Week 12, Spring ‘21
It’s our twelfth week here and we are feeling a little tearful like the drizzling rain as we prepare to part ways.
On Sunday, we decided to shift our work week to get seeds and seedlings in the ground before the rain on Monday! We tilled and raked more beds across the road, weighed and spread basalt on each research bed, transplanted the rest of the tomato plants and the thornless blackberries, and seeded cucumbers, squash, bush beans, and annual flowers. Then we continued our tree tubing endeavors, tubing the blackberries, elderberries, Aronia berries, and more of our saplings. It was a full day of planting and protecting!
For dinner, Tuomas made lentil stew and salad.
On Monday, we took the rainy day off, relishing our last day with Brendan and Sophia.
For dinner, Shachar and Gavi made pesto and squash flatbread, lentil soup, and salad.
On Tuesday morning, we sent off Brendan and Sophia on their next adventures! We were so sad to part ways but so grateful to have spent such an amazing three months together. After many hugs and goodbyes, the rest of us came together for our All Hands Meeting. We planned our full week ahead and got to work! We fluxed in the hay test plots, weeded and cleaned up our greenhouse beds, planted the three sisters (corn, squash, and beans), planted zucchini, and got more sawdust for our Blue Oyster mushroom cultivation.
For dinner, Hannah and Jesse made chili, rice, and salad.
On Wednesday, the rainy weather urged us to do our “indoor work.” We finished editing and updating our Work Handbooks, we prepared for the arrival of our new cohort of summer apprentices in the coming weeks, we organized our many research spreadsheets, and we caught up on our financial accounting and planning. In the afternoon, we worked on researching the state guidelines for biochar distribution. We are hoping to scale up our biochar production so that we may sell biochar compost mixes to people in the local region and in Chicago. Recently, the Chicago Botanic Gardens reached out to us because they are interested in purchasing biochar from us.
On Thursday, we had a brief team meeting before heading out to make our watering rounds and start soil coring in the fields. Then we prepared several beds across the road for blackberry planting. After hoeing and raking, we planted and tree tubed 40 thornless blackberries and prepared the area surrounding them for direct seeding squash. In the beds furthest East across the road, we weighed out the basalt that we’ll spread before transplanting kale. In the Gan Ha’Ezim, we finished transplanting any remaining cucumbers. Later in the day, we began planting the three sisters, corn, squash, and beans, in one of the beds near the house. The three sisters have a rich, long history in multiple Native American tribes. You can learn more about the history of the three sisters here, and read about their meaning as described by Robin Wall Kimmerer in an excerpt from her novel Braiding Sweetgrass. Into the night, Lilly and I prepared to cultivate our blue oyster mushrooms. In a large sterilized tub, we mixed water, sawdust, and soybean hulls that are a waste product from the Chicago tofu producer Phoenix Bean. Then we distributed the mixture into eight autoclave mushroom bags and pressure sterilized each of them in the Instant Pot for two hours.
When we weren't preparing the mushrooms, Lilly and I made a daikon-themed “everything but the kitchen sink” dinner. We made roasted daikons, spinach and bok choy salad, and rice.
On Friday, we began the day by measuring the pH of our soil water samples and conducting alkalinity titrations. Meanwhile, others took pH samples in the strawberry test plots and made watering rounds. In the afternoon, we dug out trenches for our asparagus seedlings that were bursting from their little pots. For our horticultural research, we used differing soil mixes of basalt, biochar, manure, and soil for our asparagus. After all eight mushroom bags were autoclaved, Lilly and I sterilized our outdoor table and began weighing out grain spawn to inoculate our mushroom bags. After sealing each of the bags, we placed them all back in their big tub and let them be. In a few weeks, we will cut slits in the bags so that the mushrooms can fruit from them. After a full week, we got ready for Shabbat.
For Shabbat dinner, Shachar and Hannah made bok choy salad, spinach and quinoa salad, Moroccan lentil soup, sauteed cabbage, lemon potatoes, and challah.
On Saturday, Shachar left the farm to head off on her next adventure! We were so sad to part ways but so grateful to have such an incredible person in our community. We can’t wait to all meet up again soon.