Week 9, Fall 2023
Hi everyone! Here’s what we’ve been up to out in Sheldon.
Last weekend was quiet in the house, as Amy went to Saint Louis and Margalit visited a friend at Oberlin. On Saturday, Gavi led some of us in a discussion about homelands, places we’ve called home, and our relationships with Israel. We used this worksheet from Linke Fligel to frame our discussion and read some excerpts from the book “The Color of Jews,” by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz. On Sunday, some of us went to Iroquois Cafe for breakfast, some of us went through a corn maze and got pumpkins, and some of us hung out at the house and walked through the woods.
Monday morning, we jumped back into the sampling grind, urgently trying to get as much done before the ground freezes. We also packed up our Down at the Farm order per usual. In the evening, many of us watched the film Israelism, which explored the changing relationship of American Jews towards Israel. The film discussed how fostering a strong connection with Israel from a young age is part of many Jewish spaces and highlighted two American Jews whose personal experiences in Israel drastically changed their perceptions of Israel from wholly positive to more critical.
After the film, Gavi, Acacia, and Sophie stayed up late finishing up a grant that would mean funding salaries for Eric and Acacia as farm managers to help ZA’s long term planning (fingers crossed!)
Tuesday was our coldest day yet, hovering between 25 and 32 degrees. While Sophie, Claire Pryor and Martina were turning beds in Goat and Amy went to drop off the DAF order, we thought ash was blowing in from our burn pile, but it turned out it was snow! In the afternoon, Margalit, Gavi, and Martina went out to sample, but after 3 points out of 20, it started snowing again and the wind was crazy, so we pushed that to a later time. In the evening, we cooked up a Samhain (Halloween) feast of butternut squash pumpkin soup, barley, cornbread, and a fall salad with roasted beets, cranberries, and pepitas. We also had a visitor, Steve Schwartz, who has an alpaca farm in Sebastopol, CA. It was so lovely having a guest and having an extra hand to carve pumpkins!
We ushered in the first day of November by finishing turning the beds in Goat! They are weeded, reshaped, composted, and officially ready for the mulch to put them to sleep for the winter. Claire Pryor went to the food pantry, and then joined Sophie for a much needed compost turn (got to keep the microbes warm and happy). Lexi and Claire Ivey continued sampling, while Amy harvested the last of our colorful corn and broad beans and made nasturtium chips.
Thursday was the day for the high tunnel that we have been preparing for and anxiously awaiting. Thanks to JR and the tractor, the first end piece of the high tunnel went up! There is definitely light at the end of the (high) tunnel. Ivey continued soil sampling with the help of Sophie, Lexi, Claire Pryor, and Martina, Amy continued turning Bayit, seed saving flowers for next season, and drying the last of our herbs including bee balm (monarda), mint, calendula flowers, motherwort, and anise hyssop, and Acacia worked on a SARE grant.
Friday shockingly entailed more sampling, more work on the high tunnel, and more turning beds (this time in Miracle!) Another development on the farm is a new fence around Miracle to keep the deer out and our baby trees safe and standing. We closed out the day by beginning a conversation about the Israel-Hamas War from an organizational standpoint, having engaged with this issue deeply on a personal level for the past month. As an organization that focuses on American food and agriculture systems and building Jewish communities in the diaspora, we have not yet explored extensively what our organization’s relationship to this issue is. With the recent eruption of violence, it seems more pressing that we think through how ZA represents the voices of its members both internally and externally.
On Saturday, it was another quiet day in the house. Claire Ivey went home for the weekend, and Acacia and Sophie went to an event about scaling up an organic farm. Amy foraged for dwarf mallow (also known as cheeseweed) to be added into chickpea masala for dinner. Gavi, Margalit, Claire Pryor, and Martina took a walk through the woods to the river; the trees have changed so fast!
On Sunday, Gavi led some of us in a dance/improv exercise where we shook to music for a whole hour and six minutes. After that, Amy, Sophie, Claire Pryor, and Martina went to West Lafayette where we explored Purdue’s campus, got bubble tea (it’s been too long!) and Mexican food, stopped in an Asian supermarket, and strolled along the river.
Thanks for reading, catch us next week!
