{"id":134,"date":"2022-07-09T15:35:24","date_gmt":"2022-07-09T15:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/ilc-su22-dewitt\/?p=134"},"modified":"2022-08-04T21:07:34","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T21:07:34","slug":"week-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/ilc-su22-dewitt\/week-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 2: Strawberries and Lemon Balm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sally screaming at me from the top of the LeSharo<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Learning Highlights<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This week was filled with lots of time in the drying room and lots of time working with strawberries. We were able to speed up the process of drying the lemon balm quite a lot with guidance from Moon Valley owner, Kim, who taught us how to get the most use out of the limited space in the drying room. This included stacking the screens higher with plant material and relying on the warmth of the room itself to complete the drying of the lemon balm instead of always using the finish dryers. In a perfect world, our meticulous method of laying out each individual lemon balm stalk would be ideal but is simply impossible with the amount of space available at Moon Valley currently. Kim’s guidance allowed us to speed through the lemon balm processing; hopefully, we will have it entirely finished by the end of next week which would allow us to get to work on the calendula we are continuing to harvest weekly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Processing lemon balm <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A snail friend brought in on a stem of lemon balm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Fields of calendula<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Loving the variety of color and shape between each bloom<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A big portion of this week felt like it was dedicated to the maintenance of the owners’ garden and yard which is not a part of the job that I was expecting. We weeded around their house, targeting the strangling bindweed that snaked its way around desired plants and was a huge pain to unwind and remove. I also learned how to use a weedwhacker which was an exciting job. The weedwhacker was used to mow all the places that a lawnmower couldn’t reach, including the edges of buildings and along the main entrance to the farm. Before weed whacking, I was taught the difference between gas and farm diesel as the containers of the two were greatly mixed up by accident. The gas appears more clear or yellow-ish while the farm diesel has a pinkish-red hue or sometimes even blue-ish. Pour out a little of the fuel into a clear jar if unsure to be able to spot the difference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bindweed – beautiful but a pain to remove<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Another big part of this week was spent working with strawberries. Strawberries are probably my favorite berry so I was excited to get to work with them in and out of the field. We started by picking basketfuls of the ripe berries and weeding around the plants. We separated our berries into two categories: the perfect berries to be eaten or frozen and stored, and the overly ripe or critter-bitten berries to be made into jam that evening. The perfect berries were taken into the garage for processing. We removed the tops and stems and laid them out on trays to be left in the freezer overnight. The following morning, we moved the fully frozen berries into gallon-sized plastic bags for better freezer storage. Not only were we able to work with fully matured strawberry plants producing fruit, but we also got to transplant younger plants into the soil at the incubator farm at the end of the week. I really enjoyed getting to see almost the entire process of working with strawberry plants, and of course getting to pop a few sweet berries into my mouth as I was working. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Box of strawberries for eating!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

One of the biggest highlights of the week was finally getting the irrigation system up and running at the incubator farm. For the previous weeks of work, WWOOFers had been assigned the task of dragging a hose up and down every row for watering, which took hours to complete every day and was not the most enjoyable task. Thankfully this week, farm manager, Dylan, was able to finally hook up the irrigation system and teach us a little about the process along the way. Moon Valley uses drip tape irrigation, which consists of thin tubes with little slits along the side to allow water to drip out when the water is turned on. Each plant row had two lines of drip tape which were already laid out under the plastic row cover; all that needed to occur was the connection of the drip tape to the main water line. Dylan taught us how to measure and cut the correct drip tape lengths, punch a hole in the main line, and use a connecting piece to screw the drip tape into place. He also showed us how to cap the drip tape off at the other end using a smaller piece of cut-up drip tape. It was exciting to have the water come on and to see our work on the irrigation system finally pay off. No more dragging a hose around for hours in the blazing heat! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lots of planting!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A final big learning highlight of my week has more to do with my WWOOF experience overall. I am realizing that the choice of working at a more popular WWOOF destination for my summer means that a lot of my tasks are going to be easy filler tasks instead of in-depth learning opportunities directly with the farm managers or owners. There have been around 8 other WWOOFers with me for my entire two weeks so far, which is quite a large number for the scale of Moon Valley. This means there are sometimes not enough tasks for everyone, or more people will be assigned to a task than are required. For example, four of us were assigned to set up hoops for the pepper hoop house when really only two people needed to be doing it. This isn’t a huge issue, I am still learning a lot and having a wonderful experience, plus I was looking for a larger WWOOF community to enter for my summer anyways. I think it is just maximized here because of how many of us there are. As the summer goes on, I am sure this will change. Most of my fellow WWOOFers are leaving before me and I have a hunch that there will be a week or two in August where I am the only WWOOFer left. Hopefully in this time, I will get a bit more in-depth learning from the farm managers and owners. I will also keep this thought in mind for any future WWOOF endeavors; maybe WWOOFing with a smaller community or even solo would yield more opportunities for learning directly from the farm managers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading Highlights<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This week, I wrapped up the first section of Braiding Sweetgrass<\/em>, which was entitled “Planting Sweetgrass.” As I discussed last week, a lot of this section revolved around the idea of gifts, but the two chapters that stood out the most to me as I ended this section revolved around Kimmerer’s journey as a Native scientist. Kimmerer entered University with one question: “Why is the world so beautiful?” But upon asking this to her professor, he told her “That’s not science, go to art school if you want to study beauty.” This response was a shock to Kimmerer, but she decided she must’ve been mistaken, and so fell into the scientific side of botany through a master’s degree, phD, and teaching position. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn’t until she heard a Navajo woman talk of botany for hours on end without the hint of a university background that Kimmerer realized what had been missing: the Indigenous side of botany. She had fallen into the science at university and had completely lost sight of her question: “Why is the world so beautiful?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Learning Highlights This week was filled with lots of time in the drying room and lots of time working with strawberries. We were able to speed up the process of drying the lemon balm quite a lot with guidance from Moon Valley owner, Kim, who taught us how to get the most use out of … Continue reading Week 2: Strawberries and Lemon Balm<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"geo":{"latitude":48.759388,"longitude":-122.1994934,"description":"Deming, Washington, 98244, US"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/ilc-su22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/ilc-su22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/ilc-su22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/ilc-su22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/ilc-su22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/ilc-su22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/ilc-su22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/ilc-su22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/ilc-su22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/ilc-su22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}