Week 2, Summer ‘21
Just as our lettuce is abundant and ever-growing, so are the connections we’re making within our community.
An exciting announcement for this week's journal-- our final summer cohort member arrived! We’re thrilled to introduce...
Zaria Howell (she/they), is from Pocono Mountains, PA, and just graduated from Northwestern with a B.A. in Journalism. Zaria is planning on furthering her studies at Columbia, where she will pursue a Masters in Social Work. On the farm, they are in charge of the Bayit Beds, and when indoors works as the farm’s Market Coordinator. When she’s not writing about environmental justice, she can be found reading a good book, sitting in the sun, or drinking lemonade.
Although it's only our second week, we had heaps to do!
On Monday, we of course started with our hour-long team meeting (which are our Monday morning staples-- without them we’d be more chaotic than we already are). The meeting confirmed that this summer will be no walk in the park. We planned to start on a wash station that would help us efficiently wash and distribute all of our harvests. We also determined that harvesting was a top priority; from radishes, to lettuce, to turnips, to bok choy, to spinach-- most things were ready to go, which made the coming days very busy. We also decided to transplant peppers and eggplants that we had been nursing in the greenhouse in the available rows. After the meeting, we immediately got out into the field and started on some planting and research.
We may have let the weeds in the strawberry patch get a little too comfortable, and began with weeding our strawberry patch (which we later realized would be a weeklong task). That morning we also transplanted eggplants Across the Road, and began clearing out a good bit of greens that needed to be picked.
And no ZA day would be complete without a little research! After lunch we all talked to Gavi’s research advisor, Noah, who told us more about the research we’re doing here on the farm, and the greater impact it has in reducing the impacts of climate change. We also had the honor to be visited by former apprentices Lilly and Julia, who had so much to share with us! Lilly taught Sophie, Patricia, and Joey how to pull rhizones from soil data, and Julia and Gavi made change at the Our Planet Our Purpose Changemaker Summit over Zoom.
We finished the day off with a culinary trip to India in which Gavi and Grace cooked red lentil dahl, spinach palak paneer, and scallion pancakes with arugula instead of scallions.
On Tuesday, we began with even more research. Hannah led a pH and soil core tutorial for the ATR and Goat Garden managers using what she has branded the “Kahn-Glass method” for the most efficient way to complete data collection. Lilly continued onto part two of the research lesson, following up the rhizone pulling with titrations which lasted about all day. Meanwhile Gavi fluxed in the field. Tuomas and Stephanie finished setting up the drip irrigation in Goat Garden. We now have drip lines across the whole farm (excluding Bayit Beds in our backyard which we tend to by hand)!
In the afternoon, Joey continued building the strawberry fence with wooden posts and chicken wire. Gavi planted concord grape vines near our shed, while also mulching our fig trees and meeting with the youth change makers of today. Jesse sprayed Goat Garden with BT for pest control, and everyone else continued with farm maintenance, harvesting, and research collection.
We finished the day off with a lightly Asian inspired meal of rice noodles w/ bok choy, tofu, cucumber/orange salad cooked by Patricia and Joey.
On Wednesday, we realized our harvests were getting bulkier and more time sensitive, so Stephanie looked into national health and safety guidelines for harvesting methods that we implemented with the start of food distribution. In addition to preparing for widespread distribution (at the farmers market, the food bank, to family and friends, etc.), JR and Gavi hosted a visit for a crop insurance agent so we can be ready when our gardens produce enough to feed the masses! Joey continued working on the fence, putting up tension wire around the strawberry patch to keep critters out. Other apprentices mulched, weeded, and harvested around the garden. Hannah and Steph worked on activating our biochar that had been burned the week before.
At lunch we had a great Context Conversation led by Patricia and Eric on nativist language, the sociology of science, and our relationships to nature and our surroundings. That afternoon, Sophie led veggie washing and box prepping, in order to have food ready to donate to the local food bank on Thursday. Anticipating a visit from biochar expert Paul Anderson on Thursday, Patricia weighed around 300 kg of wood for our upcoming biochar burn.
We finished the day off with a meal made by Tuomas and Joey. They cooked warming chili, TVP, cornbread, and plain, undressed lettuce, which ended in a brief debate about the benefits and drawbacks that lettuce has on the world.
On Thursday, we gathered wood to prepare for a visit from biochar legend, Paul Anderson. Paul is a retired professor from Illinois State University who has worked with Chip energy to develop biochar kilns. Paul led a demonstration on Rotatable Covered Cavity Kilns. It was exciting to speak to a biochar expert and learn about this new kiln design aimed at increasing access to biochar for small and medium scale farmers. While Paul burned biochar with Stephanie, Gavi, Patricia, and Jesse the rest of the group stayed busy with planting and farm maintenance. Hannah and Grace planted peppers ATR (Across the Road) and then moved on to harvest lettuce, turnips, and golden beets in Miracle Garden. After days of hard work, Joey completed the strawberry fence! Now our strawberries can grow safe and sound! The rest of the group worked on weeding Goat Garden, which has an endless supply of weeds to keep us busy!
In the afternoon, Tuomas, Patricia and Eric had a vision meeting for our policy committee where they planted the seeds for exciting new projects such as weekly political action power hours and preparing for the visit from our State Representative Tom Bennett. Joey and Jesse worked on chainsawing wood for our shiitake mushroom inoculation. The rest of the team worked on harvesting and washing pounds and pounds of lettuce. We sold our beautiful romaine lettuce to Kopi a beloved cafe in Chicago. We were so excited to make our first sale as Zumwalt Acres! We gave a few boxes of lettuce to our neighbors and donated the remainder to The Bread Basket Food Pantry in Watseka. They were so excited to get boxes of romaine and speckled lettuce straight from our garden!
We finished the day off with a diverse meal of veggie fried rice, fruit salad, roasted radishes, and baked tofu cooked by Stephanie and Grace.
On Friday, Hannah and Sophie started the day getting in touch with the earth (and listening to iconic DCOM soundtracks) by planting eggplants and peppers in Miracle Garden. While that was happening, Grace, Eric, and Patricia finished up trellising the cucumbers in Goat Garden. At the same time, Jesse was working out the kinks of future mushroom growth here at ZA.
In the latter half of the day Hannah took the pH of our Perennial Patch, and Jesse and Joey continued mapping mushroom methods. Because we wanted to have ample time to observe Shabbat, we got all hands on deck for finishing harvesting the remaining veggies that were ready to go, and (of course) weeding as necessary, so we would be able to have a lovely dinner as we always do.
We finished the day off with a beautiful shabbat dinner featuring challah (of course), falafel, salad with tahini dressing, sauteed greens, kale tomato soup, golden beets and red beets with mint, and a big bowl of hummus cooked by Gavi and Hannah.
