Week 2, Fall ‘21
After a Monday morning breakfast, which required meticulous rationing on the part of the cohort’s three coffee drinkers, we all headed out to get some quick harvesting in before Matt Ryan showed up for a presentation on all things setting up a farm. Matt is a farm/garden consultant and the educator who runs the farming program at Evanston Township High School. Fun Fact: Our very own Joey is an alum of ETHS, and Matt was his farm mentor! Our biggest takeaway from the workshop: efficiency is key. After lunch, we continued with the harvest -- Maya on peppers and green beans, Eric on summer squash, Maranda and Marya on tomatoes, and Joey on eggplants. Joey was very excited to find a record-breakingly large (not really, but you get the idea) Japanese eggplant (you can find photos capturing the joy this brought him on the ZA instagram). To finish off the workday, we washed the produce and packed orders for market while Joey rushed to the store to pick up coffee, so that the cohort’s coffee drinkers would survive another day. For dinner, Maya and Maranda made peanut noodles, shoshito peppers, and Korean braised tomatoes. Their cheffery was especially chaotic and messy, but the finished result was quite tasty. Before bed, we sat down to play some card games, but were soon discouraged when Marya won them all.
On Tuesday morning, Maya and Maranda set out to bring our produce to Gray Farms for market and then headed to the library to print the harvest logs needed to bring Joey and Eric’s vision of peak organization to life. Eric and Marya began the laborious and glorious task of pruning tomatoes. In the afternoon, we all gathered in the living room for a presentation and discussion about ZA’s finances led by ALC Finance Manager, Jesse. After that, Maya and Joey headed to Murphy’s Grocery in Kentland to pick up a massive haul of cardboard boxes, some of which we will use later in the week for mulching and some of which we will use to pack future CSA orders (woohoo exciting!). For dinner, Joey and Eric made an okra, Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP), & tomato stew with rice.
After a quick tomato and cucumber harvesting stint on Wednesday morning with the whole crew, Maranda drove herself and Maya (shoutout for Maranda behind the wheel!) to the Sheldon Food Pantry. Back at the farm, Eric and Marya held the fort down and continued to prune the tomatoes in Goat Garden; they are now looking quite gorgeous with their fresh haircut! Stepping into his role as part of the research team, Joey fluxed all day, and we (and Yale University) are so grateful for it. After lunch, Eric led the whole squadron in a tutorial on how to do bed walkthroughs, bestowing much knowledge upon us all about soil moisture, plant families, and pest recognition. And Joey demonstrated spraying neem oil and BT -- two essential organic pesticides that we use on the farm. To end the work day, Maya, Maranda, and Eric thinned the radishes in Bayit garden and harvested a bounty of watermelons, which are now resting comfortably in Finn’s Fridge™. Lexi showed up in the afternoon just in time for our end-of-the-day meeting. For dinner, Maya and Marya made summer squash tots, a wheatberry, nut, & watermelon salad, and radish green pesto.
Thursday morning we jumped into our biggest task yet: Miracle Garden beautification. The weeds were wild, the beds were muddy, the sun was blazing, but Maranda, Lexi, Joey, and Maya rose to the task. While the miracle team was weeding, Marya and Eric spent all morning SAREing, and we (and the government) are so grateful. After lunch, Maya and Joey headed back out to Miracle to mulch the freshly cleared rows with hay. With all of her weeds pulled and beds mulched, Miracle Garden is looking as pristine as ever. Eric and Marya continued with their SAREing (#MVPs!). After the workday, Maya, Lexi, and JR headed over to JR’s cousin Johnny’s farm so that Maya could drive his tractor while Lexi and JR helped him bail hay. For dinner, Maya and Eric made rigatoni with tomato sauce & radish green pesto along with roasted squash & tofu. We all ate gathered around the television for a Jewish Farmers Network zoom about the Shmita year.
On Friday, the last day of the work week, the cohort split off to do various important horticulture and agroforestry tasks. It was a divide-and-conquer kind of day! Maranda harvested tomatoes, jalapeños, and bell peppers in Goat Garden; Maya harvested shoshito peppers, eggplants, and green beans in Miracle Garden; and Eric harvested squash, peppers, and eggplants in ATR. Joey hopped onto the lawnmower to tend to all the lawns on the farm, and Marya, like a true agroforestry queen, continued to tend to the trees. Later in the morning, JR acquainted Maya and Maranda with the farm’s pickup truck (whose name is Frankie), and Joey headed out to finish spraying the plants that Lexi had been working on all morning. In the afternoon, Linda Raven came to the farm to lead a workshop called “embodied liberation,” in which we explored the principles of embodiment -- our connection to our bodies, other humans, and the non-human world -- and talked about how those principles can be liberatory, as well as their relationship to permaculture. Woah! In the evening the crew prepared for a special Taylor Swift themed Shabbat. The entire T-Swizzle oeuvre was played, important pop music discourse was had, Marya and Maranda cooked a special meal of stuffed squash, roasted green beans, and a cucumber & tomato salad, and surprise….our beloved Isabelle returned to the farm! Everyone is looking forward to a weekend of rest, relaxation, and rejuvenation before we embark on next week’s farm journey. Stay tuned!
