By Linda Halley | It’s going to happen any day now. You’re going to go outside and smell spring. It smells like life itself, awakening after a long slumber. Truly, it is.
Microscopic life in the soil is stirring. The biology of organisms eating, digesting, excreting and repeating is the scent of spring. Breathe it in.
Last fall, when we put the vegetable plots to bed for the winter, we laid the soil’s table with a feast of composted vegetables and livestock bedding. As the soil warms and the bacteria and fungi break their winter’s fast the compost will be transformed into simple nutrients available to the plants. We feed the soil and the soil will feed us.
If I were a poet, I’d write a poem to the soil.
If I were a teacher, I’d teach a lesson about the soil.
If I were a songwriter, I’d write a song of praise to the soil.
But I am a farmer, so I will plant a seed in the soil.
Linda Halley is the General Manager of Gwenyn Hill Farm and has planted seeds for 30 consecutive springs.