Week 8, Fall ‘20
By Remi Welbel
It’s our eighth week here and we are as active as our biochar!
Before I delve into our weekly update, I want to thank everyone so much for supporting us and buying tickets to the BOOST 2020 Midwest’s Emerging Entrepreneurs in Sustainability event! We cannot express how grateful we are for the outpour of support. On November 10th at 6:00pm, the BOOST finalists’ video pitches will debut and Debut Night Talkback will follow immediately afterwards. Between November 10th to November 15th, you’ll be able to cast your vote for us. https://delta-institute.org/event/boost-2020/
On Monday, we kicked off the new week with a productive team meeting. We set goals for BOOST outreach, brainstormed ideas for our BOOST pitch video, began preparing for our call with the Illinois Regenerative Agriculture Initiative on Friday, and continued planning for our spring cohort of apprentices. We are overjoyed by the number of folks interested in joining our team in the spring and summer months! Then, to prepare for an evening biochar burn, we collected sticks and began weighing our biochar feedstock. While Samm took a drive to get more food pellets for the goats and more organic flour for us, we worked on developing the script for our BOOST pitch video. It was a wonderful exercise in reflecting upon why we are here, what we are doing, and what we ultimately hope to accomplish. Then, we began our evening biochar burn (it was a bit too wet outside in the morning to burn, so we opted for a delayed start). While we took shifts tending to the burn, we worked on updating our website and choosing our logo from one of Gavi and Claire’s beautiful designs.
For dinner, Samm and Claire made roasted sweet potatoes, tofu, and pasta with tomato sauce.
On Tuesday, we collected more sticks so that we weren't in a sticky situation when it came time to do another burn.After coming back inside, we continued developing and editing our pitch script. In the afternoon, we worked on creating an application to send out to all the folks interested in becoming apprentices. Keep an eye out! The application will be sent out to everyone who expressed interest by the end of the week. We also began working on signage for our tree nursery. These signs were painted and distributed throughout the nursery detailing the composition of the soil (biochar, basalt, and compost content by percentage) and the species growing. Having clear signage will be instrumental in maintaining the integrity of our research. After working on cleaning and cutting boards for signs, we laid out Monday’s biochar to dry.
For dinner, Max and Gavi made homemade tahini, baba ganoush, salad ,and roasted chickpeas, carrots, cauliflower, and bok choy.
On Wednesday, we spent the day putting last minute touches on our pitch video! It was a huge team effort and I want to give a major shoutout to everyone who poured their hearts into this (Gavi and Julia were still hard at work at 4am on Tuesday night!). We are so excited for everyone to see our video! In the evening, we painted our nursery signs, weighed our finished biochar, and prepared the three components of our soil mixture (biochar, soil, and manure).
For dinner, Claire and I made a miso sweet potato, green bean, carrot, quinoa stew and grilled tofu.
On Thursday, we kicked off the day with soil mixing! We’re creating a mixture that is 30% biochar, 20% manure, and 50% soil. In order to create the mixture, we shovel each component into our wheelbarrow, which has a known volume, and produce a mound with all three components. In doing so, we are able to produce a heap that has the correct composition and then use the Bobcat loader to effectively mix it all together. After shoveling and mixing, we took the finished product and poured it into our raised beds. We then raked the freshly laid soil so that our beds are ready for planting! After our mixing festivities, we continued working on our nursery signs and prepared for a special visit on Friday, when a couple folks from a grant organization will be coming to check out the farm. In the evening, we decided to do an impromptu biochar burn so that we will have enough biochar to incorporate into the soil mixture that will be used in our tree nursery.
For dinner, Samm and Julia, our iconic duo, made yellow curry, roast eggplant, and tofu.
On Friday morning, even the goats were excited for our visitors! Before they arrived, we finished distributing our painted signs throughout the nursery and raised beds, and prepared our challah dough. We had a wonderful time giving our visitors a tour of the nursery, raised beds, biochar production site, and the area of the woods where we will be cultivating shiitake mushrooms. It was so exciting to tell them about all the projects we have underway. After they left, we began weighing and adding basalt to our raised beds, and mixed more soil. Then we went inside to prepare Shabbat dinner and get ready for our weekly conversation about the indigenous origins of the agroforestry and horticulture practices we are implementing and the history of the land we are stewarding. We had a thoughtful, constructive conversation surrounding materials Sophie prepared for us. Then we lit the Shabbat candles and sat down for dinner.
For dinner, Sophie and I made tomato vegetable soup, homemade hummus, lentils and rice, and roasted beets and carrots.
After dinner, we celebrated an incredible week by reading the fills from our jars.