If you've sent me an email or given me a call recently and I've been extremely slow to answer...blame it on the sun. This bout of stunningly gorgeous weather means that our usual schedule of half a day working inside and half a day working outside went right out the window. Instead, Mark and I have been catching up on all of the fun garden tasks that got put off when snow was on the ground, barely coming inside for meals and then collapsing at the end of a long, glorious day. I promise to be a better correspondent once the cold, wet weather returns this weekend.

Specifically, I've been weeding and mulching garlic and strawberries, pruning perennials, transplanting cabbage seedlings, and direct seeding carrots, parsley, and mangels this week. As I plant, I'm experimenting with the broadfork, fluffing up half of each bed while simply raking topdressed manure into the top inch of the other half. It's easy to see the broadfork's effects right away, with manure filtering down into the looser soil in the broadforked areas while the fluffed up soil sits higher above the aisles. I'll keep you posted about germination, growth, and yields of the roots in the broadforked vs. unbroadforked beds as the results come in.