Glances around the farmyard and fields while doing morning chores in the region tell us the slowly melting snow that fell early this week is leaving deep seas of green where the April sun is caressing the soil back to life.
Old-timers referred to April snows as poor-man’s fertilizer, for the way it so often seeped moisture into the soil so much more gently than a spring rain. Agronomists in the region aren’t sold on the notion that the spring snow’s moisture necessarily was needed, though at least one said the snow might have done its job in protecting alfalfa from the week’s relatively cold weather.
Mike Gronski, a Pioneer agronomist who works out of Marshfield — where the land lies heavy and flat — said during an early morning visit that the snow adds to the already-important need for us to get out and assess the year’s alfalfa stands. Much of the region’s alfalfa had broken dormancy and started its spring growth before the snow, he said; the snow likely protected it from the cold but he said only a walk in the fields can say how well that protection worked.
There’s no doubt that those field-walks are important to assess how well the alfalfa stands made it through winter and this most recent cold and snow. That’s something those who work the land already know.
Besides the assessment, of course, those walks also allow for a few moments of slowing down and enjoying what spring is bring to us.
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