Week 4, Summer 2024

Hi everyone! My name is Zoë and I will be helping to write the farm journal this week because Hedy is out of town for her birthday (whoohoo happy birthday Hedy!!) I just came inside from weeding in High Tunnel with Yonah, Ernest, and Luisa, where we came up with an exciting idea to write haikus for each day . Most of them were a collaboration between all of us with a couple other ones I threw in the mix - I will include those after I pick up where Hedy left off in her awesome entries:). 

Friday:

Friday morning kicked off with a farm walk and some weeding and mulching in ATR amidst the brutal midwestern heat that had us moving slower than the slugs on our potato plants. In the spirit of our IPM orientation earlier in the week plus weeks of carefully disguised yearning and “...what if?”, we rounded out the week with our first ever themed Shabbat: bug Shabbat. Acacia, Gavi, and Yonah cooked up an incredible meal of vegetarian sushi, an oatmeal bake with fresh-picked black raspberries and mulberries, and bug-shaped challahs (which, of course, featured a cicada. Another one found itself on our Shabbat candles). -Zoë here: some more detail on the cicada Hedy is referencing us that it was a part of a beautiful shrine that Acacia set up with the candles!- Over dinner, Patricia, whose brain was somehow not fried from writing her thesis for the whole week, started us on some bug riddling. See if you can figure this one out (the answer will be at the bottom of this entry): With those who stay grounded / I find myself in company. / That weasel in that old folk song / Has a lot in common with me. Who am I?  

Shoutout Acacia and Gavi for their awesome challah collab

Shabbos day:

Saturday was a day of rest and rejuvenation, with folks catching up with friends and family back home, making music and art, taking naps, and otherwise finding space for leisure and restoration after a long and hot week of work. I would also like to note at this point that Phoebe and Nooch (well, mostly Phoebe) found themselves in a panic upon realizing that Eric had left for the weekend to visit family, and kept meowing mournfully at the door. We concluded Shabbat with Havdalah out on the front steps, which eventually somehow evolved into us singing a soulful and slam poetic rendition of “Lost Boy” by Ruth B. -Zoë here again: Before Lost Boy, we sang Puff the Magic Dragon. I have to admit that this was my idea, and I don’t know how I didn’t realize before we were all singing together, but the lyrics are REALLY sad. Naturally we had to end on a brighter note (Lost Boy). Throughout the week I am happy to report that the song has maintained its presence on the farm, and I imagine some sort of piano rendition in our near future (credit to Patricia for her Lost Boy -and general- piano skills).

Sunday:

On Sunday, we had our first field trip out to the Indiana Dunes and Lake Michigan! For many of us, this was our first time seeing and swimming in a Great Lake, and personally I was surprised at how beach-like it was — if you had told me that you had actually made a wrong turn and taken me to the Jersey Shore instead, I probably would have believed you. We took dips in the water, ran up and down the sand dunes, and munched on some sassafras leaves. Despite some parking mishaps (it seems like the heat wave of this week brought the entire states of Illinois and Indiana to the beach), it was a lovely time being by the water and exploring new places.

Monday:

Monday entailed a rather hectic day of learning as we harvested and packed our first order for Down at the Farms! In the morning, we harvested and washed some more snow and snap peas for the house, puzzled over when fava beans were ready to be harvested, and harvested and washed frisée lettuce, fennel, and chicory greens. In the afternoon, Patricia introduced us to the concept of “Type 3 fun” — something that’s so clean that it’s not fun (as opposed to something like Type 2 fun, where something is so dirty/difficult/tedious that it is immediately fun), which, in my humble opinion, is a characteristic we might attribute to cleaning and packing frisée lettuce. Don’t be fooled — frisée lettuce might be fun to eat and pretty to look at, but boy is it difficult to clean. Despite the longer day, the heat, and the audacity of the frisée, Monday was a successful day of distribution, learning, and supporting each other through some of the more challenging moments of the day. Also, the pink oyster mushrooms we inoculated earlier in June started to pin!

(Ok, now this is Zoë for the rest! This is where the haikus come into play, so prepare yourself…)

First time packing, yay!

What abundant frisee, hey?

We love to harvest

Racoons and possums

Chickens up in a basket

Move them one by one

(Don’t worry, the chickens are okay…)

Tuesday  

Caught in the lightning 

Counting the seconds away

Rainstorm so cozy 

A bit more information about this day: some of the main projects we were working on on Tuesday were weeding and mulching in ATR, and shifting around some beams in High Tunnel to accommodate trellises for the quickly growing tomato plants! I have heard so much about the summer abundance of tomatoes at ZA and am so excited to see for myself.

Wednesday

Safe travels Hedy 

Evening dancing, oh what fun!

Nooch came along too, me-ow

Wednesday we also seeded root crops, squash and cucumbers and transplanted peppers and eggplants in ATR

Beautiful sunset on the way to evening dance.

Pea harvest!

Thursday

Beautiful squash

(So this next haiku is adding a personal touch, along with the general excitement for Luisa and Ella’s arrival that we all share, I am also EAGERLY anticipating an Adrianne Lenker concert with Yonah this weekend. Many other people have exciting weekend plans as well such as visiting friends, a wedding, and settling in!)

Anticipation

New friends, weekend trips ahead

Adrianne Lenker 

Abundant fennel

Records spinning round and round

Welcomed new fellows!

I want to add some detail to the last line of this haiku! We got to welcome Luisa and Ella which was so exciting. Ella didn’t stay for long but we can’t wait for her return on Sunday. It has been so much fun to welcome new people into our cohort and such exciting plans are already emerging- keep an eye out for a farm band! 

With that exciting news I will wrap things up. It has been so much fun to write part of this week's journal! I hope everyone has an awesome week and check back in next week for another update:)

ANSWER TO RIDDLE:

Colorado Potato Beetles