Week 3, Summer 2024
Welcome to week 3 of summer! This is Hedy taking over for Ayden (though that’s not to say there won’t be special guest contributors soon…perhaps they’ll be human, perhaps they’ll have fur or feathers) and certainly feeling like I have big shoes to fill — but Ayden I know you’re reading this, so I hope I’m making you proud.
Friday was a frenzy of setting up, cooking, cleaning, harvesting, and making flower bouquets out of bay lilies, motherwort, and flowers from bolted cabbage and radishes for hosting Chicago-based group Higaleh Nah for the Shabbaton this weekend. Higaleh Nah led services in the evening, and for many ZA members, singing together in a large group of people with such incredible energy was a rejuvenating change of pace. Phoebe did, however, decide it was a good idea to catch and play with a mouse before proceeding to eat it in front of the entire group — I guess she just never learned that it’s not okay to play with your food.
(Phoebe also accompanied Yonah and me while we were cleaning out the shed, and emerged from underneath a tarp completely covered in cobwebs. I don’t know how long they stayed on her head for.)
Shabbos day was a day of building community, music, and skill sharing through workshops led by members of Higaleh Nah, including a one-day Klezmer band, Yiddish 101, tincture-making, and a Klezmer dance party and bonfire to close out the night. This weekend was certainly a music-filled one, and when I went for a sunset walk on Saturday, the neighbor’s cow down the street seemed a little bit confused about the various sounds filling the typical unbroken quiet of the rural Midwest.
Sunday was a peaceful and relaxing one as we said goodbye to our guests for the weekend, and took the day to recharge before the week of work ahead. The cohort watched movies, picked berries, called family and friends, and just chatted in the living room. I know Ayden liked to write a lot about the meals we make in the farm journal, but truly all I remember from this week was just the various transformations of leftover cabbage, lettuce, potatoes, and bean soup. Before coming here, I truly never thought there could be leftovers cooking for such a large group of people, but alas, I have been proven wrong. In the evening, we began the process of saying goodbye to Ayden with some Oscar-deserving home video screenings, a discussion about idols, and some singing late into the night in the silo.
On Monday, it was back to work as we broke off to harvest some delicious snow and snap peas, and then mulched the rest of goat garden all the while contending with the brutal midwestern heat. We said goodbye to Ayden after lunch and the sky shed some tears :( In the afternoon, the others broke off to do some other farm tasks while Zoë and I began our quest of dealing with the fungus gnats in the mushroom tents and reorganizing the buckets. I truly think the mushrooms were so incredibly distressed by Ayden’s departure that they got all weird. For dinner, Zoë made an incredible mushroom lentil cabbage soup, and I made some spring rolls with mushrooms and snap peas freshly harvested earlier that day, along with — you guessed it — leftovers. Later that evening, some folks decided to go for a sunset walk only to be confronted by an escaped bull and a calf bellowing up and down the street (seriously, that’s the best way to describe the noises emanating from the bull). Thus began a journey of getting them back into their pastures, with Phoebe sitting on the side watching the drama the whole way back.
On Tuesday, we finished up mulching in goat and passed the time singing silly songs about escaped bulls only to look up and see him glaring at us through the fence, discussing what we’re going to bring along with us on our ZA picnic, and reaching into the wheelbarrow to grab some hay only to realize that the very thick piece of hay that was moving was not in fact hay, but a very alarmed snake. Then some of us transplanted some squash and onion plants in goat, while others began prepping some new OHT beds where we learned the humbling and exhausting art of broadforking. According to Eric, it’s a task on par with running with a backpack on in terms of how graceful one can look doing it, and I wholeheartedly agree. We probably had some more leftovers for dinner, and then we rounded out the day with a beautiful sunset walk accompanied by Phoebe.
Wednesday was our IPM day — some might know it as integrated pest management and the various methods of cultural, biological, and chemical control, or for Zoë and me this week, perhaps “integrated phly management” would be more accurate. After an IPM orientation and a discussion of what we might do with our jar of freshly harvested Colorado potato beetles and slugs (one-ingredient popping boba, anyone?), we broke off to do various farm tasks again, which included harvesting some basil that Gavi made into an incredible pesto for lunch, continuing to prepare the OHT beds, delivering mushrooms and other produce, and more. We harvested the first batch of shiitake mushrooms, and Wednesday was also the day that we FINALLY finished the leftovers from the Shabbaton — greatly aided by Yonah’s clever integration of a ridiculous amount of the frisée lettuce from the salad into a soup.
On Thursday, Zoë and I tackled a tent and bucket clean in the morning and inoculation in the afternoon (PoHus!) while the others were out by the high tunnel installing drip and an electric fence. In the afternoon, we had our first Context Conversation about hospitality led by Patricia, which ignited thought-provoking conversation about how our upbringings shape our perspectives on hospitality and what it means to be a good guest or host, how hosting differs from solidarity or accompaniment, and how we can be intentional about hosting as a community at ZA, especially with the various exciting events coming up later this season. The chickens also finally learned that perhaps the outdoors is an interesting place with many delicious things to eat, although it is absolutely hysterical to watch them stumble out because their ramp works a little bit more like a slide. For dinner, we returned to the forbidden rice noodles with some delicious Vietnamese rice noodle bowls cooked by Eric and Acacia, featuring garlic scapes, chives, and fresh basil and snap peas from the gardens.
The season is certainly starting to heat up, and so are we — stay tuned to hear about our adventures to the Indiana dunes this weekend, some amazing kimchi we’re hoping to make with our abundance of napa cabbage, and the adventures of our furry friends.
