Today. I will start seed flats of broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, onions, leeks, artichokes, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, basil, parsley and of course FLOWERS!

I disagree with T S Eliot. April is not the cruelest month.

At least in April you believe in spring, even if you know it will be cruel. In March, you believe only in March.

So, when the March weather turned predictably ugly again, we did what everyone in public education in America does. We spent the weekend fund raising.

Yesterday, it was a big fund raising dinner and auction for William’s seventh grade. They are trying to raise enough money to take a field trip to Montreal. This has involved selling wrapping paper, popcorn, and magazines door to door, selling soup and sandwiches at town meetings, selling candy at basketball games as well as selling babysitting services at any event where there are children in need of entertainment.

Frankly, William’s seventh grade class has more business experience than I had by the time I was twenty thirty, forty, fifty.

Will, Jim, and I were on macaroni and cheese duty for yesterday’s dinner. Along with some thirteen year old business moguls, we made four cheese Macaroni and Cheese for the 270 people who attended the dinner.

Here the moguls prepared to grate the cheddar. Getting a chance to wield a big knife in the kitchen is very motivating.

A victory celebration was held as the last of the 15 pounds of cheddar was grated.

10 pounds crumbled gorgonzola, 10 pounds grated parmesan, and fifteen pounds grated mozzarella at the ready.

With six gallons of milk we made a lot of cream sauce.

Then added the gorgonzola.

Then the cheddar and mozzarella.

We added three enormous trays of 30 pounds of cooked rigatoni.

Will did the final mixing before its was put in pans, topped with the parmesan and popped in the ovens.

Many hands made light work.

So some of the crew moved on to the ham part of the dinner preparation. Liz Taylor, who worked here at the farm for many years, now owns her family’s smokehouse. They provided the five hams for last night’s dinner. Liz had the kids pour maple syrup on the hams, also provided by Liz’s family who has a sugarhouse as well.

A nod to the vegetable kingdom was made with the salads.

With the macaroni and cheese in the oven and only a few needed for the hams and salads, the remainder of the crew was conscripted to cut brownies into 270 equal size pieces. Jim does the math to figure out how.

In the whirlwind that followed as we served the meal, my picture taking fell to the wayside, but I did get one photo of one happy customer, Will’s cousin Caroline.

Eighty gallons of sap, a good boil in the pans, plenty of firewood, sunshine, blankets, a good book, and

my mates. Does it get any better than this?

Yesterday, the Angels gave us the thumbs up. It was time to tap the maple trees for maple sugaring.

We greeted each tree as a beloved friend.

Our support staff for tapping was a bit thin on the ground. The Sheehan sugaring crew of yore is scattered to the four winds.

Just when the kids get big enough to haul the sap buckets, they get big enough to spend March in their own lives! Can you imagine?

Ben is off on a golf junket to Alabama for his spring break away from his teaching post. Lizzy is rock climbing in California for her spring break away from her teaching post. Emily’s spring break has come and gone and she is back in Maine, searching through snowdrifts for her lost cell phone.

William holds up the rear guard. Yesterday however, nothing could tempt him to join us in hauling sap buckets through snow drifts.

He noted that once we had trampled out paths to each tree, he would be happy to go on collecting runs with me. He will be as good as his word on this, because he actually does like the collecting runs.

But for tapping, it was just me and Jim.

And it was a lovely couple of hours.

If a staff goddess ships on Monday, I try to organize it so she invoices on Tuesday and does email on yet another day. From day to day, even hour to hour, we take turns with these jobs and others like bottle labeling, red shiso tincture making, mail runs, and door service for dogs and cats.

Jim’s brother, Stephen, calls this cross training. As a manager of a large company, he has given me many good reasons for doing this. For example, if someone is on vacation or out for some reason, the rest of us know how to fill in.

It takes awhile to cross train someone in all the things we do here. When a new goddess arrives to work here, she usually spends a couple of months primarily at the shipping desk before she is plunged into the arcane and mysterious world of Green Hope Farm invoicing.

As a mother in “Love Actually” remarks about sewing an octopus costume, “Eight is a lot of Legs, Davey.” So too I say, “Six zillion Flower Essences is a lot of Essences to keep track of, especially when it was my right brain that organized our systems.”

Right now, Masaki is at the computer seeking the codes for all the Flower Essences on our line up. May she finish her quest before dawn tomorrow.

Here she is at the keyboard. Jane is on her right available for moral support and strong doses of green tea with pink Flower Essences in it.

Masaki also began to learn the ropes on email this morning. In one of those wonderful Angel synchronicities, when I went on email with Masaki, after we had cleared out the 437 viagra ads, the second email Masaki opened was from an animal practitioner in Japan. How thrilled we were to have Masaki answer the email in Japanese!
The reason for all this flurry of cross training is that a few weeks ago long time staff goddess Patricia departed from the farm as part of the sea changes of her retirement. Sophie and Masaki wanted to take Patricia’s hours which was terrific good news for the farm. Losing someone who has worked with the Flower Essences as long as Patricia leaves a gap in our collective skill set. It was great to have Sophie and Masaki expand their hours because they are already well into the process of learning their way around our Flower Essence collection.

This week saw me sipping big tall glasses of Showcats water so that I could somewhat coherently begin to explain email and invoicing to Sophie and Masaki. We have so many systems born to prevent routine goofs and again there are all those quirks like Wild Physic Nut was made on St John but is listed in the Bermuda collection. It is a lot to explain, let alone absorb. Fortunately, office supervisor May May was there to help.

We had a particular and unusual treat on this day of training, when a saw whet owl landed on a peach tree branch right outside the office. This tiny owl of about six inches is described in Peterson’s Guide to the Birds as an absurdly tame little owl.

A short eared owl, saw whets hunt during day and night and migrate from here to Louisiana, leading us to wonder why this fluff ball was back here so early. Saw Whets are considered courageous, playful, curious, and extremely strong and fast when in flight. They can best hawks and crows in aerobatics and have an uncanny knack of being in the right field at the right time to find the juiciest mice.

We hope he finds a good dinner soon. We wish him well and thank him for giving us such a delightful day of owl medicine.