Week 2, Fall 2023
Hey everyone it’s Claire (Ivey)!
This week has provided us with misty mornings and sunny afternoons, and it’s finally starting to feel a little bit more like fall. I can’t wait for the trees to start changing colors and pumpkins and apples and SO MUCH MORE! Can you tell fall is my favorite season?
On Monday, folks started off harvesting all the late summer/ early fall goodies; cucumbers, winter squash, zucchini, tomatoes, okra, green beans, and mushrooms. A walkthrough was also done to assess what we could send to market this week and how much. Orientation bled into this week as well, so there was a meeting on long term visioning where people talked about the overarching goals of this season! In the late afternoon I arrived and got settled back into the house and took some time to snuggle with our cats since I hadn’t seen them in almost 3 weeks!
On Tuesday, we started bright and early in the fog and everyone split off to do various tasks. First we all spent some time rooting strawberry plants. This means going into our strawberry patch and finding “runners” that are offshoots from the mother plant that have not rooted into the ground, once we find them we cut them off the main plant and put them in a pot mixed with soil, compost, peat, biochar, and sand. Soon we will have more strawberry plants than we know what to do with! After this some went to trellis the tomato plants and some turned the compost. At some point some yummy looking onions were harvested as well.
On Wednesday, the morning started with a meeting for folks who were interested in talking about what we will be doing for Rosh Hashana, which is this Friday and Saturday! Our usual harvest of green beans, okra, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and mushrooms was also carried out during this time. Our Bayit (house) beds were weeded by Amy and while Gavi and Margalit did a mushroom inoculation. On Wednesdays from 9-11 a.m. we are at the Sheldon food pantry. This week I got to go and give out produce and have some awesome conversations.
On Thursday, we started with a push from everyone to mulch the east shelterbelt where a ton of our baby (now more like adolescent) trees live. At first we focused on the pine and american arborvitae which are in mesh steel cages, so we had to undo each of those (rough on the fingers) then mulch them, and put the cages back. Once we were done with that we moved on to all the other trees (our paw paws, chestnuts, hazelnuts, pecans, and serviceberries) and tucked each one of them into a little bed of mulch and a kiss goodnight (okay maybe not that last part). We also weeded around the sweet potatoes which was much needed, and rooted even more strawberries. In the late afternoon we started flipping one of our vegetable beds which uncovered many rogue onions that we later used in dinner.
On Friday, we had a half day! Yay! We wanted to have ample time to prepare for the first night of Rosh Hashanah so we ended the day after lunch. In the morning we harvested all the usuals plus eggplants and shishito peppers, did some more tomato trellising, cleaned out our mushroom tents, and did some spreadsheet work to keep our harvest log data nice and organized.
All in all it was an awesome and packed week! We got a ton of things done and now we are looking forward to a lovely Rosh Hashana and getting some rest for the week ahead of us.
See you next week!
-Claire
