Out in the slushy mess confronting some maintenance duties today, an encouraging sound found my ears: the sound of the earliest snow geese heading north.  Later I noticed that the snow was receding from the land I plowed last fall in preparation for this year’s crops, and the seemingly permanent coating of ice on the driveway showed signs of weakening.  And daylight savings time has returned.  Think of all the daylight saved.

We’re up to about 4,000 starts in the greenhouse and have started the worry/scramble to accommodate more plants than we have room for.  Sixty chicks, Rhode Island reds, California whites and Americaunas are already getting too big for the brooder.  I watered greens in the high tunnel today.  Greens, I proclaim, that were planted in September!  30 below?  No big deal. 

The horses have been getting into shape and we’ve been honing our teamster skills by driving the bobsled around the farm.  It doesn’t look like there will be too  much more of that.  Maybe tomorrow morning I’ll get them out and break up the night’s frozen crust before the warmth of the day returns it all to slush. 

A few things on the list: Rebuild small greenhouse, acquire decrepit trailer for conversion to another egg mobile, bring in the width of the tractor to match (exactly double) that of the horses, clean out the tool shed, excavate the collapsed storage shed, extract honey from the bee-less hive, mobilize the horse drawn fore cart, start a bazillion more transplants and listen to the snow geese.