The Earth Provides
It's been nearly 8 weeks here on the farm! My, how things have changed in these past two-ish months! The high tunnel now has tomatoes pushing 9 ft tall, the flowers are in bloom, the produce is becoming more robust and varying from what we had even a few weeks ago! It’s so fun to see the garden change through the season.
Looking in the high tunnel, 6 weeks apart.
I’ve recovered from the week of filling in for Stephan, and I think climbing the hill up Acorn Trail has indeed been easier since then! I’m hoping that by the end of my time here, I’ll be able to walk up it with ease. The 3 flights of stairs up to my apartment in Evanston wont know what hit it! As someone who despises working out, I appreciate that farm life requires being active just by the nature of it. I feel like I’m getting a good balance of active work and more low-key rest or less active time. Most days, about half the day I spend working on my permaculture class, and the other half is working in the garden or with food service.
The permaculture class has been so interesting! I recently learned about a variety of online resources to use when you need to learn about your land, that have to do with wind directions, sun movement, direction of water flow and watersheds, and contour of the ground. The contour map creator uses Google Earth to tell you the contour/elevation of your land, and its so cool! I did both Hungry World Farm, and the property where I grew up in Iowa, just to see it. You can customize how much elevation you want to see, and the interval of change. Here’s a screenshot of HWF and my parents’ property in Iowa!
As the season continues, some of my garden duties have been changes, which is fun. I’ve gotten to help harvest garlic, carrots and potatoes so far! All of which are fun, because you get to dig in the dirt :) I quite enjoy getting my hands dirty. I’ve heard that physically touching dirt has positive psychological effects, and its also just fun to get messy! I’ve done a lot of transplanting of seedlings into the ground so far, and its fun to now be able to see the other end of pulling things out of the ground in its final food form. I love looking at the piles of produce that gets harvested from this earth. It energizes me to see the abundance that this earth is providing. The bunches of bright orange carrots, the tables full of garlic drying, the bins of red potatoes, the buckets of basil, the clusters of tomatoes ripening on the vines… this earth is straight up magical.
I also get to start helping out with the harvest wash/pack team on Friday mornings! I’ve only done it once so far, but I think its going to be real fun. The team is led by Heather, and two other locals Jed and Ashley come to help as well. Then whichever interns or volunteers that are around and capable of keeping up with the three of them get to help out! It’s a small team with a lot to harvest, wash, and pack up for the market, and Heather, Jed and Ashley are a well oiled machine that have it down to a science. So hopefully I can do them proud and keep up in the coming weeks!
Jed, Ashley, Jasmin (volunteer) and Heather, at break time during Friday morning harvest.
Aside from all of this fun stuff, I’ve also enjoyed some visits from friends, and some fun trips off the farm with local friends, which I’ll post about soon! Until then, enjoy these pictures of this beautiful farm! :)
