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