Week 4, Summer 2022
Hello everyone,
We’re here to share some updates from our 4th week of the summer season <3
We got 20,003 new animals on the farm this week! Wow! We got 3 new goats (they’re on loan to us for the summer, and we’re milking one of them), and 20,000 bees! Marya, JR, and I (Luisa) drove to pick up the bee nucs (starter nucleus colonies) from an apiary on Thursday. On Friday, a neighbor and new friend Ken Striker came to the farm to help us transfer the nucs to their hives. We now have two hives of Italian Honey Bees.
The road trip that JR, Marya, and I took to the apiary stirred up some interesting conversation. We talked about the network of sustainable and organic farms in Illinois. ZA has connections to some of these farms and it’s inspiring how successful many of these farms are as pioneers of farming unconventionally in the region. But there are also many differences in the ways in which these farmers run their operations compared to ZA. For example, at ZA apprentices have a lot of autonomy in deciding their schedules, daily farm tasks, and pursuing their own interests. Additionally, leadership is transparent and apprentices have a say in all parts of the operation. At the same time, we have a lot to learn from people who have been doing this work much longer than we have. How do we see ourselves within this network?
Marya, Sophie, and Gavi have been working on hay baling and taking soil samples for ZA’s research on enhanced rock weathering in collaboration with Yale. We got 800 bales of hay out of our 12-acre plot, which is currently capturing carbon from basalt applied in the spring of 2021. That plot was divided into smaller sections, with differing rates of rock dust that were applied, so we can see which rate is most successful. This was a big occupation last week and it was especially difficult during the hottest days. We’ve been thinking a lot about what increasing basalt application to new farms would look like, what the primary motivations are, and what questions remain unanswered. Daniel has been writing letters to people involved in drafting the 2023 Farm Bill, mentioning our work and how important it is to allocate funding for regenerative agricultural methods such as these. We are also interested in pursuing more closely how basalt interacts with soil health and the soil microbiome, and have had many interesting conversations with different researchers on this topic over the past few days.
Some of this dialogue was continued off the farm for an exciting event at the Watseka Historical Society where we gave a public presentation about ZA’s work. Munching on snap peas and garlic scape pesto afterwards, we chatted with folks from Watseka and nearby about their own experiences with agriculture and how this kind of work sounds to them.
Gavi brought us back to other resonant questions that were close to home during their Context Conversation (an apprentice-led educational session) this week—how people name themselves and each other, and how our names for other living beings affect the way in which we relate to them.
We had a long awaited rain on Saturday, bringing ourselves and our plants back to life after an intense heat wave. Looking forward to getting some new people, Isa and Julia, on the farm this week.
Thanks and have a great week,
Luisa, Sophie, Marya, Sydney, Lexi, Daniel, Bella, and Gavi
Something we read this week:
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass - To Name and Describe You Must First See
Cover image alt text:
A large bee standing above a tiny farmhouse and windmill.
Image credit: Luisa Cichowski
