Baby Steps

The problem with having to stay out of the growing areas in the early spring due to wet soggy conditions (see previous post) is mostly mental. Of course, it's also physical, being that I don't tend to excercise nearly as much as it would take to make up for the work I'm missing. Okay, I hardly excercise at all in the cold, wet, snowy, windy months. Which we are still in
But the soil is drying, just perfectly moist under the shallow crust, and my desire to go dig in it is immense. So this morning after taking care of the birdies (the many, many birdies), I grabbed a digging fork and rake and headed to one of the beds I mulched a few months ago for the corn rotation (see previous post "Reading Gene Logsden"). This bed's about 30 feet long, and I wanted to turn over about 20 feet of that, so I began digging. The day was increasingly breezy but sunny and not too cold, so it was nice to start with. However, by the time I'd covered about 8 feet, the breeze was getting noticeably stronger and my hat was flapping around my ears. By the time I'd gone another two feet, the wind was trying to scrape the hat off my head, though I had it tied on firmly, and my jacket was flapping so it was hard to control the fork. Of course, I wasn't surprised; I knew there was another storm passing us by just to the north, dragging the jet stream down to the ground (the forecast for the afternoon is "gusts to 60-65 miles per hour"). It's just so amazing how fast the conditions can deteriorate from merely unpleasant to untenable.
I quit at the halfway point, quickly smoothed out the bed with a rake, and sowed some old seeds to act as a cover crop until it's warm enough to plant corn, some time around late May. This is what I call a dump planting, since it doesn't take much effort to simply flick the seeds around and then cover with the rake. This time I used leftover seeds from 2007--lettuces, arugula, asters, cabbage, and a few other cool-season plants. Hopefully some of them ended up on the turned soil (I have a feeling a few flew off in the wind before I could cover them) and will germinate in the next month. It's always worth a try.
So it wasn't much, but it' a start, and in a few days when the weather's warmer and a little quieter I'll get back out there to continue digging, smoothing, and planting, and the season will go on from there..

Oh, and now, an hour after my attempt, the forecast is for "gusts to 65-70 miles per hour." I have to stop listening to the forecasts!