A week or two back, like everyone else, I had to move my clock forward an hour for daylight-savings and I’m not sure I’ve settled in fully to the time change. It has definitely taken a little while to get my bearings. Longer than usual this year for some reason. Even Indy is struggling to get back to normal. Where she usually wakes by 6 am or so, I’m having to wake her up at 7:15 in the mornings just to allow enough time for her to get dressed and have breakfast before time to leave for school.
But as challenging as the time change has been, Spring finally getting here to stay has been just the opposite. It’s been nothing but a joy.
Here in middle Tennessee, it showed up early this year. The daffodils around the cemetery fence were in full-bloom in the early part of February, rather than at the end. Springtime came on strong, and then left us, and then finally came back again recently and I think maybe it’s left Mother Nature, and most of us, a little confused.
Indiana caught a head cold and it lingered for weeks. We finally had to get a nebulizer from Dr. Theron and do some breathing treatments and she’s feeling much better now.
At our farm, it’s getting greener every day and life is abounding. Not just the people and animals that are here, but the new ones that are arriving daily and others that are on their way.
Last month, the kids at school gathered eggs and put them in the incubator and after checking on them daily, a week or so ago, they hatched.
A couple of weeks before that, we got four new baby pigs, and our Duroc mama pig is pregnant, with who-knows how many babies that are due in May. We named her Pearl, so that when she has her piglets, we’ll have lots of ‘Minnie Pearls.’
Last week the school kiddos, Ms. Rebecca and Farmer Dalton drove to Chick Days in Hohenwald and came home with 150 new laying hen chicks, and 17 baby ducks, all courtesy of the fine folks at McMurray Hatchery where we get a lot of our baby chicks each year.
On top of that, our red roan mare Ria is pregnant and due in the next two weeks or so. We’ve never had a horse foal here on the farm before, so we are all excited about the new addition that will arrive soon.
Besides all that, in the backfield, we’re pretty sure three of our mama cows are pregnant, and due to have calves in May and June.
We also have my eighteen-month-old great niece Eloise (Farmer Dalton and my niece Rachel’s little one) and my nephew Mikel’s son Teddy Bear nearby, so it really feels like life is happening everywhere. It is so so beautiful.
Lastly, each day the soil gets a little warmer and we get a little more excited about putting seeds in the ground and getting our gardens planted. I’m still going to grow corn in our big garden behind the farmhouse, but have begun creating a number of ‘no dig’ garden beds, just off the side porch... and one by one, they’re getting filled.
The children at school have been growing starts in the greenhouse, and filling raised beds at the schoolhouse, getting ready for lots of planting in each of their own garden beds, where they’ll spend the last few months of school tending to the food they're growing. And hopefully getting to harvest some before school lets out and the hot days of summer come.
I know that in no time, Spring will have turned to Summer and all the fun things we’re excited about right now (new baby animals, new starts in the garden, etc) will turn into great amounts of work and sweat and we’ll be wishing it was Spring again. But for now, it’s a joy to wake up each morning and see the world coming alive, after the long winter months where everything seemed dead or sleeping.
Now, all I have to do is get back on a good sleep schedule…
- rory
