Week 10, Spring 2024
Hello wonderful readers, welcome back to the farm journal!
The theme of the past week’s Shabbat was corners. Why, you might ask? Well, in the week’s Context Conversation about Jewish agricultural values we learned about Pe’ah. While the Hebrew term literally means, “corner,” the concept refers to a biblical decree to leave a corner of your field unharvested so that those in need may take from it. Inspired by this, Acacia and I prepared a gorgeous frittata adorned with tomatoes, peppers, our own sage leaves, olives, foraged wild garlic, and more in the shape of a vibrant sunset garden. For dessert I ambitiously spearheaded a sweet lasagna kugel layered with our own apple sauce, ricotta, and caramel. Our Kabbalat Shabbat service welcomed in Shabbat accompanied by Eric on guitar which was an extra special treat.
Our Shabbat day was enjoyed like many of our others, picnicking, exploring the woods, reading, napping, and playing Bananagrams. We closed out Shabbat with Havdallah in the silo, which is always a favorite of mine here on the farm. In the evening we set up a campfire, roasted marshmallows, and sang some songs together. On Sunday we reviewed all of the line dances we’ve learned over the course of the season, and there are a lot of them! In the afternoon we treated ourselves to milkshakes and fried fare at Don’s.
On Monday we started by prepping soil in ATR. We were hit with some heavy rain so I headed inside to start working on this week’s Context Conversation about racism and marginalized groups in the Jewish community. I’ve really been enjoying doing research on this topic and being able to bring some of my Moroccan family’s history to the table. After the work day was over I made sure to catch up on some quality time with the cats.
On Tuesday morning we transplanted our eggplant seedlings in the high tunnel and took some samples of the soil. We also worked on setting up our drip lines and mulching in ATR. In the afternoon I spent some more time working on our Context Convo.
On Wednesday our team worked on planting some trees and putting some netting on our existing trees to protect them from cicadas. For anyone who hasn’t heard yet, 2024 marks the rare occurrence of 2 cicada broods emerging at the same time. With one only emerging every 13 years and the other every 17, this overlap only occurs every 221 years! Sheldon, IL happens to be part of the small area where both of these broods have made homes in the past. So if we’re lucky (or unlucky) enough, we might be in the presence of an unprecedented magnitude of cicadas. Wednesday was also a big mushroom maintenance day for me; it was finally time to start moving buckets into our second grow tent. It’s crazy to imagine that not long from now we may have as many as 12 buckets moving into/out of the tents every single week.
Thursday was a busy one. The crew was hard at work pruning and covering our little trees. I worked on washing out some of our old buckets which we used for our Grey Dove inoculation in the afternoon. We made sure to spend some time with the chicks before heading out for our weekend trip. You would not believe how big they are getting! Acacia recently moved them to a larger enclosure which they seem to be thrilled about. They especially love hanging out together on their perch. Adorable.
With that I’ll be closing out this week’s installment. Come back next time to hear all about our exciting weekend!
