Many thanks to the crew of the Gill Tract Community Farm for providing such a wonderful space for the San Francisco Bay action day. More than 300 volunteers planted a medicinal mandala garden, rows of autumnal vegetables, dug, shoveled and sculpted mounded beds, and attended educational workshops. The topics ranged from natural dyeing and the construction and use of solar ovens, to the intersection of agroecology and permaculture.
The Gill Tract Farm is held in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley through an agreement to have the space available for farming and education for at least the next ten years.
The Gill Tract Farm provides an estimated 200 people with 325 pounds of organic produce weekly.
Volunteers at the farm have the opportunity to work alongside members of the Farm Management Working Group on seasonal projects including seed-starting, seed-saving, planting, building irrigation, plant-protection systems, soil building, composting, and more.
Watch 'Occupy The Farm' Film
“Ohlone elder” Hank Herrera began the action day on October 5th at noon honoring the four directions with the assistance of his saxophone. He gave an excellent history of the Gill Tract Farm, while blessing the people in attendance and the land we all stood on.
Members of Occupy the Farm spoke about the successful direct-action that took place on the land in 2012 to prevent commercial development.
The gallant group occupied the this last piece of soil in the Berkeley area and despite much opposition transformed the land into a sustained community farm.
Read more: http://occupythefarm.org/
With so many people at the action day we were able to split into groups to work on different projects on site including planting the medicinal garden, moving compost, manure, and soil amendments to build up the bio-intensive beds, and preparing the rows for fall plantings. The garden and medicinals planted are the first perennials planted on the Gill Tract since the original occupation of the land back in 2012.
Perennials, as opposed to annuals or biennials, are plants that live for more than two years. Permaculture gardening has a focus on perennial polycultures – systems that grow a diversity of perennial plants alongside each other, providing functional connection and beneficial relationship to one another.
Food Not Bombs, a radical food organization committed to equitable access to healthy food, provided volunteers with a banquet table of fresh, flavorful salad, rice, beans, breads, and baked vegetables, as well as iced coffee and tea. The Philosopher’s Stoneground, a nut butter company that is looking to become the first company to source their ingredients entirely from regenerative agriculture, brought sprouted almond butters and coconut butters to share; and REBBL Elixirs brought out their adaptogen-rich tonics to keep the working bodies refreshed.
Regenerative agriculture focuses on building soil health through organic growing methods. It is a long-term integrated approach to growing food and other useful materials
