Week 4, Fall 2022
Welcome back to the farm journal!
We started off this week with our continued weeding efforts. As usual, we packed some produce to send to our distributor, mainly all varieties of tomatoes and peppers, and we have plenty of them! While walking through ATR we noticed a giant radish peeking through the soil and harvested it; it came in at a whopping 4 pounds! You can find some more pictures of this incredible radish on our Instagram @zumwaltacres. For dinner I (Ayden) prepared some Spanish rice using our very own tomato sauce and veggie broth.
On Tuesday the cohort got together for a meeting about our roles on the farm. Having conversations like these is what ZA is all about! It’s important to be able to have open lines of communication when we’re living and working in such close quarters together. We also have to be able to manage our own responsibilities on the farm and otherwise. It can be scary to take on a job like this, especially for me as someone with little hands-on agricultural experience. But after spending a month at ZA I am starting to feel more confident taking some initiative with the tasks I am familiar with, which can be very rewarding. Later in the day Mira and Stephanie packed some produce to take to the food pantry. Tuesday was quite a warm day (almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit!) so we went for a swim after work. On our way we stopped by a couple friends of JR’s who had apple trees we could pick from so we could enjoy the traditional fruit of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year.
On Wednesday morning I handed out produce at the food pantry then made some miso soup for lunch. In the afternoon I harvested some mushrooms and Mira set up the dust monitor with some guidance from Marya over facetime. Stephanie also brought over 50 pounds of tomatoes to the Watseka Bread Basket, another local food pantry. For dinner Mira made lentils (with our mushrooms and onions!) and a lovely salad with beets, jicama, apple, and feta.
On Thursday morning I prepared some straw for mushroom inoculation. This process involved soaking bags of straw in some biochar water and recording the pH. With Lexi gone for the week I decided to take charge on this week’s mushroom operations. Although I was a little worried I also felt proud after completing this task all by myself for the first time. After lunch Stephanie and I helped JR and his nephew load some hay into the barn with the help of the hay elevator. For dinner I made a curry with some of our swiss chard and tomatoes and some tofu.
Friday morning was busy with mushroom inoculation. We used pink oyster grain spawn and from the looks of last week’s batch these mushrooms will be just as beautiful and vibrant. First we took the straw out of the biochar water and washed some buckets that we then filled with layers of alternating mushroom spawn and soaked straw. JR worked on planting some switchgrass and Kernza, both perennial crops that will benefit our local ecosystem. In the afternoon we decompressed and began preparing for Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah.
Our weekend wasn’t super eventful. We relaxed during Shabbat and I caught up on some reading. While I was checking on the mushrooms I noticed that a bunch of the pink oyster mushrooms that Lexi inoculated had started pinning. I had to take out some of the older buckets of mushrooms to make way for new growth, which I felt was appropriate for the High Holiday season. On Sunday we packed and headed for Chicago to be able to attend Rosh Hashanah services in person for the first time since before the pandemic. Stay tuned to hear about our Rosh Hashanah experience in next week’s entry!
Image description: Giant radish held out in the sunlight
Image credit: Ayden Holzkenner
