The farm has moods. It’s surreal to read back through posts
from the fall (here and here) and remember how much was being produced. After
all the work and heat of summer, it took everything we had to keep up. We were
tired, but it was alive!
Spring is different. We could spend days outside in the sunlight
and dirt. We have endless energy to give the farm, but it gives little in
return. (Outside of an enormous amount of grass to mow…) Seeds that grew quickly and easily last year
fail to sprout this year, despite hours of prep work on the garden beds. Wind and rain bring the greenhouse plastic crashing down on newly planted tomatoes, leaving them broken under heavy pools of water. Llamas
that were supposed to help protect the lambs strip the bark off some of our favorite
trees. Half the chickens are taken out by a raccoon and then this morning,
after days this winter working on a lambing pen; we find all three lambs have
been taken out. Likely (again) by a local coyote. It’s hard not to feel
defeated.
Living here is like having another person in our
family that we must consider at all times. They are testy in the spring. Hard to
wake up, and harder to put to bed in the fall. Two years is just enough to
demonstrate how little we still know about this person, but the experience of
two summers has given us a glimpse of what is to come. In just a few short months
our energy, and the farm's, will run hand-in-hand with new veggies, new chickens
and, yet again, new lambs.