Week 8, Summer 2022
Zumwalt Acres is sustained by the built-in community on our farm – with everyone in the summer cohort is here at once this week, a special rarity this season, we’re up to 9 people in the house, and Lexi and JR are not far away. Still, this past week was especially joyous because of the extra people we were able to welcome to the farm, which revealed many of the strong connections that have slowly been building over the past two years, turning our on-farm community into a web that extends throughout the surrounding towns and cornfields, as well as up to Chicago and around the Midwest.
Last Tuesday, we visited Black Oaks Center, an eco-campus and food hub in Pembroke Township, a historically Black farming community thirty minutes away from Zumwalt Acres. In addition to building out their own sustainable farm, Black Oaks Center has worked tirelessly over the past 15 years to reimagine a structure of resource provision that prioritizes community care, health, and grass-roots organizing. We had a long conversation with Dr. J and Fred Carter about their experience in this work and how we might apply similar thinking to Zumwalt Acres.
Over the weekend, we hosted the Avodah Chicago bayit (house), a group of 13 young adults who live in a Jewish communal house in Chicago and work for local non-profits over the course of the year. They came to the farm for their closing retreat and spent Shabbat camping, trying to stay dry from a major storm passing through, and exploring the space. We joined them for havdalah on Saturday night. I (Sophie) noticed how special it was to be hosting a Jewish ritual with a large community among the farmland of Illinois, showing how it is possible to create meaningful Jewish spaces in untraditional locations.
Unfortunately our market was rained out, but we were still able to have our local community cookout and tour on Sunday to finish out a busy weekend. We hosted neighbors and local friends for the afternoon, and JR and some buddies played music until the sun went down.
Bella, Luisa, and Isa sang for everyone, turning our tool sheds into a beautiful concert space.
The produce highlight of the week was harvesting our garlic, which had been growing since last fall. The process of yanking stalks out of the ground, shaking the dirt off of the large bulbs, and laying the dozens of pounds out to dry was a really joyful experience for me, Sydney, and Isa.
Image description:
A white background with three types of folding chairs drawn in colored pencil. There is a red chair, blue chair, and purple chair. Above the chairs, red handwritten text says “chairs at our community event.”