The Greening of Spring

After a rather (to us farmers) long, albeit mild Winter, the soil has been turned, Winter clover has been plowed under, a year’s worth of compost spread over the fields and raised rows prepared for sowing the garden. With the beginning of March and with the help of fair weather, we began planting in earnest. We have taken a calculated risk and gone “all in” with our Spring seeds. Along the rows we can now see a haze of green where young plants are dutifully emerging: bold red Swiss chard sprouts, stout beet seedlings, spiraling pea tendrils and fragile carrot leaflets now stand where bare, frosty earth lay just weeks before.

These last days of East Tennessee warmth and sunshine have caused the cells of our Fall-planted crops to swell and fill with water. All of the sudden, the garden has become a giant salad bowl, brimming with a true bounty of juicy and crisp arugula, cress, spring onions and heirloom lettuces. Each day now we have been able to provide the culinary team with a plethora of fresh greens picked mere minutes before.

Old-timers in our area describe “shedding off slick” in the Springtime. This harkens back to the days when cattle, after a Winter diet of hay, would begin grazing on the first green growth of the year and shedding their coarse Winter coats, taking on a slick appearance. Mountain folk, whose lives so closely paralleled those of their livestock, rejoiced at the first meal of gathered Spring greens.

We invite you to the garden to experience the welcome joy of Spring with us. Walk the lush rows of our diverse fields and “shed off slick” in true East Tennessee fashion!

– Jeff Ross, Garden Manager