Week 3, Fall ‘20

By Remi Welbel

It’s our third week here and we are thriving almost as much as our sourdough starter, Drew.

On Monday, we kicked off our week by working on our raised beds and our tree nursery! We finished drilling together all the cement panels for the walls and began digging a second trench for another raised bed. We continued working on grant proposals, searching for small local grants while keeping in mind larger grants that we may be able to apply to with the support of our partner, the Delta Institute. Last week, one of our mentors at the Savannah Institute, Kate Wersan, offered us the incredible opportunity to help with researching and drafting the Association for Temperate Agroforestry (AFTA) policy report. So, this week we delved into a deep dive, learning about agroforestry policy. 

For dinner, Charlotte and Sasha made homemade tortillas with red lentils and potatoes to fill them! 

On Tuesday, we woke up and began our bread bake of the week! By the end of the day, we had three loaves of cinnamon raisin sourdough bread and two loaves of sesame crusted sourdough bread. After some morning grant writing and research work, we ventured into the woods to continue mapping and familiarizing ourselves with the tree species.  We also made our third batch of biochar! Researching techniques and learning from more experienced people has greatly improved our technique and we were all excited with the limited smoke this batch produced. 

For dinner, Julia and Samm made a green lentil dish and beautiful salad. Charlotte made stellar vegan chocolate cupcakes for dessert. 

On Wednesday, bright and early, a fourth batch of biochar went in! As always, we took turns tending to the fire as it burned. When our wood stock was fully burned, we quenched it with our hose, first filling it from the bottom, and then spraying from the top to ensure the fire was fully extinguished. In addition to creating biochar and learning about its applications to regenerative agriculture, one of our goals at the farm is to cultivate horticulture in our raised beds and in the green house. After much contemplation, we ordered the seeds we will be planting, including lettuce, raishes, spinach, and squash. We also worked on planning the research we will be conducting using nine different sections of the raised beds to investigate the impact of biochar on soil fertility. 

For dinner, Gavi and Claire made roasted golden and sweet potatoes, miso glazed tofu, and a big salad.

On Thursday, several of us gained a deeper insight into the current farming practices on the land by riding in the combine with Johnny as he harvested the soybeans. We had a very successful meeting with Jack Byrne, the Dean of Environmental Affairs & Sustainability at Middlebury, and he connected us with a farm in Vermont, Shelburne Farms, that is currently creating biochar and using an educational model of regenerative agriculture. As their vision closely aligns with ours, we are very excited to reach out to them and learn from them. We also delved deeper into our policy research for Kate, parsing through the 2018 Farm Bill and reading through the existing literature on agroforestry policy in the U.S.

For dinner, Sophie and I made baba ganoush, salad, and a miso quinoa dish teeming with sweet potatoes, peas, and chickpeas. Sophie also made some fab zucchini bread for dessert with the abundance of zucchini we got in this week’s box of MisFits produce. 

On Friday morning, we jumped into our day, making challah dough for Shabbat dinner. We then had a really exciting meeting with the Delta Institute about the Lumpkin Family Foundation Grant and the Delta Boost Grant that we are applying for. They were very positive about our community’s mission and offered us a lot of helpful guidance. We continued working on building our second raised bed and on tilling and preparing our tree nursery. We also continued chugging along on our agroforestry policy research. As always, we made a beautiful Shabbat dinner and enjoyed reading all the notes that had accumulated in each of our “fill jars.”

For dinner, Sasha and Sophie made butternut squash soup, cabbage slaw, and rice with daal. For dessert, Charlotte made fab brownies.