Week 5, Spring ‘21
It’s our fifth week here and our emissions testing backpack may be heavy but our hearts are light.
On Monday, we took the work day off in celebration of Pesach. Together, we ventured to a nearby nature conservancy and walked through the sunshine. It was a beautiful, reflective day.
For dinner, Lilly made carrot salad; tahini, sweet potato, and kale salad; quinoa; and roasted chickpeas.
On Tuesday, we joined together for a quick All Hands Meeting and got to work! We set outside to cover our baby strawberries in straw to protect them from the oncoming cold nights and to harvest spinach from our raised bed. In the greenhouse, we got to work seeding more vegetables and thinning out the lettuce. Back inside, we poured over our research equipment manual to learn how to assemble and operate our emissions testing mass spectrometer. It looks like a backpack with a hardy shell, but do not be deceived. Inside, it contains specialized lasers that measures carbon dioxide, methane, and water emissions from the soil. Attached to the backpack is a big metal bowl that creates a flux chamber when placed on the ground. Once we felt comfortable operating the equipment, we set out to the fields to conduct our testing. While conducting emissions tests, we also took soil cores that we later used our microrhizones to dehydrate the samples and simultaneously collect analyzable water samples.
For dinner, Jesse and Hannah made quinoa, sweet potato, black bean chili and tahini dressed spinach salad.
On Wednesday, we gathered for a morning meeting to share our daily goals and create a plan for building several more raised beds and irrigating all of our crops! After dispersing, we alternated shifts tending to a biochar burn, taking research samples in the field, and raking our in-progress raised beds. Jesse, our agroforestry team lead, ensured that all of our tree orders were coming at the right time and planned when we will plant each of our species. We cannot wait to plant more trees! Our apple saplings are growing strong and we will begin planting our shelterbelt in the coming weeks. Now that our berry patch is ready for planting, we can plant our service berries, blackberries, and currants when the weather warms a bit.
In the evening, we had our context conversation and watched a recorded lecture from Carolyn Finney, a story teller, author, and cultural geographer who is currently a scholar in-residence at Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College as the Environmental Studies Professor of Practice. Her lecture focused on her book, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors.
For dinner, Gavi and Sophia made spaghetti squash with tomato sauce, salad, and quinoa with lentil stew.
On Thursday, we kicked off the day with a biochar burn! While we rotated tending to the fire, the rest of us worked on building our raised beds. After the biochar was fully charred, we quenched and activated, while the rest of us continued shoveling, raking, and hoeing away at the raised beds. It was a BIG outdoor work day for the ZA spring crew!
For dinner, Gavi and I made stir-fried black beans, quinoa, and roasted broccoli, carrots, and cabbage.
On Friday, we gathered around the table to map out all the outdoor work that needed to get done to prepare for spring planting! First, we set out to the field to take emissions tests with our flux chamber. Then we went on our watering rounds as we tended to the apple saplings, strawberries, and raised beds. While some of us worked on digging out raised beds, others bent PVC pipes to construct low tunnels on one of the newly created raised beds. Low tunnels allow us to cover our crops easily when temperatures drop and thereby extend the growing season. Before heading in for the day, we planted our rhubarb crowns. Rhubarb is a perennial that we can expect to pop up every spring for at least the next ten years!
For dinner, we had a Greek goddess themed Shabbat! Lilly and Hannah made greek salad, lemon potatoes, roasted asparagus, mushroom meatballs, tahini tzatziki, braised cabbage, and carrot and cabbage salad.
After dinner, we shared in our classic Oneg activity of reading our weekly “fill jar” notes.