Saturday, April 09, 2016

San Francisco's only farm to be displaced

The other day while Walking San Francisco in the Mission Terrace neighborhood, I started noticing these window signs. On some blocks, every other house displayed one.

Many cars also carried them.

Soon enough, I came upon the farm, Little City Gardens, itself.

Neighborhood farmers were working the land as I walked by.

At least one seemed wary of a passing photographer. This happens.

The Save the Farm website tells the story. Apparently this one acre lot has been producing greens and vegetables since 2010, to the delight of adjacent property owners and other neighbors. Ironically, the parcel has been bought by a private Waldorf school whose mission statement includes this:

In building and sustaining bridges between the school, families, and the local communities, we are preparing children to be productive global citizens and stewards of the Earth.

Existing neighbors and farmers are not happy. They have sought to get the city to stop the development through a petition to the Planning Department.

The school tries to allay neighborhood concerns with this FAQ.

An article in Modern Farmer summarizes some of the contradictions.

Neighbors are pissed, partly because the farm is a fun cool thing and partly because it’s much quieter than a bustling private school full of kids who have to be picked up and dropped off every day.

San Francisco has prohibitively expensive land, and Little City Gardens was exploiting a rare unused chunk in a city where an acre of land sells for upwards of a million dollars. ...

In this city beset with fights over development and direction, here's another in an otherwise quiet corner.

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