Memphis Democrat Column from April 13, 2009

With the beginning of spring, the first of this year's interns have made their appearances at Sandhill Farm. The two that arrived toward the end of March are old friends. Ali, who was an intern here in 2006, has decided that she wants to see the beginning of our growing season instead of the end of it this time around. She has also spent part of the past two summers at Dancing Rabbit. Emily was here for a couple of stays last year during the summer and during the sorghum harvest. Ali and Emily are both former members of Twin Oaks Community in Virginia and Emily also lived at Acorn Community. This week, two more interns will arrive on Wednesday. Keren will be taking the train from California, where she has been working on an organic farm near San Luis Obispo, and Tony will come up from his home in Desoto, Missouri. He spent the past season working on a farm in Hillsboro. Gigi and I are just finishing up the intern interview and selection process and we are very happy with the group we are going to have here this year. More folks will be coming during the season and I will introduce them as they arrive. We also have had another visitor staying with us this past week. Adam, who is from Cincinnati, arrived last Tuesday. He is at the beginning of a trip to explore community life and will be going over to Dancing Rabbit after his week here. He has stayed busy during his visit doing wood cutting with Otto and helping out with gardening and other tasks. A group from the Catholic Worker House in Dubuque, Iowa came by for a tour last Saturday afternoon. They had been visiting our friends at The Sanctuary in La Plata and also went to Dancing Rabbit for their regular public tour. Stan showed them around and talked with them about our organic gardening and farming. The garden is starting to come to life bit by bit the past couple of weeks. We have been harvesting over-wintered spinach, spring garlic, and multiplier onions. Gigi set out some lettuce a couple of days ago and our crew got busy putting in the first of the potatoes in the North Garden yesterday. The greenhouse is filling up fast with flats of seedlings. I'm hoping the weather will warm up and dry out a bit so that I can plant my early greens soon. Another thing we like to do in the spring is to treat ourselves to some of the wild greens that grow plentifully on our land. This past week we have had chickweed as a salad and in lentil soup and we should be harvesting violet leaves soon by the looks of things. Laird, Emily and Ali inoculated another batch of shitake logs on March 30th. It looks like we will have enough plug spawn to do another round of logs. In about a year and a half we should have good harvests of the tasty mushrooms for our use and for sale. A task that we try to do in the spring in between rain showers is our trash pickup on the section of Highway M from the junction with W to Rutledge. We were joined this year by folks from Dancing Rabbit, which made the work go quicker. When the pickup was done, the recyclables were brought back to Sandhill. Laird and Ma'ikwe sorted them so that we can take them to the recycling center on our next trip. With signs and activities of the season all around, it seems even the non-humans are getting busy. I've been seeing various small woodpeckers scouting out nesting holes, pairs of ducks on our ponds and one of our Black Spanish turkey hens has decided to sit on a clutch of eggs. We are hoping it isn't too early for her to be successful, but we will see how it turns out.