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Spring has sprung

I did not want to come to work today. The morning air smelled of hyacinths and cows as I walked out the back door and to the show barn where I park my car. Spring is my favorite time of year and I simply wore out before finishing everything that I wanted to do outside over the week-end.

I love managing a farm radio network and telling the story of agriculture, but I love the farm more.

Jim has been working up the soil in the garden so the seedbed will be ready when it is time to plant. The mail carrier left the box of onion sets we’d ordered on the table in the barn office for us to find when we arrived home Saturday after spending the day at the University of Missouri Block & Bridle heifer show.

Having spent winter evenings poring over seed catalogs and sorting through “saved seeds” and last year’s leftovers, I think we are as ready as we have ever been to plant our garden. Jim planted some seeds indoors in those little netted peat pots and every day I see they are stretching their necks in the direction of the sun.

Meanwhile, the hay fields are beginning to “awaken” and hopefully we’ll soon begin to see the clover seed recently scattered with fertilizer turn into clover plants in the field west of the house.

It is breeding season on our farm. Tom turkeys strut and dance in courtship with a bevy of beauties of the opposite sex. We watched a pair of owls chasing and calling to one another in flight while we were doing cow chores one evening last week. The cows’ mating experience does not include the presence of a bull, but instead a plastic-sleeved arm, a French gun and a straw of frozen semen.

Although I’ve yet to see one this year, I know the elusive morel mushroom will soon poke its head from the rich timber soil and dare me to find it.

As farmers across the midsection of the country dive in to the 2007 growing season, there is much to contemplate. Change is in the air. The future that so many have talked about for so long has arrived. Energy from plants is a reality. There are now higher prices being paid to some in agriculture and higher prices to be paid by others in the same industry.

Crop inputs, insurance, energy, big iron, new technology, farm land and cash rent are all more expensive than they were a couple of years ago. Managing risk is more important than ever. So many business decisions must be made in advance of putting that first seed, from those bags stacked high on a palette in the shed, in the ground. So much research and preparation took place prior to hybrid selection and purchase of the seed and chemical.

As you continue your vigil, awaiting the right conditions to lay that seed in the ground, I hope you will find the time to smell the hyacinths and watch the sky as it changes from day to night. I hope you will find time to contemplate the turkey’s dance and the Baltimore oriole’s nest-building and the discovery of the first morel mushroom in your area.

Time passes so quickly. Before you know it, the corn crop will be as high as an elephant’s eye and then you will be harvesting it and planning for the next growing season.