Happy Spring Everyone! According to the calendar we’re 3 weeks into the season, but it’s only been during the last few days that it has actually felt like spring. The forsythias are blooming and the garlic is up and growing. We’ve been busy in the greenhouse for the last 5 or 6 weeks planting lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and radicchio among other things. Many of these plants are ready to go outside to be “hardened off”, which means becoming accustomed to slightly colder nighttime temperatures and the drying effect of the wind. I hope to begin transplanting these by the end of the week. Actually the planting season began in early February with onions and leeks that I started in a vacant room in my house under florescent lights. These crops are slow germinators and slow growers and should be transplanted out into the field as early in April as possible. Since it’s too cold and would be too expensive to heat the greenhouse to grow these plants in February, I choose to let my neighbors wonder: “what’s he growing in there”. We began transplanting the onions into the field this past week, and will be continuing to plant them out over the next couple of weeks. Also planted this past week were about 2200 row feet of Fava beans, and nearly 6000 r.f. of peas. In the next 2 weeks I will be spending a lot of time on the big tractor plowing and preparing ground for the many crops that it will soon be time to seed, and the plants which will soon be ready for transplanting. I expect to begin planting potatoes in the next few days; a process that will continue for several weeks. Spring has sprung and the hard work has begun! I look forward to a great season. Farmer John