperature. Our guest gets involved. The three stand at the smoky oven mouth differing in opinion. They become the fire council for the night. I open more wine.

8 p.m. Lacking a thermometer gun to test the oven temperature, Marcel sticks his hand in the oven singeing the hair on his arm and quickly retracting it from the heat. We unanimously decide to place the pizza in the oven. But wait, the pizza is sitting on a pizza stone, not a pizza peel, so we seek ways to transfer it off the stone. The fire council decides to keep it on the stone. It gets placed in the oven and a door pre-soaked in water closes the oven.

8:15 p.m. The pizza isn’t cooking evenly…or really at all. The fire council decides to place the entire stone directly on the bed of coals. I disappear myself.

8:30 p.m. The two halves of the now broken stone are removed. Even with the intense heat of being directly on the coals, the pizza is not cooked through but the edges are burnt. The fire council decides to remove the pizza from the stone halves and place it directly on the oven floor. This does the trick (enough). Another friend arrives in time to try the unevenly cooked pizza. Another pizza is loaded into the oven while the first is removed. This one goes directly in the oven, no pizza stone. Another guest arrives. The homemade crust has as amazing flavor from the wood fire. The homemade mozzarella melted perfectly. There is the taste of promise in the endeavor. However, the texture of crunchy and creamy is offset by the grit of sand that was stuck to the bottom of the pizza. Apparently, a bit of sand from the oven form had been overlooked. At this point, we are inspired by the flame, the group effort, and good humor. We think the second pizza is nearing completion and I decide to add an egg to broil on top. Amidst strong objection from one council member, I crack a fresh egg over my portion of pizza and watch as the well formed egg white slides recklessly off the pie and onto the oven floor. The fire council is not pleased. I retreat.

Somewhere between 8:45 p.m. and 9 p.m. Independent action is taken within the council. It is decided that folding the second pizza in half to make room for the third pizza is a good idea. I hear “calzone” followed by “uh oh.” I approach to find Marcel in tears from the burning smoke and pizza #2 more scrambled than turned. The burning egg white is politely forgotten.

9:15 p.m. So far we’ve all had one small slice of pizza for dinner and the next slice seems an eternity away. We decide to remove the “calzone” for better or for worse and eat it. The dinner momentarily takes a somber tone. My slice has what remains of the egg. All slices have sand.

9:25 p.m. The third pizza is done and one friend is cold and slightly disillusioned. We offer her a last slice and see her off.

9:45 p.m. Hunger satiated and the fire gently burning we settle into a discussion on current California propositions. A lively debate breaks loose on Prop 19, underground economies of impoverished communities and the Mexican cartel. The conflict adverse begin cleaning up the broken plate, splatters cheese and empty glasses. The argument prone rage on. Amazingly we all settle into a harmony of socializing that suits us.

10:30 p.m. Food and drink exhausted, we call it a night as a few of us have early morning activities.

SATURDAY

7 a.m. Dipak and I wake, recap the previous evening and get a great laugh out of our shattered idealism of cooking with fire in our earthen oven made with the love and pleasure of friends.

Even with this we look forward to the next time.

Help me raise funds for the Bay Area Urban Farmer Directory! Please check it out and spread the word! Click here to view.

WHAT WE’RE DOING
Urban Farming and homesteading have taken hold on cities across the U.S. A severe recession and failing food system has prompted many of us to find creative economic solutions and to grow our own food. The Bay Area of California is one of the nation’s hot spots for testing the sustainability and economic viability of urban agriculture. With this in mind, the Urban Farmer Directory is a tool to: Organize and connect a growing industry; Keep local food accessible and affordable in our communities; and Push the bounds of urban agriculture.

The Urban Farmer Directory is a listing of folks that have been growing food and medicinals and keep animals to maintain the health of our families and communities, to educate and/or to trade. The directory will include a contact name, farm name (if applicable), phone, email, website, city, specialty crops, livestock keeping and products/services offered. The directory will be primarily online. There will be a one time summary print piece about it.

This directory will support creative projects, social enterprise and economic innovation for people interested in food and farming in and near Bay Area cities. By creating and sharing an online directory, urban farmers and homesteaders will have quick access to information, a space to promote their unique products and services, an online place to organize for collaborations and share resources.

The Urban Farmer Directory includes:
Farming/homesteading information
Homestead product & service listings
Products & services for trade
Educational resources
Opportunities for collaboration
Shared resources

Lessons learned: You don’t need straw in the final plaster layer. Be very careful with your ratio of pigment to white clay. Listen. Read all bags and instructions that come into your project space. Add at least 50% sand to your pure clay. Don’t take things too seriously. Be open to redoing. Start before sundown.

Round one of the plaster layer consisted of a large batch of 1 sand:3 clay ratio. I also added in quite a bit of Baton Rouge natural pigment. I don’t suggest either of these steps.

We got a rough layer that looked like cat vomit close up.

