Spring is springing, kind of...

I love spring, need I say more?  The glorious weather, the potential of new life, the crawling out of winter's heavy emotional embrace, thank goddess for the SPRING!  In light of the 'heavy emotional embrace' and how I kind of turned myself inside out the last post, I will try to stay a bit lighter this time, ahem...

The farm is starting to come back to life, its interesting to watch the congruency of the farm's life cycle with my own and in fact that of little baby Aya.  Currently she has to be carried around everywhere, wrapped up securely much like the little tomatoes popping up in the sun room, babied by the warmth of the tile floors and large windows, sustained by daily hand watering.  By the time we start harvest Aya will probably be crawling about, figuring out life through the gathering of input from her environment just as the maturing plants, now in the ground, learn to gather their needs from the soil surrounding them.  A certain maturity arises at the time of self mobility, an ability to really see and feel the world and create the beginnings of perspective.  Its so magical watching children grow, it happens so quickly though, I very much enjoy likening it to the cycle of the farm as I can recreate that each year minus the lifelong intensive commitment!  I often feel like every plant that I seed or put in the ground is another baby of mine.  Another reason I adore spring so deeply, I get to see what has survived the winter, what has grown and thrived and what has passed.  It provides so much insight into my future endeavors around here.

The crocus', mini iris and hyacinth began blooming around the edges of the sunroom a couple weeks ago, not only is it refreshing to see some color but makes my heart so happy to see the honey bees buzzing around.  I am constantly looking for new bee forage for the early and late season as it makes me smile to see the bees engaged and working so hard.  I have been saving the last of last years honey harvest to make elderberry, lemon balm syrup, a little late for this years cold season, oops, and love it that the ladies are out and about already gathering fodder for the hive.  The weather has been so strangely warm, I have spent a few days in the past week finishing up the fruit tree pruning before the buds decide to break early.  The fruit trees are the first huge blossoming of the season and provide much pollen and nectar for the bees to enjoy.  I would like to see TONS of blossoms covering all the trees and will pray that we get a bout of warm weather around that time to allow fruit to set.  Many of the trees around here have not borne well the past years even without the frost.  I am not an expert pruner but hope each year that what I do prune will help encourage more.  One of the garden angels came around yesterday wanting to do a walk about the front flower gardens.  She expressed a desire to work on the trees as well, digging out the grass from around the roots and feeding with the cow manure and humates piled up from last season.  I long for shelves full of jam and chutney jars to savor all year long.

With a couple others help, we cleaned out the rest of last years fields irrigation and trellising.  I worked with Aya in the Moby pretty successfully, I even nursed her simultaneously for a bit which felt like a huge success!  It gave me a pretty good idea of what I will be able to do with her during the early season before she graduates into the backpack.  A lot of the early season work involves hoeing and rototilling to get the rows prepared.  I will have to find someone else to hang with her or to do the tilling with the machine but am pretty confident of my ability to work with long handled tools while carrying her on my front.  Which brings me to another very welcomed success of the week...

In order to maintain my farming abilities and keep this little one with me I must get my strength back.  Particularly my core and back muscles.  Obviously just working with her will help but I have already felt my posture failing and the awareness of what that can spiral into as the season progresses.  Aya and I made it through two Qi Gong classes this week without incident!  Thank heavens, I pretty much abandoned my practice a couple months ago as my body became so large and uncomfortable along with the quiet time with Aya in her early weeks.  It feels so great to reconnect with my practice and my Qi family with Aya in attendance.  We spent a lot of time sharing energy, both inherently and intentionally, during my pregnancy, its really fun to continue that relationship out of the womb.  Its hard for me at the moment, to reengage my lower Dantien and to stay focused.  It will take some time but the practice has pulled me out of much more difficult situations and I know I can regain my previous strength of awareness.

Today we completed a long desired piece of infrastructure for the farm.  We retrofit an carport frame/'greenhouse' into a real functioning Greenhouse.  I am so excited, practically giddy, to have a dedicated space to raise my starts and create a potting station.  The best part is we hardly had to purchase any materials to make it happen.  The frame was here, we used the old plastic from the large greenhouse and I am going to commandeer one of the tables to make a potting bench.  We had to get some lumber and some hardware but its done, its really done, and in my eyes its absolutely beautiful.  The ventilation may become a trick as the days warm up and we shall see if a simple electric heater can keep it from freezing during these high teens nighttime temperatures but, we will make it work!  This means that we have a space to seed trays, an easily accessible water supply to both keep wet and feed, and resources to make the transition from plug to pot so much simpler.  All of my tools and supplies will be in one spot, finally.  I often spend a lot of time collecting items from one place and bringing them to another, sometimes wasting time and energy searching for specific items or unsuccessfully gathering all the components I will need.  Always I search for more streamlined and efficient ways of doing things, hallelujah the time has sprung!