Signs of Spring
After last week’s blizzard/rain/sleet/snow and three missed market weeks in as many months due to inclement weather, we are all ready for warmer temperatures and sunny days. Despite the prediction for a longer winter, I’m seeing plenty of signs of spring here on the farm. The Livestock Guardian Dogs (AKA: the big white fluffy idiots) have been picking off the squat brown prognosticators one by one—all males so far—and depositing them on my doorstep in exchange for biscuits. The dogs told me that for every hole-digging rodent they bring me spring is a few days closer. Good try, but they’re seeing the same signs I am.
The first thing that happens is the fur starts to fly. This coincides with Mud Season, the precursor to true spring. While we simply hang our winter coats in the closet when the time comes, farm critters resort to rolling in mud, rubbing on fences, and squeezing through the brambles in order to remove their winter coats. This may sound innocuous, but when there are multiple animals, some weighing over a thousand pounds, scratching on buildings, feed bunks, fencing, and trees they tend to be destructive. A sagging corner of a run-in shed after a support beam has been pushed in or a bale feeder in need of welding is just as much a sure sign of spring on the farm as any daffodil or crocus emerging from the ground.
The true spring is a moving target just as the festivals, holidays, and new years which depend on the lunar cycles are. Some years they fall early on the Gregorian calendar closer to the equinox and other times days or even weeks after.
The local feed elevator now has displays of onion sets and seed potatoes ready for early planting. There’s a reason late winter snows are referred to as onion snow. I hope we don’t get one this year. Just give me plain ol’ rain.
We are all looking forward to the return of the regular market season which begins the first week in April. That’s when our hours return to 9 AM to 1:30 PM and the seasonal vendors begin to trickle back in. Before long we’ll be racing for the first strawberries and asparagus. There will be ramps and fiddleheads, collards and leeks which I’ll use to prank some unsuspecting new vendor to my favorite farmers market joke. Hey, do you know you’ve got a big leek under your vehicle? They fall for it every time.
Spring also comes with specific scents. The compost windrow is heating up, literally. The decomposition of organic matter results in CO2, water, and heat. My pile is steaming. It’s not an offensive odor, just a very distinctive one that tells me the temperature has moved out of round-the-clock freezing. The other smell of spring is one in which I’m more wary about is skunk. They emerge after the groundhogs and before the raccoons and opossums. I know when I step out of my house early on Sunday morning to head to market and it smells like Adams Morgan, spring is nearby.
The birdlife announces the cusp of spring. The first to arrive are the Canada Geese with their high flying Vs. There’s still ice on the pond, so they pass by as if my Closed for the Season sign is still hung in the window. Sometimes it’s the disappearance of seasonal residents who signal the change. The Bald Eagles are still here for now but will soon head out. I have a friend who picks up road kills and places them in his front yard with a trail camera to record who comes to feast. He’s posted National Geographic worthy footage on his socials that have me considering giving it a go, but I don’t want to risk a smack down between large raptors and the Pyrenees who would most definitely claim any carcass as their own. They are truly the buzzards of the dog world. In addition to eating it, they would roll in it. I think of this every time patrons walk their pristine Pyrenees at market.
This week my favorite seasonal pals returned—the herons. They nest in the dead ash trees down by the run and feed on snails, turtles, and frogs in the pond, flying between each destination with their long spindly legs trailing behind as they raucously squawk, We’re back! Let’s get this party started.