Week 6, Spring 2023

Hey! What a week it has been. Wow wow wow. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous! The sun has been out in full force and it has been warm and sunny the whole week. Spring really feels like it is upon us. 

It has also been quite a busy week too! Marya came on Tuesday night which was super exciting and she brought so much fun and humor to ZA immediately! As our researcher working at Yale, she came to conduct soil research. A plan was devised to split the field into different plots to collect soil samples from. Everyone was thrilled by the opportunity to use the new soil augers which are much smaller and easier to use than the dreaded mallet augers (our backs thank us). In teams of two we got out into the field! We used our handy GPS to lead us to the correct spots and we got to soil coring. At some points it got really windy out there and many hats flew away- we chased right after them!

Marya and Lexi designed an amazing plan for research for the week. After all of the soil was gathered from the field we homogenized the soil samples. This meant crushing them so that there were no longer any large soil clumps, and separating the samples into bags to go to the University of Illinois and to Yale University. 

It was really an all-hands on deck type of week. While people went out into the field with the soil augers, others worked on bed prepping the Bayit beds, mulching in Miracle, and soil blocking and seed planting in the greenhouse. Many different kinds of basil were planted this week and the leeks are starting to pop up! 

The warm and lively week was brightened even more with some more exciting faces! Alison and Ren arrived at ZA Friday morning and were awesome in helping out all around. A little bit later Gavi and Grace showed up which was super fun! These four came with so much joy and it was amazing to work as a bigger group. Later that day a couple people went to a fish fry in Sheldon which was organized by the town firefighters and their initiative to raise money for cancer research. Then Eric finally came! The cats were ecstatic to see him. He was just in time for a lovely Shabbat dinner where we reflected on the crazy week we had. 

If you thought the fun was over you would be surely mistaken. We were met by Maranda Saturday morning and Marya made a super delicious egg sandwich for her. Later that day some people went on a little thrift adventure to Mary’s and some others went for a walk in the woods. Grace unfortunately had a little fall from a tree and there was a bit of a swollen ankle situation, rest assured we are taking great care of them. We all reconvened for an amazing dinner consisting of some homemade pasta made by Remi and Acacia that was wonderful and exactly what we all needed after the long week and packed weekend.

Until next time!!

-Felix