Week 6, Summer 2023
Hey all! 👋 This is Malia, back at it with this week's Farm Journal!
We have not one but TWO additional house guests with us! First, the wonderful and fabulous Patricia, who has been with ZA since summer 2021 and now is serving on the alumni board (AND as our resident meme maker), and second, one of our summer 2023 apprentices Zoe, who just returned from a family vacation in Maine and who we have missed SO much! We are so excited to have them both back at ZA! 🥰 Now for some farmlife updates:
This week’s theme in 3 words: weedin’ and mulchin’. It seems that after a few good rain episodes, the plants have collectively decided to shoot up right from the ground and have captured all of our attention. We’ve spent most of this week across our garden beds weeding out grasses and various weeds, as well as transplanting and thinning new plant babies (blueberries, cucumbers, fennel, green beans, snap peas, and cabbage!) Some of our garden beds are feeling extra fancy after a new coat of hazelnut shell mulch — blueberries I’m looking at you. 🫐
The Battle of the Beetles has also increased in fervor.Japanese Beetles are infamous for disturbing our perennial crops and accumulate in large numbers (leaving perennial leaves fully eaten), so we’ve increased our effort to combat these pests (congrats & condolences to those this week who joined the fight). Speaking of our perennials, Acacia and Malia (now the power tools queens) have powered through ATR — see what I did there? -— to clear away super long grass and plants. This lets us go in and mulch the trees with recycled cardboard, hay, and some rockwool basalt. Rockwool is a rock-based mineral fiber insulation composed of Basalt rock and Recycled Slag. Basalt is a volcanic rock, and slag is a by-product of the steel industry. The minerals are melted and spun into fibers, and are used widely as a substrate for a variety of crops at different stages of growth! Rockwool has high porosity, so it's ideal for plant roots.
The Summer 2023 cohort inoculated several log piles with shiitake spawn, which have been slowly fruiting over the last ~6 months. We soaked the logs to induce a flush next week (when lots of mushrooms will fruit)! Fingers crossed we have lots of mushrooms to show off on Field Day. 🤞 A few weeks ago we also started diverting spent mushroom substrate to a new outdoor bed, which has been *thriving* with the scattered rainstorms. We found several mushroom strains (all the kinds we grow downstairs) on the mat, and they’re super tasty!
We have also been busy with new infrastructure projects this week such as sprucing up our signage for the gardens (shoutout to Miriam!), fixing the Miracle fence, brainstorming new tactics for our composting system, establishing a new aerated manure pile, and painting our new outhouse (with *high* potent for a future mural). We hold weekly context conversations where cohort members can present a topic they feel is related to their experiences here at ZA and their identity. This week, Malia merged apprentice education & best farming practices by presenting a conversation on microplastics in agricultural soil. We discussed how to critically think about our contribution to this ongoing environmental issue.
We’ve had a handful of fun adventures this week. On Wednesday, some of us took a trip out to the Newton County Fair for some delicious funnel cake and front-row seats to the county beauty pageant. Nadav got his chef on and concocted a delicious banana, oreo, and elderberry ice-cream (I know, what a flavor combo!); Lev recreated fried oreos (bringing the fair to those who didn’t get a chance to go); and I myself brewed some homemade Red Clover and Mint tea, which I have heard is good for acid reflux. On Thursday we ventured out to the Sheldon Library to grab some good reads; On the farm this week, people are reading about Queen Elizabeth, Judaism in America, 20th-century autobiographies, sociological experiments of collective parenting, and much more! (Stay tuned for a more in-depth update on the ZA instagram about what people are reading each week!)
The cohort each season is paired up with a Hevruta partner (a study/learning buddy) to reflect on the summer and make sure we’re feeling supported during our season. Patricia has been holding “Weeding & Reflecting” sessions in the strawberry patch, and we’ve all been grateful for Patricia making the space for our thoughts & feelings!
Biochar is a highly concentrated charcoal-like material (but highly distinct!) that we mix into our soil for transplanting. Claire started the burn using a special firepit (shaped like an inverse cone), raising the fire’s temperature between 800-1200 F and burning our extra wood without ash and little smoke. The cone shape & method of adding logs keeps the carbon from escaping the pit, making a carbon-rich material that’s highly porous and great for soil structure. It’s an awesome practice & we have SO many apprentices that would love to answer any questions you have about it!
Although we’ve been using straw bales to mulch our beds, we were looking for ways to reduce our costs per bed. We raked up loose straw, hay, and (soon) grass clippings to use across our beds. This project will be in conjunction with our new composting structure, and help us reduce our baling needs (a *huge* cost factor for our small farm operation).
Last week we began secret tasks, and they’ve been imbuing our daily life with some more pizazz! We had Daniel giving everyone nicknames (which we had NO idea about), Acacia asking people how they create space for fun, Malia creating slogans for people, and more absurdity that has become part of our everyday now. We’ll hear about people’s tasks from this week at Shabbat Dinner 😊🕯️🕯️
