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It’s spring in New England, and that means a dizzying mix of sunshine and thaw, cold windy nights and frosty mornings. Though most of the snow is gone, there’s still a patch of it covering the eastern corner of our main field. The rest of the fields are wet, wet, wet. So even though we’re scheduled to seed peas in just over a week, even though we’re geared up for a great season and can’t wait to get out into the fields, we’re stuck in that age-old springtime rite-of-passage: waiting.

We can’t get a tractor on the fields until they dry out, and we can’t order up the weather we want: warm, sunny, windy days. As farmers, there is so much we can’t control, and the annual spring wait to get on the fields is the first reminder of  it. We talk a lot about the importance of resilience in our crops, how important it is to grow varieties that are adaptable and hardy. It turns out resilience in farmers is just as important.

Luckily, there’s plenty to do while we wait. The greenhouse is already full, packed wall-to-wall with onions, shallots, leeks, kale and cabbage, chard, broccoli, and beets. In just a few weeks, we’ll move the onions outside to harden them off before we plant them, and the greenhouse will fill right back up with peppers, tomatoes, squash, cukes, and eggplant.

The greenhouse in early April is absolutely gorgeous. Though the world outside is still brown and grey, the buds haven’t opened and there’s still snow in the woods, the greenhouse is bursting with green.

We’ve also been busy reorganizing and streamlining our CSA pickup area in the barn. This might seem like a small thing compared to all the work we do planting, harvesting, and weeding, but having efficient systems across the entire farm operation is what makes a successful business.

We built new tables for the CSA pickup. We can stack produce bins underneath them, move them around into different configurations, and we don’t have to dismantle them after every pickup.

We painted permanent veggie names on our chalkboard signs, which will save us lots of time during CSA setup.

We have new shelving! Everything we need for the CSA distribution — baskets, boxes, scales, etc., is neatly organized in one central location.

Check out our new pick-your-own station – it’s not in anyone’s way, and it’s super user-friendly!

We also assembled our brand-new Planet Jr. seeder. Last season, we drove 20 minutes each way to borrow this crucial tool from a friend.

What I love most about farming is the steady, satisfying, physical work. I love using my muscles and the exhaustion I feel at the end of the day. I love eating and sharing the food I grow. But there’s a whole lot more that goes into a running a farm, and I love that, too. It’s been a wonderful month, building and designing and cleaning, rethinking systems and implementing new ones. I can’t control the weather. The fields will dry out when they dry out. But I can control a whole lot of little things–CSA distribution tables and convenient shelving in the barn–that might not seem important, but add up to something big.

The days are getting longer and I can feel spring coming, the scent of thaw, the fresh wind, the strengthening sunshine. I’ve done this a few times before. The fields will get tilled, the peas will get seeded, the onions will get planted, and before I know it, we’ll be harvesting the first kale. With so much to do, and so much to look forward to, the waiting isn’t so bad.

Laura

Although it hasn’t been a very snowy winter overall, the fields are still covered from the big blizzard two weeks ago. I’m glad we ended up with some snow–there’s something satisfying about all that white, the quiet and stillness that snow brings to the farm.

Every year, I am becoming less and less sure of the weather. The patterns we’ve relied on in the past are no longer the norm. Winter is an important part of the life cycle of a farm. The hard freeze kills many pests and diseases that linger in the soil. If there aren’t enough days below freezing (or any at all), we’re likely to face a much heavier pest and disease load the following spring. So I’m grateful that we had some stretches of old-fashioned cold this winter, even though they were punctuated by several mini-thaws. It sure beats last year’s non-winter.

As I always do around this time of year, I’m getting excited for spring. Our potting soil arrived at the greenhouse yesterday–five cubic yards of beautiful, dark, nutrient rich soil from Ideal Compost in Peterborough, NH. The road to the greenhouse wasn’t plowed, but after we packed it down by driving the truck back and forth all over it, our friend Mike from Ideal did a masterful job backing up his dump truck, and the soil arrived without a hitch. The smell of it made me want to start seeding on the spot.

Luckily, I don’t have long to wait. We’ll be getting the greenhouse cleaned and ready next week, and come the first week in March, we’ll be spending our days seeding onions and leeks and shallots, the first kale and broccoli, spring chard and cabbage. It’s one of my favorite times on the farm–before the hectic season descends on us, just the quiet and the sun in the greenhouse, the first hint of spring in the air, my muscle memory kicking in as I fill tray after tray with onions.

This season promises to be one of our best. We’ve got an amazing new machine, a whole slew of new recording-keeping systems (this is especially thrilling to my inner farmer nerd), and a fantastic crew. We’re growing more food than ever, using more cover crop, and trying out a few exciting new amendments to target the specific nutrient needs of our soil.

As I write this, on a bright, snowy, late February morning, I can already smell the April sun, and feel the warming soil under my hands. I’m enjoying these last weeks of quiet, but I’m already dreaming of onion starts, spring wind, the smell of dirt.

Laura