Spring Tonic

We have survived the ocean of winter to wash up on the shore of springtime, where we find ourselves in the land of firsts.  The first robin of spring arrived before the first green grass day, as did the first Red-Winged Blackbird.  March 30th brought the first chorus of Spring Peepers down in the valley.  Later in the week, the first meadowlark call (April 6th) arrived a day before we walked down to the bus stop to witness the first daffodil blooming in the woods.  After a steady diet of gray skies and snow, each day seems to bring new unfurlings of flowers, buds, and songs.
   

Now that new grass is lushly carpeting the pasture east of the barn, our laying flock celebrated their first day on grass April 9th, bailing out of their gloomy barn home to stop and snip tender grass shoots at their feet.  Some years, it takes the girls a little while to warm up to the idea of going outdoors, and I call, "Chooook, chook, chook, chook!" and wait on the other side of the chicken door, anxious to witness their ravenous delight upon finding lush grass and bugs to peck, new ground to scratch and sunshine to bask in.  

Not this year.  The hens and rooster trundled out the little door, and stopped right in front of it, backed up in the closest thing to a George Washington Bridge traffic jam that we have on Hawk's Hill.  The rooster stood alongside his ladies, occasionally encouraging them with a soft, "chook,"  but, he could see that he needn't waste his breath calling to them, for the air was filled with the little sounds of happy chicken growls and that quiet nipping sound of beaks plucking tender grass shoots.  I could just sense the vitamins and phytochemicals coursing through the hens' feathery bodies as they enjoyed their spring tonic. 

Our first spring tonic came just a day before, when I pulled back the Agribon frost blanket to pick spinach and found chickweed thriving right alongside the spinach, so I  mixed some right in with the spinach for our lunch salads.  Later in the week, I made a salad entirely out of chickweed.  The first crunch released the invigorating sensation of childhood freedom on a Saturday morning outdoors.  A few dandelion greens tossed into the mix made it an official spring tonic.  Taraxicum officinale, which loosely translates to "the official cure for what ails you," has been a long-standing spring tonic.  Folks eating the first fresh greens in spring, must have felt like my hens gobbling up grass shoots, feeling the vitamins and antioxidants coursing through their veins in a celebration of new life.  We have found chickweed an effective decongestant for lingering spring colds. 




Yesterday, David pulled long furrows in the tilled garden soil for me to set seed potatoes in.  Cut into chunks the size of hens' eggs, the potatoes got dipped in wood ashes to prevent rotting, and dropped into the furrows about 8 inches apart.  I imagined the shrubby, healthy plants the potatoes would grow into, picturing the bounty of tubers I hoped we would till up in July as I walked down rows with a bucket of cut spuds, dropping each one in place.  I trucked a hundred pounds of seed potatoes down to the garden in my garden cart-- Yukon Golds and Red Pontiacs -- and put most of them in the ground. The rest went into storage in the root cellar David dug into the north side of the hill.  A mockingbird sang a patchwork of other birds' songs as he looked over my work, and my dog flopped in the shade of my cart like he does in the heat of summer, content to be outdoors.  

Later in the day, David and I set up beds for the broccoli and cabbage plants now filling my new plant stand.  We raked alfalfa meal (for nitrogen) into the 3 foot wide beds, pinned soaker hoses down and stretched black plastic mulch over the soil's surface and dug it in by hand with trowels.  On our hands and knees, trowels scooping earth over the edges of the plastic, we talked about politics, the new GAP farming regulations, and my struggle to fit enough plants into the garden to serve our new market in Beaver. 

The gift of the day was the sense of unity I felt with David as we worked our way down 40 foot rows, just talking.  When the sun set on Hawk's Hill, we tucked our tools in the garden shed, gathered up the jackets we had strewn on the ground, and hauled our garden cart laden with a roll of plastic mulch back up to the barn to close up for the night. 

Baby tomato plants grow next to broccoli waiting to be planted.

The plant stand David built me is now full.

Today, I awakened to another first: the morning after my first big planting day in the garden, moving like a sack of wet concrete.  I slogged through the morning, hands rough and calloused from my work yesterday, but soul singing happily at the thought of today's spring rain pattering down on the soil overtop of our Yukon Golds and Red Pontiacs out in the earthwormy garden soil.  The young broccoli and cabbage plants sit outside the house, protected from the wind, acclimating to the brightness and temperatures of the outdoor environment they will soon move to.   

May your day --whether sunny or rainy -- bring you the tonic of spring surprises and joy.
Betsy