Week 7, Fall ‘20
By Remi Welbel
It’s our seventh week here and our ideas are growing like the sprouts in our greenhouse!
Before I delve into our weekly update, we are so excited to announce we have been selected as finalists for the @DeltaInstitute BOOST Social Entrepreneurship Pitch Contest! Winning the contest would allow us to fund the next cohort of farm apprentices at Zumwalt Acres. It would give us the seed money to grow as an organization and establish our longevity. But we need your help to win! During the week of November 10th, you’ll be able to cast your vote for us. BUT! To do so, you must first purchase a ticket to the event through the link below. Use code BOOST20FINALIST for a $5 discount. 100% of your tax-deductible contribution will be used to support emerging entrepreneurs in sustainability as well as the mission of Delta Institute. Thank you so much for your support!
https://delta-institute.org/event/boost-2020/
Now for our regular scheduled programming; on Monday, we kicked off the day with our team meeting, discussing our goals for the week and writing the dinner schedule on our house whiteboard. After planning out biochar burns and research aims, our outreach team met to plan for our spring cohort! We anticipate having 6-10 folks living here and learning about regenerative agriculture from March until June and a second cohort from June until September. We’re excited that our outreach has already generated so much interest! In the spring, we will be planting the trees in our nursery, cultivating produce in our raised beds (inside the greenhouse and outside in the garden), applying to more research grants, and continuing to develop as a demonstration farm. We are currently accepting applications for spring and summer apprentices! If you are interested in coming in the spring or summer, please fill in this interest survey: https://forms.gle/ekCD9vJBSeRpSxqM6. In addition to planning for spring and summer, we also continued working on our agroforestry policy research and collected wood for Tuesday's biochar burn.
For dinner, Max and Sophie made chickpea curry with quinoa and broccoli.
On Tuesday morning we began the day with a biochar burn! This is our second week of producing experimental-grade biochar. What is an experimental grade biochar, you ask? Making experimental-grade biochar requires weighing all of the feedstock that goes into the burn, taking the temperature of the fire every five minutes, and building the fire in a way that minimizes smoke. After the feedstock has completely burned and charred, we quench it by turning on the attached hose that fills the kiln from the bottom up. Once the biochar was quenched and cooled, we activated it with compost tea and let it dry out in the sun. In the evening, we met with Delta for the BOOST grant finalist orientation. It was so wonderful to meet the other entrepreneurs and learn about their innovative projects!
For dinner, Claire and Gavi made miso soup, roasted tofu, delicata squash, sweet potatoes, and kale.
On Wednesday, we started the day by tending to the greens in our greenhouse. Our radishes and lettuce are flourishing! After taking care of our plants, we worked on crafting an outreach plan to spread the word to folks that we are finalists for the Delta BOOST grant. Then, we worked on our website and media development, and published Gavi’s stellar blog post on enhanced rock weathering! Take a look into the incredible carbon sequestering powers of basalt in her article. After working on media, we continued conducting policy research for Kate. In the evening, Samm and Julia made our first official farm TikTok, which was an exciting development for our media presence. We are currently at over 1,000 views! Check it out: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJaWeRgV/
For dinner, Gavi and I made miso adzuki beans with corn, sauteed spinach, and spiced carrots.
On Thursday, a group of us started the biochar burn while the others collected more wood. We rotated in our shifts, tending to the fire, weighing the feedstock, and recording the flame’s temperature. While we were burning, we admired our thriving raised beds. Our peas are really taking off and soon we’ll need to build a trellis for them to climb! After quenching the biochar, we laid it out to dry and activated it with our compost tea. Our basalt arrived, so we will be able to begin introducing enhanced rock weathering into our regenerative practices. In the afternoon, our agroforestry team met to finalize the tree species that we will be planting in the spring! After all the love we’ve poured into building our tree nursery, we cannot wait to begin planting. At the end of the day, we ate dinner together and watched the presidential debate.
For dinner, Julia and Samm made green beans, eggplant, rice, and tofu.
On Friday, we did a lot of mixing. First, we mixed the ingredients to make our challah dough and let it rise in the greenhouse, also affectionately known as our “large proving drawer.” After mixing bread, we began mixing soil, biochar, basalt, and manure to create our own soil mix that we will be using in our raised beds and that we will hopefully be able to sell to local farmers. After creating our first soil mix batch, we spread straw in the tree nursery pathways to prevent unwanted species from growing while retaining moisture and enhancing bioactivity. Once we finished working on the nursery, our agroforestry policy team met to discuss our findings and begin drafting a policy memo to share with Kate at our next meeting. In our research we’ve delved into areas of the Farm Bill that could be used as a precedent to promote agroforestry in Illinois, the Illinois carbon credit market, the shared land stewardship program through the Forestry Services, the author and co-signers of the Agriculture Resilience Act, and more. It’s been fascinating to learn about how Illinois can potentially be positioned as a leader in agroforestry.
For Shabbat dinner, Claire and I made lentil soup, spaghetti squash with tomato sauce, and roasted beets.
After Shabbat dinner, we celebrated the close of the week with our traditional oneg: reading the notes from our fill jars.