Happy Early Spring! Everything is coming back: the blackberry runners, the Nootka roses, the nettles. The lupines too. The primroses and daffodils and dandelions are blooming. The goats are finding things to eat out in their acreage again. The chickens spend less time huddled-up in a dry corner,and more time trying to break out, as though the siren calls of the owl and the hawk are too difficult to resist with all the stimulus of spring rising in their breasts. The apple and pear trees are now in blossom.

At the beginning of February, Don finished the Chicken Palace, so the 21 ladies have moved in there for a few months before going out in the chicken tractors again. They are settling in quite nicely. The Co-op in the Big Town Over the Water agreed to take our eggs, without our having to order labels and cartons first, since our certification is complete. So we gave them thirteen and a half dozen eggs to start with. Yay! Now we have labels and cartons, fancy-shmancy! Buck Cluck, our good-looking stud rooster was too much to handle, so we sent him off to a neighbor for "freezer camp" but his luck held and she thought he was so handsome she gave him his own harem.

The wee one - a hummingbird waiting for her people to arrive - is having difficulty with the notion of school, but is thoroughly enjoying the farm in all its splendor, having previously taken it all for granted. It's such a pleasure to see her get excited about peas coming up, or collecting the eggs, or the fern fronds unfolding.

The almost-grown-up has moved into an apartment of her very own (!!!) and is still experimenting with working/living in the Big Town Over the Water. Commitments and responsibilities on one end of the scale, "free time" and recreation at the other end. She is fledging nicely.

Don is enjoying his mainland job very much. He is working hard,and feels he is working with some of the best people he has ever known. He comes home every other weekend at this point.

The early spring caught me by surprise but I am moving as fast as I can. Despite the huge volume of rain this winter, it never snowed (before the flurries in March) and was warm enough, apparently, to encourage my peas to re-seed themselves. So I was delighted to find, in mid-February, that many pea plants were coming up. This year I am experimenting with an Aikido-type Farming Technique. That is, rolling with the punches, and accepting what is being offered, rather than being shoved off-balance by surprises. My own plan being secondary to nature's. It is important to note here that Mother Nature abhors a straight line. So I have tended all the early peas as they arrive, dotting the landscape haphazardly. In a normal year, I plant in May, when the land is dry enough. But to have so much sun in mid-February is both a blessing and an anomaly. The eagles are mating overhead, the ducks are flirting on our pond, the bees look a little stunned and sleepy, but they are showing up. And the frogs and bats are back, to combat the clouds of early mosquitoes. The first hummingbird has arrived! May you, also, be able to move fluidly with the unexpected, surprising it with your ability to rise again unhurt and moving forward again in whatever new direction is called for. Viva the paradox of spring!