Week 11, Fall ‘20
By Remi Welbel
It’s our eleventh week here and our enthusiasm is outlasting even our longest hazelnut shell biochar burns.
Before I dive into our week, we have a very exciting announcement! Drumroll… We have been selected as the winners of the Delta Institute’s 9th annual BOOST Social Entrepreneurship Pitch Contest! We are so incredibly grateful to all of you for supporting us and to the Delta Institute for helping us further our mission! Check out the official announcement below:
On Monday, we launched into our week with a bustling team meeting. With only two weeks left at the farm before we head home for the winter months, we had a lot of planning to do! We mapped out each biochar burn, scheduled biochar activation shifts, determined what experimental data still needs to be collected, and continued planning for the spring cohort. Throughout the day, we conducted a hazelnut shell biochar burn. From our last burn, we learned that because the shells are small, they pack together and do not allow adequate oxygenation to sustain a fire. To remedy this problem, we now use several logs to keep a steady burn going with our hazelnut shells. After a long burn, we weighed out the biochar and activated the biochar from our previous burn. Then, our outreach team met to discuss our work and living handbooks for future apprentices. We are currently in the process of writing both of these handbooks to provide guidance for future cohorts.
For dinner, Samm and Sophie made spinach and squash pizza and salad.
On Tuesday, knowing it would take a while, we started the day with a hazelnut shell burn. While rotating tending to the fire, the rest of us worked on our other outdoor projects. We weighed basalt for soil application to our nursery and raised beds, measured each segment of our nursery for our research purposes (each experimental plot must be 76.2cm wide and 3.6m long), and ensured that each segment of the nursery had the proper amount of soil. In the evening, we weighed out the biochar and took samples to send to the lab for analysis.
For dinner, Max and Claire made a vegetable rice stir fry, spaghetti squash, and salad from the greens in our greenhouse!
On Wednesday, we had another productive outdoor work day. We did a hazelnut shell biochar burn, continued working on the nursery, and finished building up the wall on one of our raised beds. We also applied basalt to the nursery with the proper proportions in each experimental segment. In the evening, once the freshly burned biochar was quenched and the activated biochar was spread on a tarp, we began applying biochar to the nursery. We measured our buckets to determine their volumes, shoveled activated biochar into them, and spread it in the correct proportions along each segment.
For dinner, Gavi and I made tomato vegetable soup, spiced grilled tofu, steamed spinach and bok choy from our greenhouse, and buckwheat.
On Thursday, outside, we unloaded the biochar from the activation tank, activated the nutshell biochar from the previous day’s burn, applied the rest of the activated biochar to the nursery, and hammered in our nursery signs which indicate each segment’s soil composition. We also added soil mixture to our newly finished raised bed. Inside, we continued working on preparing for the spring cohort. Applications were due Friday! We also had a meeting with Kaitie who Kate Wersan from the Savannah Institute connected us with to talk about agroforestry policy.
For dinner, Julia and Samm made roasted carrots, sauteed green beans, salad from our greenhouse, and pasta with tomato sauce.
On Friday, we had a morning meeting with the Yale graduate student we are working with to develop a long-term plan for the farm so that it can be self-sustaining and replicable for other farmers. After our meeting, we went back to outdoor work. We finished spreading biochar and basalt in the nursery and added another layer of hay to the paths between the nine plots. We also finished building a hoop house around our raised bed that sits right outside of the greenhouse. Inside, we made Challah dough for Shabbat, and got our materials ready to begin reviewing spring applications. We also finished packaging our biochar samples in vials to send to the lab for analysis.
For Shabbat dinner, Sophie and Claire made beet borscht, butternut squash and acorn squash with pomegranate seeds and tahini, and salad from our greenhouse.
After our final Shabbat dinner together at the farm, we spent our oneg reading our weekly fills.