Sowing Summer Seeds and Lifelong Memories
“Already?!” I exclaimed. “But it’s only the middle of February, ...in Wisconsin! It is 5 degrees below zero! Are you sure?”
“Yes! Look at the calendar!!! We have to get the leeks, onions, and celery started. Maybe even a few of the herbs,” he responded in exasperation. “In fact, we might even be a week late!”
While the mercury parked itself below zero and winds blasted chills into the frost biting zone, it seemed like the summer growing season was eons away. However, still weeks before the first green shoots will emerge from the sun warmed soil, the 2016 growing season got underway at Emerald Acres Farm. Our laundry room metamorphosed into a mud room. . .
Last Sunday, Valentine’s Day, our 5-year-old farmgirl worked alongside her daddy to build soil blocks and plant the first seeds of 2016. As I watched the two, I realized that there is no love quite like that which exists between a father and his daughter. As they squished and massaged the moist potting soil between their fingers and meticulously placed each of the seeds, no larger than a pencil tip, with a tweezers into the soil, I marveled at the memories they were creating together. As they were sowing seeds for the coming summer’s bounty, so too were they sowing lifelong memories of time spent together.
More signs of wildlife of the miniature nature etched the snowscape, evidenced by an intricate network of snow tunnels
and decorated by pawprints.