Dig into urban farm fun | Glen Park

Sometimes when you’re enveloped by a bustling city, a peaceful reprieve is in order. Want to feel like a country mouse? Alemany Farm gives you an arena to get down and dirty with Mother Nature smack in the middle of San Francisco.

Where once stood a junkyard now thrives a beatific organic farm spanning 3.5 acres. Sprawling and sloping, this urban garden of edibles welcomes visitors year-round. Enter its unlocked gates to meet beds of blossoming flowers and produce.

Take BART to Glen Park Station and hop on the 44 bus. Get off at Silver Avenue and Cambridge Street, and from there it’s a 5-minute walk to the edge of St. Mary’s Playground on Alemany Boulevard. Once in the farm, you’ll be bookended by rows of seasonal favorites — like leafy greens, tasty ground cherries, juicy red strawberry nuggets, pluming fruit trees and colorful petals.

Here, furrows maintained by volunteers and the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department’s Community Gardens Program not only nurture veggies, they nurture educational tours, environmental awareness and organic farm-to-table insights.  

Peek around every corner and planter box to witness how myriad produce poke through the soil.

Good for the kids? Let ’em go wild while they explore aisles of bee- and butterfly-luring specimens. Good for a romantic afternoon? Enjoy hand-in-hand strolling surrounded by well-manicured lines of organic goods.

Get in touch with your inner gardener in the outdoors. Folks of all ages stop by to lend some help — experienced green thumb not required — to support all that grows where the sidewalk ends.

When you want to dig in regularly, the public is invited to volunteer at community workdays every first and third Sundays, the Saturdays in between, and every Monday afternoon.

Check the farm calendar for Alemany Farm’s informative workshops so that you can take home helpful tips — like soil and composting how-tos — from its garden to yours. And, if you volunteer at a workday, you’ll likely take home some of what you’ve helped freshly harvest.

This all means that when the gardening gloves come off, you’ll feel like a champ.