Week 7, Spring 2023
Hello all! Remi, here.
Last week was a busy one, hence the belated Farm Journal coming your way today. Last weekend, we had a beautiful gathering of friends. Marya (fall ‘21, summer ‘22), our lab postgraduate researcher over at Yale, joined us for the past 2 weeks to conduct the Yale side of our soil sampling; then for the weekend we hosted Gavi coming in from New Haven; some of our alumni friends living in Chicago; Eric (fall ‘21) and Maranda (fall ‘21); as well as Ren, who is an old friend. It was such a joyful time with dancing, walking in the woods, and eating incredible food together.
In the Jewish calendar, we are in the time of counting the omer, which is a ritual counting leading up to the holiday of Shavuot, when the Jewish people received the Torah. Each week has a Kabalistic theme (sefirah) and last week’s sefira was gevurah, which means radical boundaries. We have been fortunate to be participating in a collective study group through the Jewish Institute for Spirituality. In this week’s reflective practice, we talked about the meaning of radical boundary setting in our community and in our lives as individuals. We also talked about how the practice of gevurah relates to the first week of the omer’s theme, chesed, meaning abundant kindness. We talked about how “celebrating boundaries,” a ZA classic for our community guidelines, and creating intentional boundaries in our own lives can be an enactment of generative kindness.
As we launched into the week, we continued on our soil sampling journey. We took soil samples in our fields and started to pH test our samples at our research bench in the shed to see how basalt changes soil composition. The weather cooled down significantly so we bundled up before heading out to the windy fields and dedicated some of our time to building our second mushroom grow tent in the basement. With lights, vents, buckets, and a homemade humidifier, our mushroom production is going strong! We are already harvesting beautiful oyster mushrooms of different colors and using them in tasty dishes for dinner. In the greenhouse, our seedlings are thriving and getting ready to be transplanted into the soil. Our tomato seedlings were outgrowing their seed blocks, so we transplanted them to some bigger pots. They are so happy having some more space to grow!
Outside the farmhouse, we have what we call our Bayit Beds (in Hebrew, Bayit means house). We worked on preparing those beds by weeding, adding compost, and raking the soil so it was level. Then we planted fava beans, cilantro, anise hyssop, lemon balm, tarragon, echinacea, and horseradish.
On Thursday, we were so excited to get to take our seasonal tour of Janie’s Mill, an organic flour mill in Ashkum, IL (https://www.janiesmill.com/). Janie’s Mill is deeply beloved by our community, and not only because we source our bulk flour from them to satisfy our love of bread baking. If you’re a baking enthusiast, highly recommend checking them out. Janie’s Mill is a collaboration between multigenerational farmers, Harold, Sandy, and Ross Wilkens, and the Brockman-Cummings family, whose land is farmed by the Wilkens and one of whom, Jill Brockman-Cummings, runs the flour mill. Janie’s Farm and Janie’s Mill were both named after and inspired by Harold and Sandy’s daughter, Janie, who passed away. We were so grateful to be taken on a tour by Sandy through the Mill where we got to see the grain grinding (milling), packaging, and storage of the many different grain products they create. We all had a wonderful time and were excited to bring some treats home with us, baked by Sandy.
On Friday, we wrapped up our tending and growing tasks for the week and closed our week with an amazing sunset (with a rainbow as a bonus!), lighting the Shabbat candles and enjoying a lovely dinner together.
Much love,
Remi
