Come celebrate with us September 23rd

It's coming soon! Common Roots Farm’s 2023 Harvest Fest is right around the corner.

Please join us on Saturday, September 23, from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. for live music, plein air painters making signed original works available on the spot, food trucks, snow cones, fair trade goods, games for the kids, farm stand, and more! Proceeds benefit people with disabilities at Common Roots Farm and Eric’s Home and Farm in Arusha, Tanzania. Buy your tickets here.

The Ten O’Clock Lunch Band	Brookdale Swimming Hole. Oil on canvas by Ed Penniman

Don’t forget your dancin’ shoes because The Ten O’Clock Lunch Band will play for us starting at 12:30 p.m. A long-time favorite in Santa Cruz, this band plays soulful, energetic cover music, with great vocals, and passionate harmonica. Come enjoy music from the Motown era and the swinging blues and rock classics.

An added treat at this year’s festival will be Ed Penniman, featured artist at the event. He and his artist colleagues will be painting live on the farm for all to enjoy.

From his website: Ed Penniman’s paintings of California scenery go quite a bit deeper than simply showing us how he sees the world around him. Indeed, part of their depth is related to Ed’s familiarity with the coastal landscape of Santa Cruz where he was born, made his first paintings at the age of twelve and continues to live, but familiarity alone can’t account for the dreamlike vibrancy and spirituality that radiates from Penniman’s landscapes. They are—in many important respects—inner vignettes that transmit the deep appreciation for life of a man who has been to the brink of death and made a comeback. Penniman is an artist living out his second life: a life infused with humility, awe and gratitude.

Blooms of Thanks program takes off!

Now that it’s peak season for our flowers, Common Roots Farm’s innovative Blooms of Thanks program is off and running. With a generous grant from the Health Care Endowment Fund of the Palo Alto Medical Group, we have been able to grow additional flowers this season and the farm is just bursting with colorful bouquets.

Day program participants making bouquets of thanks	A farm volunteer making a bouquet for her support staff

Our farm team and volunteers have sown, grown, and are now harvesting these flowers and teaching more people with disabilities how to make attractive flower bunches and bouquets. Made weekly, these bouquets become gifts to staff whose work is to support those with disabilities to live in our community. Through their care and support, people with disabilities are living more fully and making choices daily about how they wish to spend their time and live their lives. A very small percentage of the flower production worldwide is done without herbicides or pesticides. Producing cut flowers without the use of these chemicals is uniquely challenging and one of the reasons Common Roots is very proud of Nina, our Farm Manager, who grows a wide variety of blooms organically. Among the many varieties of flowers we grow, Common Roots features dahlias, zinnias, sunflowers, celosia, globe amaranth, feverfew, giant marigolds, sunballs, flax, scabiosa, and cosmos, to name a few. Handing a support provider a bouquet of flowers has proven to be a meaningful and welcome way to express thanks. Common Roots is so pleased to be part of this gratitude cycle! We thank our flower volunteers, day program participants, and donors for this enriching opportunity to help say “thank you” to our community’s essential support staff.

Support staff Joanie and Zena receive their blooms of thanks

Summer harvest is here, finally!

by Heidi Cartan, Executive Director

Our 2023 season has been a bit different than we are used to here on the coast. A mild, very wet spring and a less hot summer have been nothing to complain about, but have meant some crops have been slow to mature. Last week we were finally able to add tomatoes, peppers, and melons to our CSA! Farmer Nina and our flower team also seem to be adding something new and unique to our bouquets nearly every week! The farm has become so alive with crops flourishing and lots of folks enjoying our peak season.

Day program participants with Seed to Salad harvest	Our 2023 farm team

Our Seed to Salad garden, tended by our farmers who visit us from local day programs, also had a bountiful harvest this week. Participants were able to bring lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, and green beans home to their families!

Accessible to everyone, this area has become the heartbeat of the farm with groups arriving every morning. Here, people with intellectual/developmental disabilities really get to know this farm. They visit and feed our animals, know how to find tools, how to start seeds, to water, to fertilize and to plant.

Some people gravitate to certain tasks and get right to it as soon as they arrive. Others notice changes since the week before and are excited to point these out. Some like to settle in with a drawing project and seem to relax to the birdsong and other sounds around them. Lily, our Engagement Coordinator, is often ready with a new farm-based art project or a flower bunching lesson and an invitation to take some flowers home.

These mornings have become my favorite time on the farm. It’s glorious here at Common Roots these days. Our farm team is so dedicated, working hard every day to make experiences enjoyable and substantive for our community members living with disabilities. What a privilege it is to see it all unfold!