Today the EBPI Crew made a daylong sojourn to Alemany Farm, in the projects just south of Bernal Hill in San Francisco. There we were guided by 48-year-old Alice Carruthers, the amazing woman who runs the farm as part of the Alemany Resident Management Corporation, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving conditions in the community.

Alemany is a 165-unit low-income housing community, where Alice has spent the last 34 years of her life. She moved there at the age of 14 and has never left - and so she’s seen the neighborhood go through changes upon changes. Many of those changes are ones that she herself initiated, with an eye toward improving the lives of the people in her neighborhood. She is currently juggling five projects, including the farm, an HIV prevention program, and a senior program, but comes up with a new idea nearly every day. She took at least one jab at Gavin Newsom in explaining that around 60 of the units are vacant despite the fact that there is a waiting list to get this type of housing.

It turns out that shooting right by the highway is… very challenging. We found a nice spot that showed Alice in her neighborhood, but the cars were so loud she often had trouble hearing Andrew’s questions, and weed-whackers and leaf-rakers picked her most emotional outpourings to make shriekingly loud noises. We pressed on and collected a good hour of Alice’s life, her childhood, theories, beliefs, and other stories.

The farm itself is 4.5 acres of strawberries, plums, basil, lettuce, and many other fruits and vegetables. It’s run by kids, employees of the farm, and volunteers, and will soon be expanding and adding a greenhouse and possibly some animals.

Alice is not a farmer. She hates spiders, snakes, and won’t sit on a bale of hay. But she doesn’t do this for the farming - she does it for the community, for the Alemany kids. It’s clear that there are many reasons to get into urban farming, and in Alice’s case the farm is really the means and not the point. She started clearing overgrowth in 1998 and by 2004 she had a fully functioning plot of land nestled between the freeway and her housing community, a little oasis of food and calm. She goes there to think, to play, and to see the kids spend structured time learning how to make their own food.

After we interviewed her sitting in the garden, where she told us more about the history of the farm and how she got involved, a group of kids -aged 6 to 14 or so - came up and sat down on the hay. They answered our questions and told us what they like about the farm, their community, and what they like best about Alice - “she takes care of us.” These kids clearly know the garden well - they knew where all the various crops were, knew (to various degrees) about planting and harvesting. Before long they became much more interested in playing with the camera, and Adam spent the next 20 minutes giving them turns watching the footage we’d shot and making sure nobody broke anything.

These kids get the point of the garden, or at least know the purpose. “To keep us out of trouble” is how they generally answered our questions about why they work there. For a few hours it provides them a place to be and a way to learn something practical. Alice, her staff, and the kids don’t have lofty goals about saving the planet and reducing carbon. They are there to strengthen the neighborhood and eat healthy.

We got some b-roll of the neighborhood and of the farm - including a deeply magical shot of a bee flying off a sunflower - and then ANDREW DROPPED THE CAMERA. He broke the first rule of setting down cameras: Always Make Sure It’s Totally Not Going To Fall. Fortunately it landed on the little metal plates that surround the lens, and there was only minor damage to the rig and none to the camera itself.

So, we learned many lessons today, about cars being loud and camera safety, mostly. And about how people can love farms without loving farming. And how a kid from the projects knows what a loquat is. And how a full-grown woman ordered Warner Bros. characters painted on her new Harley. And we are richer for it.