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.