A New Crop

            As the seasons change, everything begins to wake up. Spring is one of my favorite times of year. Even while it’s still cold outside, the daffodils poke their heads up and bear their bright, beautiful faces. The goats across the way start to have their kids and I can see children leading the newest additions out to green grass. It’s time to trim back the roses, plant fruit trees, and herbs (my favorite).

So every year, it seems, there is a new crop of kids, flowers, vegetables and farm animals all coming up together. In the morning as I look out my upstairs window before coming down, I see Josiah(6) coming out of the chicken pen with his bucket of eggs. He was so excited this week because the ducks and geese have started laying and he gets BIG eggs. Then Haley comes along pulling a mamma goat twice her size by a rope and a little baby goat is following along behind. One of the other girls is over milking when I go out to pick some parsley and a couple of green onions to put in our morning omelet.

            Our rabbits didn’t make it through the heat last summer, but the garden still did good. We have a lot in the freezer from the harvest. I have a couple of bags of peas left and I made salsa with the peppers and tomatoes that is really good. We’ve been eating collard greens and turnips out of the garden the past few weeks. That’s another nice thing about community. I had several things come up last year during the summer including some health problems, and didn’t get to help with the actual planting and tending, but I still got to enjoy some things from the garden. I’m hoping to be more involved this year.

            The year before last we had a huge crop of basil. I’m not sure why it did so well, but we made pesto and then just dried the rest. We still have quite a bit of that left, too. Growing things and “farming” is another one of the things we all enjoy doing together and this morning seemed like the perfect time to write about that. The weather is warming up and it makes me want to get out and “dig in the dirt” as my neighbor, Alyssa, says. Enjoy your spring! Go out and plant something just to watch it grow! Herbs are the best, and mint is my favorite. It takes a lot of water, but multiplies quickly and is hard to killJ