Week 9, Fall ‘20
By Remi Welbel
It’s our ninth week here and we are mitigating climate change with biochar while mitigating election anxiety with sunset hay rides.
One last time, I want to thank everyone so much for supporting us and buying tickets to the BOOST 2020 Midwest’s Emerging Entrepreneurs in Sustainability event! We cannot express how grateful we are for the support. On November 10th at 6:00pm, the BOOST finalists’ video pitches will debut followed by the Debut Night Talkback. Between November 10th to November 15th, you’ll be able to cast your vote for us at https://delta-institute.org/event/boost-2020/
On Monday, we huddled together in the living room for a team meeting to plan our week. We scheduled our biochar burns for the foreseeable future and determined the feedstock of each burn (wood, corn stover, or hazelnut shells). We do not have mature trees producing hazelnuts yet, but are using hazelnut shells from a farm in Wisconsin so that we can include the data in our biochar research. Next week will be our first hazelnut burn. In addition to conducting research on soil fertility and carbon capture, Claire’s research focuses on biochar’s water retention ability and its potential applications to wildfire mitigations. After our team meeting, we collected sticks for our Tuesday burn, activated the biochar from last week, and mixed more soil. In the evening, Johnny kindly took us on a sunset hayride. We all needed it! The sunset was gorgeous and it was wonderful to take a break from everything and just enjoy being together.
For dinner, Julia and Gavi made a lentil dish and cucumber salad.
On Tuesday, we interspersed phone banking with a biochar burn. It was a cathartic burn and phone banking eased a small amount of pre-election night anxiety. After calling it a day early, we huddled around the TV and nervously watched Steve Kornacki draw on the electoral college map until late into the night. At one point we had two screens going, one of MSNBC on mute and the other of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. As election evenings go, it could have been worse.
For dinner, Sophie and Samm made chili, tempeh, and guacamole.
On Wednesday, we woke up, collected corn stover (the leaves and stalk), and began a second biochar burn. This was our first corn stover burn and it was fascinating to see how it differed from our usual wood. In our research, we are investigating multiple types of biochar feedstock so that it can be widely implemented. If we, alongside other researchers, find that corn stover produces quality biochar, it would provide the impetus for farmers who have abundant corn stover - that otherwise would get spread over or tilled into the soil - to turn their stover into biochar that could be used in place of fertilizer while sequestering vast amounts of carbon. After our burn, we continued planning for our spring cohort of apprentices and organized an informational event for interested folks to attend. We will be hosting a zoom session on November 13th at 6pm CST! More information to come!
For dinner, Claire and I made a zucchini quinoa dish, baked miso tofu, and thinly sliced roasted potatoes.
On Thursday, once again, we returned to collecting sticks and initiated our usual Ash wood burn! Additionally, we began planning our mushroom cultivation. We will be harvesting logs from the woods next week so we can begin inoculating them with shiitake mushrooms. For mushroom cultivation, it is best to collect logs in the fall because it is when the sap in the tree is richest.
For dinner, Max and Claire made chickpea curry, rice, salad, and sautéed zucchini.
On Friday, we did a fourth biochar burn! It’s been a week filled with stick and stover collecting and kiln burning. We’ve been really focused on making high quality, research grade biochar so that we are able to send in our samples to the lab and get useful results. Because plastic can contaminate our biochar samples, we store and send them in glass jars. Fortunately, we have an abundance of empty Bubbie’s Sauerkraut jars. In the evening, we watched Biggest Little Farm and had a discussion about the differences between our experience and the folks in the documentary. Overall, it was an impactful documentary and it made us feel hopeful about our dreams for this little farm.
For dinner, Gavi and I made challah, lentil soup, sautéed veggies, roasted beet, and roasted sweet potatoes.
After dinner, we opened our fill jars and simply enjoyed spending some time together. It has been quite the week and I am so grateful to be living with all of the wonderful folks in this house.