Week 4, Spring 2025
Spring update: It’s asparagus season! The patch next to the toolshed is full of shoots, and every morning brings new stalks that have shot up overnight. Spring magic.
OUR CHICKS ARE HATCHING! Nothing is more exciting than watching the eggs (kept warm and safe in the brooder) start to wiggle and shake, little cracks appear, and — next thing you know — a little puffball is wandering around the brooder! Cuteness beyond belief:
A long string of warm days this week made us realize that summer is really on its way, and spring planting has begun in earnest! Our days are full of seeding, potting up plants to give them more space to grow, hardening plants off, weeding and preparing beds, and planting. “Hardening off” is the process of gradually transitioning young plants from the greenhouse to life outdoors: first taking them outside for just a few hours each day, then leaving them outside the whole day but indoors at night, until they are eventually strong enough to stay outside full-time. We’ve been having beautiful sunny days but nights that regularly dip below freezing, which means daily trips back and forth taking the plants in and out of the greenhouse. This task is made more perilous by the cats, who are especially desperate to get inside the greenhouse when it’s close to their dinnertime, and who love to use the fragile seedlings as springboards.
Here is a ranking of farm characters most likely to be responsible for spilling flats:
Phoebe takes the top spot, no contest. I try to tell myself that she’s just looking around for her dinner when she sneaks into the greenhouse, but the number of flats she tramples as she does so feels intentional. And, frankly, malicious.
2. Me :( Prone to taking the curve heading to the High Tunnel just a little too fast.
3. Patricia. The High Tunnel curve strikes again! Patricia and I swear that it really sneaks up on you.
4. No one else has admitted to spilling any flats. Yet. Will keep you posted.
Stewardship of the silvopasture trees we planted earlier this spring continues. We are in an all-out race to get all 550 trees mulched before the alfalfa grows so tall around them that they become impossible to locate. Already, the alfalfa is almost shin-high, and our infant trees (you would be forgiven for mistaking them for foot-tall sticks) are getting woefully out-competed. To mulch, JR brings a load of wood chips out to the alfalfa field, and we lay down a piece of cardboard over each baby tree and then dump a pile of wood chips around the tree to try to give it some buffer against the alfalfa. The goal is to buy the trees enough time to develop strong root systems that will allow them to compete for the water and nutrients they need. Our current scoreboard:
ZA - 150ish
Alfalfa - at least 5
Matches remaining, advantage alfalfa - over 400
On Thursday night, we had a long group conversation about what it means to mobilize, both individually and collectively, in response to the political crisis we’re in. Some of the ideas on our minds:
Support BIPOC-led farms in our area that have lost funding in the dismantling of federal support for marginalized farmers and sustainable agriculture
Support migrant farmworkers
Join mass mobilizations in Chicago
Host people who need refuge on the farm
Build deeper relationships with our neighbors and immediate community here in Sheldon
Do any of these resonate? How are you taking action in this moment? Thoughts and ideas welcomed.
On Friday, Acacia, Gavi, and Margalit left for Scattergood Friends School in West Branch, Iowa, to watch Acacia’s sibling’s play. This turned out to line up perfectly — next week, a group of students and teachers from Scattergood will spend all week at the farm, camping out and helping us with farm work, as part of an annual service trip. We can’t wait to have a gaggle of high schoolers running around the land! Patricia will be bringing her anthropology chops to figure out “what the youth are up to these days”.
Meanwhile, back at the farm…the overwintered high tunnel spinach has been growing abundantly all spring, but it’s finally on its last legs. We harvested it for the last time today — most has already bolted — and there was so much that Eric and I worried that harvesting and processing it all could take a few hours. Turns out we were optimistic… in the end, it took us the entire day. But now we have more spinach than we can possibly eat! Eric, Patricia, and I pulled our heads out of the spinach just in time for an exhausted but cozy Shabbat dinner. And I spent much of the weekend cooking down the spinach in order to freeze for future, less-spinach-abundant seasons.
On Sunday afternoon, we welcomed the Scattergood cohort with a glorious sunset dinner under the trees. Excited to see what this week has in store!
CEP
