HVF Harvest Festival

This weekend I attended the Hayes Valley Farm Harvest Festival. It was a beautiful day and the event was very successful. Many people came to visit the farm. There were activities set up for children and adults, from face-painting to a puppet show. There were also farm tours available and a pumpkin patch where there were pumpkins sold to raise money for the farm.

It was such a great event and the energy level was high. There was live music and DJ music which could be heard all through the Hayes Valley neighborhood.

It was a perfect opportunity for me to walk around, talk to people in attendance and take some photos of the event and the farm.

I talked extensively with Ron Stanford, the architect involved in the New Buchanan Commons (NBC) project. He is on my panel of experts and though I'd exchanged many emails with him and attended a skype meeting with him, I had not yet met him in person.

I also met Zoey Kroll, another member of the NBC team, and chatted a bit with Margaretha, who I had met before and who is also on my panel of experts.

I got a lot of great information from Ron on the next steps, in addition to our first steps on the ground at NBC. It is projected that physical work will begin at NBC around the first of the year (2012). I also spoke to him about strategies for interviewing residents. He strongly discourages door-to-door interviews for a variety of reasons, so we discussed attending neighborhood association meetings and other strategies.

Overall, it was a lovely day at the farm and I am very much looking forward to increasing my involvement in the NBC project.

Stakeholders in the New Buchanan Commons

Three Sisters

When Margaretha gave me a tour of Hayes Valley Farm a couple weeks ago, she also gave me a little lesson in permaculture. I know a bit about permaculture, but still have so much to learn!

A large part of permaculture farming involves companion planting. There are certain plants that you can plant in groups that will aid each other in different ways. These groups of companion plants are called "guilds."

One of the oldest guilds that we know of is called the Three Sisters and it is commonly assumed to have originated with the Iroquois. It has been practiced for centuries and it consists of corn, beans and squash.

The corn supplies a stalk for the beans to climb and the squash surrounds and protects the corn and beans. The beans also provide nitrogen that corn needs to grow and the squash also acts as a living mulch, which helps the crop retain water.

This system was one I had not heard of before, though I have used companion planting methods in my own gardens. I was struck by the beauty and simplicity of this solution and was inspired to create an image of the three sisters guild. This design is likely much too complex to use as a logo for the New Buchanan Commons, but this image may represent the beginnings of a logo design.

PERT Chart

Timeline

Ethnography

Because this project is heavily focused on community outreach, I plan to make use of ethnography. I began this weekend by doing a very initial observation of the Buchanan Mall area. It was drizzling a bit and overcast on the day I went, so I did not observe very many actual people, but I did take some photos of the area itself and made some initial observations.

---

Buchanan Mall is a section of Buchanan Street that was closed off for green spaces and community gathering areas. There are many green areas separated by asphalt. There are also playgrounds on almost every block. I was surprised to see that this area was so under-utilized by members of the community, and thought that maybe this was because of the weather, but I've been told that there is rarely anyone using these common spaces. I will continue to research this, by visiting the area at different times of day / days of the week.

---

Much of the asphalt is used as parking spaces. Will these spaces still be available to residents after NBC is established? If not, how will the residents feel about this?

---

The residential housing along BM is all government housing projects.

"During the executive mandates for urban renewal in the 1940s, thousands of livable, Victorian-style homes and businesses owned by the city's working class African American residents were seized by the government under eminent domain and razed to make room for government sponsored housing projects."

- wikipedia.com

---

Evidence of community outreach is easy to find in the BM area, with many murals and community centers. As stated in an NBC grant proposal, "Many non-profits service the community but a recent community needs assessment by Mo’ MAGIC highlights gaps in education, youth service, workforce, and family support."

These are a few of the community organizations along BM:

- African-American Historical & Cultural Society
- Ella Hill Hutch Community Center
- St. Paul's Lutheran Church
- Rosa Parks Senior Center
- Rosa Parks Elementary School

---

"Ethnography is a systematic process. While useful ideas can emerge during casual observation, the most powerful insights come from a rigorous analysis of systematically collected data. During research, a trained ethnographer will collect photos, video, audio and other contextual data. These photos or images may look “unpolished” or “rough.” However, the beauty of ethnography is that what one observes is visually compelling, real and meaningful without being staged."

- An Ethnography Primer, AIGA / Cheskin

Successful New Direction

This past week I had a phone meeting with Margaretha Haughwout, one of the major organizers of the Hayes Valley Farm, as well as a key player in the transition of the farm to the Buchanan Mall (BM) area of San Francisco's Western Addition. This new community farm will be called the New Buchanan Commons (NBC).

My hope up to this point was that I could focus on NBC for my 505 project, specifically focusing on community outreach in the BM area. This is an underserved area of the city and the concern is that it may be difficult to get the BM community excited about the farm and to feel ownership of it.

In talking with Margaretha, it was decided that I would be folded into the team working on the NBC project. The team members are as follows:

Margaretha Haughwout: xmargarethax@gmail.com
- HVF Energy Consortium / Resource & Finance Council
- Resource Coordinator at HVF
- Artist / Graphic Designer

Zoey Krull: edibleoffice@gmail.com
- HVF Root Council / Board Member

Janelle Fitzpatrick: janellefavia@gmail.com
- HVF Energy Consortium / Resource & Finance Council
- Youth Education Coordinator

Ron Stanford: rstan1122@gmail.com
- HVF Root Council / Board Member
- Architect

London Breed: AAACC / london@aaacc.org
- Executive Director of the African American Art & Culture Complex (AAACC)

I also have a new problem and purpose statement, as my focus has shifted from the original project relating to Hayes Valley Farm.

Problem Statement:

New Buchanan Commons (NBC) is a recently proposed community farm whose organizers need to find ways to promote excitement and a sense of ownership among the existing community.

Purpose Statement:

The purpose of this study was to develop the necessary tools to enable the NBC organizers to create this level of excitement in the Buchanan Mall community.