Circle M Farm

Spring appears to have sprung here in our recently-frigid now-muddy valley. I should be thrilled, right? I love tilling and planting and playing in the dirt and the past few days of 40-degree weather have uncovered the fertile earth below the ice. But rather than inspire joy and anticipation, the sight of green stuff emerging from the snow has unleashed an anxiety bordering on panic in my soul.

I am simply not ready for the growing season to begin. I feel like I’ve just gotten into the rhythm of winter’s later sleep, earlier bedtime and less physically demanding pace. I feel that all the strained muscles and over-stressed brain pathways have just begun to heal. I absolutely love the frantic busy-ness of spring when I’m in it, but I feel that my body just isn’t recovered yet from last year. And my mind is even farther behind.

I still want to get through a stack of “thinking books” – volumes I stockpiled all last year to read through when the farm work slowed. Most of these aren’t novels, they are agricultural philosophy and homestead how-to books that I need to help me work out some complex issues of vegetable production, farm organization and animal management.

I still have to hammer out a plan for how we’ll house and pasture double the meat chickens we housed and pastured last year. I have to research other small producers and see if there are any farmers who manage to keep heritage turkeys close to home without caging them. I have to map out this year’s garden rotations and decide where the new plots of flowers will go. I have to clean out my basement. And I have to finish writing Christmas thank-you notes.

If I was a groundhog, I wouldn’t even wait to check for my shadow. I’d venture out of my warm burrow, get a glimpse of the tender new grass and leap back into my cozy winter bed, throwing the covers over my head and curling back up into sleep.