The minute I shuffle out of bed Tuesday morning, still wobbly with sleep, my husband Jamie greets me with urgency. “Hey, let’s go look at this equinox sun”, he says.
The farmer is the consummate early riser. In this house, he’s already two cups of coffee deep. Wiping the sleep from my half-opened eyes, I throw a sweater over my vintage muumuu and step onto the back porch. The sunrise makes a thin luminous line across the sky. The chill that blew in the night before nips at my exposed legs. Jamie puts his arms around me and whispers, “This is a very spiritual time.”
“Why?”
“Because this is the time right before I get the shit kicked out of me for the next six months.”
He’s not wrong.
The minute the Earth doles out equal parts daylight and dark is when things get interesting. Spring showers commiserate with sunlight to turn everything green. The ground warms and the plants are supercharged by photosynthesis. Once the transformation begins, there is no stopping the work of Nature. The farmer takes off running, chasing the work through spring, summer, and fall before collapsing into winter once more. (We didn’t have much of a winter this year, by the way. Our little corner of the world warmed itself into a brand new growing zone. )
On the farm we bear witness to world as it emerges in colorful patches, still wobbly with sleep. A single dandelion, then two, then three, then a riot. Daffodils huddle on the roadside like schoolgirls gossiping at the bus stop, their bonnets bowing up and down with the whoosh of the wind, or the breeze of a passing car. The violet patch comes alive again and life dots the pasture, three slick black calves, knobby-kneed and brand new.
As is the life-giving/life-taking way of the world, one of the calves loses its mother to bloat, instantly orphaned and hungry. I can’t help but think of the children in Gaza, an ongoing tragedy underlying all things, even this time of earthly renewal. We monitor the calf, ready to bottle-feed if a surrogate doesn’t show.
In our very own propagation house, we watch as one of our crew enters her third trimester. She seeds trays of future plants while nurturing her own. This ranks as one of our best gifts this season.
In the trees, the birds whoop it up early and often with their singsong soundscape. The bees return to foraging and I can hear the singular buzz as one makes it way onto the porch, scoping out the scene. We check the hives when the sun is out, making sure our colonies made it through winter. I am always afraid they won’t survive the winter, that we messed it up somehow, but they are already working way harder than we are. The front of the hives are a flurry. The bees fly in with their tiny violin legs saddled with golden pollen. Brood abound and honey is being made.
As the world outside awakens, so do we. The steady behind-the-scenes work of earlier months begins to unfold in real time. Seeding, organizing and amending garden beds ticks up day over day. We snooze less. The farm crew adjusts their hours, arriving a little earlier as the light and temperature permits. Each week in the bakery, we do a little more than the week before.
Last Sunday, we held our first event of the season— a Pie Party. The weather cooperated and nearly one hundred people drove out to the farm to eat pie and soak in the perfect spring day.
Early spring feels like climbing the first hill of a roller coaster. There is anticipation and excitement, a mounting thrill. For now we welcome the work, ready to take the ride. Wishing you all a blessed Equinox.
Just so infinitely beautiful. What a writer you are. Dandelion riot, gossiping bonneted schoolgirl daffodils...the birds and the bees!
XXXOOO