It isn’t often that a soul can participate in a little winter exercise while concentrating on the soon-to-be green pastures, crop-planting and gardens.
Snow that fell on Sunday and Monday – and which occasionally fell on Tuesday – provided a good base for an old farm kid to grab his back-country cross country skis for a late-morning ride across some of Trempealeau County’s northern Driftless Area soil.
While taking that ski-ride, the old kid made note of the fields where a neighbor recently finished combining the corn that fall and early winter weather hadn’t allowed; the snapped-over stalks glistening in icy wait for not-so-distant warmth that will allow this year’s crops to be planted.
Note was made of last year’s soybean stubble barely poking through the slowly melting snow, that stubble inviting the farmer’s no-till planter to deposit this year’s seeds between their rows.
The mid-April sun had re-exposed some of the pasture grass along a south-facing slope that had been covered with the snow. It was a dull green before that snow fell, but a deep verdant green was being revealed under the sun’s gentle spring warmth – evidence of the old-timers’ adage that such a slow-melting spring snow massages the soil as it melts, making it what they called poor-man’s fertilizer.
Back at the farmhouse, the old farm kid assessed his cache of spring garden seeds, and then grabbed an egg carton to fill some of the compartments with topsoil and plant some of the cool-weather seeds. Though the snow covered the farm’s garden plots, the land’s spirit was saying it won’t be long before the seeds, carefully started on farmhouse windowsill perches, could be transferred to the gardens. The warmer-weather garden plants would be started later for Memorial Day transfers, but those cold-weather plants give hope for a long and strong season of home-grown goodness.
The skis were set aside after that mid-April ride, their owner intent on getting them into warm-weather storage. The time for planting is nigh, even though the remaining snow is in dispute.
— Scott Schultz
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