May News

The killdeer came back to the garden a few weeks ago, and their presence is welcomed by all of us here at the farm.  I like to think they are the same individuals as last year, maybe even last fall's chicks now back in adult form.  They are up to their same old tricks.  They do their broken wing dance in front of Moon and then quickly swoop out and around the garden leading him away from an invisible nest, finding safety in the dirt of the garden knowing he is not allowed in.  Moon enjoys the excuse to run, although chases them a bit half-heartedly this year, maybe knowing how it always ends where he is forbidden to enter.  Joni knows how to spot the killdeer now, listening for their telltale noisy scream and ground running behavior. She watches for them on our walks down to the pond where she has taken a liking to making echos and throwing rocks off the dock.  The echoing works best on cloudy days and requires several seconds of silence to hear.  Any moments of silence are hard for Joni and often the echo is lost but the pond seems like a perfect place to get loud energy out.  Ryah doesn't understand the echoing but thinks watching excessive noises coming from Joni is worthwhile entertainment and the splashing of rocks into water is great fun.   
 
The garden is filling up, one long bed at a time.  The pre-season garden is always the ugliest time of year to me, the large expanse of brown when everything else around us is turning green is an unfortunate scar of human cultivation. Long layers of plastic mulch that have been laid to help us control weeds and moisture make the scenery worse and leave us having repetitive conversations about the benefits and downsides to its use on our land.  But those tiny plants are going in, and soon they will shoot up and leaf out, drawing the eye away from the ground and to the amazing growth of life that occurs in such a short amount of time. The tree line along the pond has slowly leafed in, allowing us to still see the sparkling blue of the pond but obscuring the Hosac ridge that we are treated with in the winter months. 

We marvel yearly at the sudden flush of life in spring, a phenomena I hope will never feel old.  We see it in the daffodils getting fuller and thicker each year, the bumble bees and honeybees dancing around the flowers of the almond tree making it sound alive.  We see it in the delicate white violets sprinkled amongst the dandelions in our un-mowed yard, the sounds of the tree frogs returning in the evenings, and the songbirds in the mornings.  

We are still farming in small children mode.  Joni is more eager and able to help for some amounts of time this year, although the help is slower and involves much more chatter.  Ryah is walking (almost running) both eagerly following Joni around and often determined in her own independence.  Kyle and I take turns in the garden and with the kids, one of us often planting in the morning, the other in the afternoon.  It has made us change work strategies, and although we are missing time in the garden working together, it spreads out the load on each of our bodies in a silver lining kind of way.  We have one volunteer who we realized has been working with us since Joni was born, and she has been an incredible support to us during these harder years.  This season she has already helped us get hundreds of plants into the ground.