david i. was right

well, there is trouble in urban farm paradise.

if you don't remember this important fact, we are members of a "decentralized urban farm" in sf. we received a very sad email this morning from one of the farmers in this group saying that they had not been paid in two months and that things were not going well. which we had kind of noticed since our little backyard farm has been a little neglected.

on my way home from a trip over potrero hill i stopped at the eat-in at the awesome 18th and rhode island permaculture garden. they were eating all kinds of gourmet vegetable creations but i was mostly mesmerized by a tour with the main gardener, who is all about permaculture, which invloves cool stuff like building up soil, everything being a perennial, climbing perennial squash vines, low maintenance, training out of control fruit trees to behave and fruit within reach, lovely pineapple guavas (hi nat),sharing food, sharing systems, and not constantly going to floorcraft for more bags of soil amendment and little plastic six packs of baby vegetables. he said to come back on friday during their weekly workday and i could pick his brain some more. so maybe there is hope for our backyard farm yet.

the eat-in is an awareness-raising event, i guess they were all over california, to raise awareness of the need for healthy local food in kids' lunches. right now at miles' school the achievement gap even follows the kids into the cafeteria--more educated and affluent parents pack whole grain breads and nut butters and organic apples and yogurt and sugar snap peas in their kid's cute little lunch bag while most of the kids from lower income families get the fake juice, processed food pizza, extra sugary corn muffin, you get the picture. click on the permaculture link above to get more info about the eat-in.

tonight after dinner i took the big kid to the skate park. we rang his buddy's bell on the way over and they accompanied us with a.'s DOUBLE-BLADED LIGHTSABER. his mom had a nice little buzz from an afternoon bbq and i remembered why i like having so many cool neighbors as we gossiped about the school and the boys twirled their plastic sticks around in the cool and sunny almost bed-time evening.

i have to do some work for real work now. the kids are asleep, visions of star wars in their heads. it is kind of quiet and last night's huge moon has vanished.