Week 11, Fall 2023
Hello all! Claire Ivey here with your weekly update of what does on down at ZA! Last week really felt like everything was wrapping up and I had to accept that the season is coming to an end. Living here for 9 long months has been so amazing and moving back to the city will be in no way easy, I will have to get used to loud noises, bright lights, and not having the woods right across the street from me again.
On Monday we had a day off and some of us decided to take a field trip into the city.
On Tuesday we got right back to work. Most of the morning was spent either packaging for orders for market distribution or working on the high tunnel. By the way, the high tunnel looks STUNNING- I can remember way back in spring season when it took us 7 hours to take down and JR thought that we would be able to put it back together at the farm in just a day, and now 8 months later it’s still not done! Margalit and Acacia have made amazing progress on it and of course this is not the last time it will be mentioned in this farm journal. Later on in the day I drove the produce order down to our distributor and others laid out a giant sheet of plastic to dry that will later go on the high tunnel. Some people also started putting away all of our drip lines for the winter so that they don’t get damaged from the harsh weather.
On Wednesday we started with folding up that plastic once it was dry, processing some daikon radish tops, and Acacia and I took some soil samples from the different garden beds around the farm so we can see what’s really going on in them. In the afternoon CP and Martina started working on clearing out three sisters and uncovering the old mulch so that it could be tilled and covered in manure, while Acacia and Margalit were per usual hard at work on the high tunnel.
On Thursday CP and Martina finished tilling three sisters and covered it in the manure which was not an easy task (who knew manure is so dense??). Margalit harvested mushrooms and Sophie then went and dropped them off at our local grocery store Murphy’s to sell them. In the afternoon, all of us went out to the high tunnel to help lift up the end piece!! It was wild to see the project feeling so visually complete, there's still a lot of work to be done on it but it was such a huge project to take on and I’m so proud of this team for knocking it out of the park! Frances and I hosted a context conversation on the LandBack movement and repatriation before the end of the day that went very well. On Friday night we hosted a little barn party as Gavi turned 24! We had dancing, games, yummy apple cider, an amazing chocolate and carrot cake, and a ton of fun.
On Friday we continued to work on the high tunnel of course, and miracle garden got a lot of love. We reshaped the beds, rototilled all of it, and then mulched it all. The work that we put in now to clean all of the beds up will make it much easier in the spring to get things back up and running. After lunch, we sadly said goodbye to Claire Pryor and I drove her off to the bus to take her to the city. We are so sad to have a shrinking cohort! But as it gets colder outside and there is less work to be done, things feel ready to be left in a state of suspension until the spring. Next week we will continue all our preparations for the long winter here and our cohort size will continue to shrink much to our dismay. But as I said it’s a really bittersweet feeling as we have done so much work this season and people should leave feeling as if they have left their mark on this place. Multiple people from this season will also be here in the spring, so for some it’s only a short break from their time at ZA.
Until next week,
Claire
