Our surroundings on the farm seem to be getting greener by the day. Most of our fruit trees have been in bloom the past couple of weeks, a few shy blossoms are showing on the strawberries and the very

fragrant white lilac bush by our north garden is in its glory. Many of our resident birds are busily preparing for the nesting season. I watched a beautiful pair of northern flickers scouting out nest locations this afternoon.

Another sign of spring at Sandhill is the sight of people crawling around on their hands and knees in the garden. Michael and Mike have been setting out brassica transplants for the past few days. Gigi also planted more potatoes. Sol, Angelina, Bekka and Jon have all been occupied with their planting chores. My turn is coming since I have about 500 little lettuce seedlings to plant very soon. We have also been seeding flats of warm weather crops including tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, eggplant, melons and flowers.

Stan and Gigi have been very busy with the bees lately. The winter was rough on our bee population and Stan is having to buy more bees this spring, as well as new queens. We are committed to managing our hives by organic methods and this involves a lot of work for Stan and Gigi and their helpers.

We have been enjoying having shitakes to eat the past couple of weeks. Some of our older logs are bearing and we are beginning to get results from the batch that we inoculated last year. It will be nice if production is good enough this season for us to also dry some for winter meals.

On the seventeenth, most of us participated in a cleanup of the 3.1 miles of Highway M that we are responsible for. Other members provided childcare so some of the parents could go. Fortunately, it was a brisk and cool day, which was perfect for doing it. Stan remarked that there seems to be a lot

less trash by the road these days. He said that when Sandhill first started doing the highway cleans it was a much bigger job.

Earth Day last Tuesday has given a focus to much of this week for us. Michael and I had a table at the Earth Day event put on by the Truman State Eco Group in Kirksville Friday evening. On Saturday, we hosted another group of students from the Truman Environmental Awareness class. This was the biggest group so far, seventeen students. I gave them a tour of the farm and then they helped us with work on our horseradish crop before going to Dancing Rabbit for the afternoon. Sue and Laird participated in the Earth Day Festival in Columbia on Sunday. They had a table with both Sandhill's products and books from Community Bookshelf.

The past two weeks have also been marked by a couple of departures. One of our members, Chad, left on the nineteenth. He had been a member of Sandhill since January of last year. He is hoping to get a place of his own and is staying with his brother in Iowa for a while.

We also said goodbye to Sadie, our resident dog, this past Wednesday. She is now living with a family north of Memphis. Summers won't be quite the same without Sadie lying in the middle of the road.