Ah, Spring

Everyone has their favorite season and favorite holidays.  We have different reasons for our preferences - great memories, well-loved activities, birthdays.  As a life-long Kansas girl, I enjoy all of the seasons and would have a tough time adapting to a place where there was no snow or the leaves didn't turn the radiant variety of colors we get to experience each fall.  For us, fall seems to be a slow time after a summer that is hot and packed full of garden tasks, canning, and fair preparation.  The holiday season provides a fun respite before a cold and dreary time highlighted by lambing season and the start of calving.  But then comes the spring.

So, in case you have yet to figure it out, spring is my personal favorite.  I find it a poetic time, a time of renewal where the dead is stripped away and new life begins.  From the first peeks of green from daffodils and iris leaves and the yellow and purple dots of color from the crocus, I start to feel excitement.  Seed catalogs fill the mailbox, the windows can be open for the first hints of warm breezes and the reintroduction to fresh air.  My brain, which never truly rests, moves into a special gear only used in the spring.

We start to look at the farm with new eyes, refreshed eyes.  We burn the guck off the asparagus patch.  The trimmers come out for pruning the fruit trees.  The dead and dry must go to make room for the new growth. Our 7 year old spends hours looking at poultry catalogs and planning his ideal flocks.  The calves run and leap through the pasture, the lambs jump onto hay piles enjoying the sunshine.

Today was that hint of early spring, and you bet your bippies we were out enjoying it!  I did my annual clueless pruning of the fruit trees and roses.  I really don't know what I'm doing but I make a valiant effort and hope for the best.  We built a new pig pen and moved our future sow herd out of the barn.  They immediately found a tiny wet spot in the new pen and worked together to create a mud pit, luxuriating in the fresh earth.  We released the ducks from their winter quarters and they started scavenging for bugs and other yummies under the hay bales.  The asparagus patch was burned, the remnants of last year's herb garden removed and I had dirty feet.  I love having dirty feet.  It's a sign of a good day.

So tonight we will rest after a day well-lived.  The renaissance of spring has begun and I can't wait.  Maybe I'll kick up my now-clean feet and get lost in picking a new pear tree or comparing green bean seeds while enjoying the last of the breeze before it gets too chilly.  Or maybe I will go to bed early and dream of green grass and the joy of spring that lies ahead.