This house stood absolutely empty yesterday for six beautiful hours, for the first time in thirty five years. Having spent the last four months emptying two houses, a few reflections surface from the effort. It is a momuntal task to render a house clean and to clear it of its past. It only happens step by step, box by box, and endless hour after endless hour. It is an exhausting endeavor, especially when done twice in a row. Inflexible timelines force the process forward, which lead to neglected secondary matters like correspondence, bills, and spouses.

As this pear tree blooms between Pin Oaks, we prepare for opening day at the market. We have upgraded equipment and assembled a new team to bring to you frozen meats, eggs, and grilled sliders. Over the past three summers Susan's children have donated dedicated support to us at the summer market, and are now moving to other pastures. Clark, Mike, Beth, Bob, Susan, and I will be in attendance this Sunday, working toward the same efficiency as in the past. It will be good to be back on the square, and we look forward to seeing those of you whom we did not see this winter at Clark Montessori.

To What Do We Devote Ourselves? Dahr Jamail provokes this question, when pondering the crisis of climate that is upon our planet. This crisis is forcing our civilization to articulate and claim its essential values.

This brief perennial embrace between dogwood and redbud celebrates the glory of spring. What an exquisite moment this is when both trees are blooming, to expire within a mere week, but bringing a sense of beauty, grace, and glory to all that follows.

The past three weeks have been totally consuming, for moving from one house to another. Few tasks are as dreaded as emptying one's house to move to another. The house being moved from was the one in Batavia, supporting Susan's law practise (or vice versa.) But now that she has retired, it became time to move to the farm full-time. We recruited movers to do the heavy lifting and family to help with the moderate, while we executed the rest. The rest included emptying and unpacking endless closets, cabinets, drawers, appliances, basement, and tools. Many, many trips to the truck and many in the truck to the farm. The task seemed relentless and far more tiring than when last performed ten years ago. We had such a good time, however, that we are going to do it again over the next month, emptying our past residence at the farm, Lark Hill, to make way for the arrival of Clark's family in June.

This set of tack was a pride and joy of Magic Jack. Jack Cadam lives on St. Joseph Island in Ontario. When our family would visit there during summer months, he would take us for rides on his stone-sled, pulled by four beautiful black Percheron draft horses, named Ruby, Pearl, Sapphire, and Jewel. The horses were bedecked in the handsomest tack imaginable -- silver-studded black leather, from head to tail and wither to belly. It was always stunning to witness these magnificent horses in their finery, driven by Jack, bursting with pride.

The sacred cycle of life and death is vitalizing. Some caring people find it disturbing to harvest animals for human consumption. They turn to harvesting vegetables instead, allowing animals to live on. This point of view feels compassionate, but the case can be made it is the product of urban living, reflecting disconnection from elemental cycles of life and death, so vivid in the countryside.

The wind brought one and the rain the other. As I left the bank in Hillsboro one day late in November, amidst a downpour of rain, a strapping young man stepped forward to introduce himself. He explained he raises pastured hens and has been selling eggs to restaurants and CSA's in Columbus. He had heard about our farm and wondered if he could come for a visit to learn more about what we are doing. He had seen the truck and trailer pull through town, followed it to the bank, and waited for me in the rain to introduce himself. After giving him my card and driving away, I couldn't help being impressed by the initiative.

Despite intense polar air of recent, a welcome warm breeze is coming our way from Colorado. It is very difficult to find partners aligned with the realities of living on a beautiful but isolated farm, who can perform the hard work of producing grassfed foods, and have capacity for the challenge of marketing. Three summers ago, a strapping, articulate young man approached me at the Hyde Park Farmers' Market on a busy day, and shared that his greater family owns a farm near Hillsboro, and that he is interested in coming back to the area to participate in the production and marketing of grassfed foods. He mentioned he was working as a soil scientist out West somewhere. By the time I finished helping yet another customer, he had disappeared back into the crowd.

This mobile hen house arrived from Lancaster County, Pa. on Wednesday. It was 40 degrees and raining as we received this impressively designed piece of equipment, built by Cliff Stoltzfoos. This hen house is designed to accommodate 600 hens, which we expect to fill by summer's end. It supplements the one we built five years ago, which is great, but is limited to 100 hens. We hope this will solve our problem of running out of eggs this winter. It will also allow us to service some wholesale accounts, developing larger scale, which is essential to sustainability.

Landis built this 10 foot tall snowman, with son Cameron. How inspiring it is to have a two year old son. The two year old inspires the father to build a snowman that requires a ladder to complete. Isn't it great how one's heart responds to the eagerness of the child?

Within this peaceful landscape, beavers are always at work and play. We don't interact with them much except when we graze next to our wetlands. The constant flow of water out of our wetlands attracts beavers, especially during a year like this one past, during which we received over 80 inches of rain, twice the average amount. Our wetlands never dried up, and the constant flow of water created ideal habitat for our busy friends.