1008131715_ed_lAfter 25 years living in my home in Oakland and 15 years of building a mini-farm and gardening in my backyard, this was one-half of my final harvest. (The other half was given to a friend, of course.) As I write this from Grass Valley, I’m eating the squash and tomatoes shown in the photo, part of a favorite summer salad.

I’m going to miss my mini-farm. But, I’ll continue gardening in Grass Valley, where I’m on the landscaping team with other gardeners from Wolf Creek Lodge. Perhaps the most important item in this photo is not the edibles in the basket, but the cuttings in the coffee cup from my blackberry plant. I will plant them here in Grass Valley and see how they do. They could mark the beginnings of something good here. My beloved blackberry in Oakland was from a cutting received about 15 years ago from a guy in Berkeley and it provided the beginning of my urban agriculture pursuits. Taking this cutting with me, I feel like I am part of a hundreds-year-old tradition of horticulturists who have carried all sorts of crops around the world, providing the basis for our current farming and gardening.