Weeks 1 & 2, Summer 2022

The first week of June is a transitional time for many parts of a farm, and the first week of June at Zumwalt Acres bore witness to many important transitions, providing exciting potential for new growth, opportunities for rewarding accomplishments, and introductions into a supportive community. I returned to Zumwalt Acres a week and a half ago for the first time since November of 2020, and settled in for the summer. When I had left the farm that November, I didn’t know how long it would take for me to come back to Sheldon, and had no idea just how much would grow and change in the time I was gone. 

There wasn’t much time for me to process these developments, as we jumped in right away to harvest the first fruits of the summer and transplant the last seedlings that will ripen in early August. Zumwalt Acres’ first strawberries came out of our learning patch — a horticulture field started right behind the house in our first season by our founding cohort. Back in that fall, we mounded raised beds and made mixes of compost, basalt, and biochar in differing proportions, pouring hope and optimism into soil that hadn’t produced food for human consumption in decades or longer. 

Today, as the weather shoots above 90 degrees, strawberries, kohlrabi, kale, cilantro, beet greens, and turnips are going to Down at the Farms, and a similar harvest will be donated to the Watseka Food Pantry on Wednesday. Our new apprentice cohort, currently made up of myself (Sophie), Gavi, Marya, Bella, Sydney, Daniel, and Luisa, quickly oriented themselves to the land and the many avenues through which we try to distribute our produce and connect with regional friends in regenerative agriculture. During our first weekend together, we celebrated Shavuot together and with the Jewish Farmers Network, reveling in everyone’s first fruits. We conducted our initial hay harvest, baling and storing from the carbon-capturing test plots as the Jewish calendar marked the beginning of the grain harvest. 

We also planted our first Three Sisters Garden during this time. The spring cohort lovingly planned out this patch behind the house, on a plot that had been in monocropped rotations of corn and soy as far as anyone could remember. This season, this earth will instead host an intercropped system we learned from Anishinaabe teachers, a sacred agricultural practice of many indigenous cultures. Our garden has four sisters: corn, which provides the trellis upon which beans climb up; beans, which sequester nitrogen to add to the soil; squash, which grow wide leaves that shade the soil; and sunflowers at the intersection of these mounded communities. Orly, who lived and farmed at ZA this past spring, introduced this planting method from their seed mentors. Orly described corn in an industrial food system as lonely. They pointed out a quote by Rowen White, which describes corn plants planted in monoculture as “brokenhearted seeds being planted by brokenhearted people.”

A lot of farmland in the Midwest consists of hundreds of acres being farmed by one or two individuals. We kicked off this season at Zumwalt Acres with nine people who are dedicated to tending our 50 acres. As we get to know one another and meet the land, we are grateful to be planting corn with its sisters, and alongside each other.

Signed,

Sophie, Marya, Lexi, Bella, Sydney, Daniel, Luisa, Gavi

Cover image alt text:

White illustration on brown paper. Text reads: “We planted a lot when we first got here... Eggplant, Tomatoes, Green Beans, 3 Sisters.” Sketches of seedlings, beens, a vine with a flower, and three conjoined faces.

Image credit:

Luisa Cichowski