http://peoplesgrocery.org/brahm/peoples-grocery/west-oaklands-only-grocery-store-closes-down Brahm Ahmadi's Personal Blog Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:01:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.1 http://peoplesgrocery.org/brahm/peoples-grocery/west-oaklands-only-grocery-store-closes-down#comment-70450 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:02:06 +0000 http://peoplesgrocery.org/brahm/peoples-grocery/west-oaklands-only-grocery-store-closes-down#comment-70450 [...] With the exciting financial times, Duck and I have been thinking about ways to both secure our own sense of safety and invest in our community. Since I’ve been feeling the food production thing, we decided to check out My Farm, which I found awhile ago poking around the web. My Farm is a great organization in San Francisco that builds a network of urban gardens and provides a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box for members and other subscribers. My Farm installs a vegetable garden, and then maintains it weekly in exchange for harvesting and distributing your fruits and veggies to members. Or, you can choose to have a personal garden and pay for maintenance.I read a San Francisco Chronicle article about My Farm flush with lots of comments from folks about the bougie (or dispicable, depending on the commenter) aspect of paying someone to create a farm for you. I had conflict with this format also, recognizing the deep and complex intricacies of access to produce; it seemed an irresponsible use of resources and privilege to pay someone to create an urban garden when so many folks don’t even have access to a grocery in their neighborhood. One of the reasons we began looking into this was to consider responsible and accountable ways to distribute wealth and resources, investing in community instead of institutions as well as preparing a sustainable and responsible space in our home. I looked at a couple of different garden/farm resources, including Victory Gardens and City Slickers, and I am currently interning with People’s Grocery. All three are limited to  specific and criticially deserving communties in San Francisco and West Oakland, so we didn’t fit the bill. I found My Farm, and was a little hesitant about the use of privilege and resources, but wanted to learn more. [...] […] With the exciting financial times, Duck and I have been thinking about ways to both secure our own sense of safety and invest in our community. Since I’ve been feeling the food production thing, we decided to check out My Farm, which I found awhile ago poking around the web. My Farm is a great organization in San Francisco that builds a network of urban gardens and provides a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box for members and other subscribers. My Farm installs a vegetable garden, and then maintains it weekly in exchange for harvesting and distributing your fruits and veggies to members. Or, you can choose to have a personal garden and pay for maintenance.I read a San Francisco Chronicle article about My Farm flush with lots of comments from folks about the bougie (or dispicable, depending on the commenter) aspect of paying someone to create a farm for you. I had conflict with this format also, recognizing the deep and complex intricacies of access to produce; it seemed an irresponsible use of resources and privilege to pay someone to create an urban garden when so many folks don’t even have access to a grocery in their neighborhood. One of the reasons we began looking into this was to consider responsible and accountable ways to distribute wealth and resources, investing in community instead of institutions as well as preparing a sustainable and responsible space in our home. I looked at a couple of different garden/farm resources, including Victory Gardens and City Slickers, and I am currently interning with People’s Grocery. All three are limited to  specific and criticially deserving communties in San Francisco and West Oakland, so we didn’t fit the bill. I found My Farm, and was a little hesitant about the use of privilege and resources, but wanted to learn more. […]

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