Then we “fixed” it and got what looked like terracotta at dusk and hot pink by afternoon the next day.

Then El Maestro, Nevada, showed us how its done.

Now we have one good looking oven that will be ready to fire up in a week.

I was saddened and intrigued by a recent newsletter from Taste Like Chicken (TLC) Ranch in Aromas, CA. They are closing their doors. I learned of them through friends with CSA boxes and I attended a great pig slaughter class of theirs. Though it sounds like the best decision for them, I am sad to see them go. I think they are brave souls for 1) having the courage to start a small ranch and 2) sharing with us the reasons they are closing shop. The piece they wrote is highly informative for those of us looking to support small farms, urban farms or to farm ourselves. Urban agriculture, in particular, is a grand experiment in sustainability and economic viability. It is exciting, sexy for many and easy enough to start. Yet, the truth of it is that we don’t know how things will unfold in the long run. Even small homestead farms require a significant change in lifestyle. These activities take long term commitment to reap the benefits. For many of us looking to focus our livelihoods in urban agriculture and food systems, it takes risk as well. This is all to say that TLC leaves us with a grounding reality that farming is hard work done with a great deal of hope and requires a deeply pragmatic approach.

TLC, you all rocked it out there! You gave it your all and it truly showed in your food. I wish you the best on your new path.

One might ask, why Micky D’s? There is Burger King, Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr. True, true, but McDonalds is the leader of the industry and they aim their predatory marketing to kids at a time when healthy food is increasingly expensive (30% and growing in a four year study*) and children are sick with diabetes and other severe diet related disease. They target poor communities of color and locations near schools. They have the megacorporation affliction of being unethical.

Anyone catch that they had a huge recall of their kid cups because were tainted with Cadmium, a carcinogen that can cause long term adverse health effects.

This is unacceptable, take action to stop McDonalds from targeting our children with their irresponsible products. If you are not in San Francisco, contact Corporate Accountability International to find out how you can work with them to bring similar ordinance to your town. Read on.

According to Corporate Accountability International, since the introduction of the McDonald’s Happy Meal in 1979, such giveaways have been a primary vehicle for marketing junk food to kids. Each year, fast food chains sell more than a billion children’s meals with toys to children ages 12 or younger.

McDonald’s and its competitors pump hundreds of millions each year into toy promotions and other forms of predatory marketing to kids because the return on investment is high…for them, at least. Children up to age 12 command $40-50 billion in directing purchasing power, and influence another $670 billion in family purchases each year. The downsides are the direct implications for children’s health. Reducing even one form of predatory marketing – TV advertisements, for instance – could reduce the number of overweight U.S. children and adolescents by nearly 20 percent.

With this in mind, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee voted 3-0 in favor of an ordinance to limit toy giveaways in children’s meals that have excessive calories, sodium and fat. If the measure passes a vote of the full Board in the coming weeks, San Francisco will become the first city in the nation to take such action. Please help support this effort by writing to the SF Board of Supervisors in support of the ordinance. Also, go to the Corporate Accountability website and learn more about what you can do.

*Monsivais, P., Mclain, J., and Drewnowski, A. 2010. The rising disparity in the price of healthful foods: 2004-2008. Food Policy.

I am working in a little project and would like to know your level of interest in urban farming and other homesteading activities. If you are in the Bay Area, please help me by completing this survey and circulating it to other Bay Area people. Thank you!! Click here to take survey

Also, if you know any urban farmers in the South Bay and/or North Bay send me an email to let me know you they are! epallana (at) sonic (dot) net.

I posted a while back on the brilliantly creative Ms. T. and her reuse of just about anything in the garden. Continuing along those lines,  I have been collecting ideas for other reused materials for containers and other small space tips. Theses are just a few.

The large sack for potatoes is quite smart. You just roll the sides up to “hill” the potatoes as they grow. I would imagine harvest to be much easier then gingerly digging deep to find your tubers in the ground. The next few photos are actually from the Havenscourt Homestead. I will be posting about that farm soon.

The above strawberry spiral is about 18 square inches and holds 25 strawberry plants. It can be fabricated out of untreated scrap wood.

This great trellis set up allows long vines, pumpkin in this case, to climb vertically rather than horizontally. You can just make out the small pumpkins hanging on the trellis.

A vertical herb shelf.

Also, this may be hard to see in the photo but the above set up has a bamboo trellis fence laying flat between the yard fence and the vertical trellis the pumpkin is growing on. This is to allow the kiwi vine growing a place to grow but leaves the vertical trellis available. I suspect this will take a bit of effort to keep the vine on the bamboo but its a great way to fully utilize the space.

Lastly, the above example of reuse is similar to what Ms. T does but I liked how they created continuity in the look with similar vintagey looking items. Ok. really what I like it that Radio Flyer wagon because who doesn’t. Though its bit shallow so I’m not sure what edibles you could plant in there other than maybe lettuce.