March 20, 2019

Winter starts in October in the several mile wide Chitina River Valley where we are situated between the Wrangell Mountains to the North and the Chugach Mountains to the South. It is dark, cold, and quiet during those winter months and for someone like me who thinks year round about food production, the hibernating landscape can feel tedious by the time January rolls around. The good news is plant catalogs, graphing out garden plans, seed orders and plant starts fill up those hard times in the coldest and seemingly longest months. In the beginning of March this year, I pulled a dozen of various sized frozen pots filled with soil, roots, and dead plant matter from underneath our cabin. In a matter of days these field dug herbs were growing again. This annual cycle never ceases to amaze me.

The first day of spring is determined on the Gregorian calendar by the time when the sun’s most direct rays hit the equator. And usually it is a date I celebrate in theory, more about the promise of spring than any actual sign other than returning sunlight after a dark winter. Where I live, the actual arrival of spring is determined by rain instead of snow, outdoor air that does not assault your flesh, slush, mud, AND the quickly increasing daylight hours. Usually spring arrives in April, a season we call break up. The hard pack of winter snow and ice literally breaks up and floods over the frozen ground until it finally warms up enough to soak in and stay. But this year spring has sprung early with a rainstorm starting on the 17th and progressing into the 18th with sideways slashing, freezing cold rain that melted our pathetic accumulation of winter snow. I am intimately acquainted with this rain as I was about 80 miles upriver in the Wrangell St Elias National Park when it started and spent a long, cold, and not entirely happy day out in it on my snowmachine (snowmobile to non Alaskans) while returning back home. There is exposed gravel on the road, a flood in the perennial garden, a strawberry bed peeking through the snow and the beginnings of mud and muck everywhere. Hello spring…

So much for March being the best time of year in this part of the country. Might February take March’s place? Terrible to think about…

Garden starts are in the windowsills and even though the season is early already my family is eating dinner in their lap as the plant trays take over any horizontal surface that receives sunlight.

What are we starting this week? Snapdragons (my favorite flower!)

What are we eating on the farm this week? Delicious windowsill grown micro greens.

What is for sale at Wood Frog this week? Nothing yet! But if you want to talk gardening, I’m your girl.

I hope this first day of spring finds you excited for the upcoming season. I sure am!