| Before purple, there was red and blue. This is the time of year when the seasons feel like they are melting together. Like, literally, I feel the snow melting underneath my feet as I sink into the mud below. It feels like the time of year where there are layers of different seasons happening all in the same moment. When I walked along the field edge this morning with the dog, the earth was frozen underneath my feet, and my hands were retreating into the sleeves on my sweatshirt for protection. But, all around me I could hear the sounds of Springtime bird songs. And the light was brighter and clearer and no longer felt like winter to me. My partner describes this time of year like paint on a pallet. Before you really mix up the red and the blue to make purple, you can grab a little of each color on your brush, spread it across your canvas and see the bold streaks of each one, running parallel to each other for a while. Once we mix them and find our purple, we forget what the blue or red looked like alone. For the next week or two I am savoring the two colors of winter and spring running side by side. What that looks like for me and my crew right now is that we are equally invested in our spring projects–slowly waking up the farm–spending lots of hours in the greenhouse with the seeds and seedlings, or walking the fields to clean up old reemay and hoops that may have been left in the soil over the cold months. But, we are also spending time in the cold barn fixing tools or building new ones. Or, we are on the perimeters of the farm, setting up new compost areas and new gathering nooks for the season to come. We are not yet planting in the fields, or working on hands and knees getting to know our soil. That will come. But not yet. For now we are straddling winter and spring, from one moment to the next. Sometimes it’s joyful, sometimes it’s uncomfortable. But, all of it means that the farm season is ON and pretty soon the blue of winter will fade into the red of spring and we will have purple….and green and blue and yellow and all the colors of a farm season. From our farm to your table, Meryl (on behalf of the Just Roots team) |