Week 7, Fall 2022
Hello, it’s Ayden, and welcome back to the farm journal!
We started this week processing some of our seemingly never-ending tomatoes. We’ve been trying to save as much produce as we can from being wasted so we’ve been getting creative with freezing, saucing, canning, and even dehydrating the tomatoes. Later Lexi and I prepped some water for another mushroom inoculation and de-seeded one of our qishu’im for seed saving. For lunch Mira made good use of our tomatoes in a pico de gallo and we got to sit down for our first meal in our Sukkah! In the afternoon we packed our order for Marty which came in at a whopping 125 pounds, 50 of which were butternut squash. For dinner Stephanie made quinoa with some of our pepper and radish which we enjoyed in the Sukkah once again.
Spending time in the Sukkah is an important part of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. This holiday marks one of 3 harvest holidays when the Jewish people would make pilgrimages to the Temple in Jerusalem to offer up their produce. It is customary to build a Sukkah, a type of temporary dwelling, just like our ancestors might have stayed in on their way to the Temple or during the peak of harvesting. This holiday is especially significant to us at ZA because it gives us a great opportunity to appreciate the rich history of Jewish stewardship practices. Not to mention that we get to embody the spirit of the holiday and really appreciate the bounty of our own harvest.
On Tuesday morning we washed some buckets and used them to inoculate some more oyster mushrooms. For lunch I made sesame peanut noodles with some of our kale and the recently foraged hen of the woods mushrooms. In the afternoon I packed some produce to bring to the food pantry and Stephanie and Mira did some cleaning in our big fridge that holds our produce. For dinner Mira made a lentil stew with rice and some oyster mushrooms Lexi had harvested from one of our outdoor mushroom patches.
As usual, I spent Wednesday morning at the food pantry. Back at the farm Stephanie and Mira helped Lexi measure the growth of some of our young trees. These recordings are part of a grant that ZA has received to study how biochar will affect the growth of these trees. For lunch Mira made some congee, an Asian rice porridge, along with some of our eggplant and chard: a very cozy meal for the ever dropping temperatures here in Sheldon. In the afternoon we did some more weeding for our fall crops. In the evening Stephanie made some enchilada quinoa for dinner and we watched the film Everything Everywhere All at Once. One one level, it tells a story of a mother who must learn to travel through alternate dimensions to save humanity. But it touches on many other salient themes like racism, familial relationships and conflict, intergenerational trauma, patriarchy, misogyny, mental illness, free will vs. destiny, absurdism, and joy. It’s an incredible film and I would highly recommend giving it a watch if you’re able.
On Thursday we were once again joined by our friend Allison. In the morning we soaked some more logs inoculated with shiitake spawn to encourage them to fruit again. We were expecting another frost in the evening so we tried to pick as many peppers as possible. Stephanie also showed us how to harvest our radishes and beets that are just starting to come in. In the afternoon we collected as many tomatoes as possible and covered our tomato patch with a tarp once more to try to salvage as many of the plants as possible.
The impending doom of a frost can be worrisome for us farmers. We’ve spent months working so hard to ensure that our plants will thrive and we don’t want one cold evening to set back a season’s worth of growth and progress. However, this force of destruction is a natural part of our earth’s seasonal cycles. Sometimes, as hard as it can be, some things need to die to make room for new growth.
On Friday morning Mira and I measured some more trees, specifically hazelnut trees, with a little help from our barn cat, Shlomi. We then uncovered the tomatoes and harvested as many of them as possible as well as our Ukrainian peppers from our Valentine garden. For lunch Lexi made some delicious stir fry with some of our peppers, eggplant, and mushrooms. In the afternoon Lexi and I took out some soaking shiitake logs and put some more in to soak. We were even lucky enough to harvest some fresh shiitake mushrooms that fruited after an earlier soak! After a busy week of running around trying to brace ourselves and our crops for the cold, we were very grateful for the chance to rest this Shabbat.
On Shabbat Lexi made us some brunch which we enjoyed in the Sukkah. Although it was a little cold, it was nice and sunny and the Sukkah provided some relief from the wind. Eating all our meals in the Sukkah through the duration of Sukkot gave us a great opportunity to appreciate the connection between us, the land, and the food we eat. As someone who has spent most of my life in a big city, I often feel disconnected from the food that I eat. Spending Sukkot at ZA has been doubly meaningful to me because I get to celebrate the abundance that our earth provides us from a Jewish lens. On Sunday I went for a walk in the woods to enjoy the fall foliage and I was accompanied by our cats Shlomi and Phoebe, of their own volition to be clear. In an effort to preserve more of our tomatoes I also prepped some to be “sun-dried” in the dehydrator. All in all, we’re doing our very best to make sure we’re ready for a full transition into the fall season.