Snow peas are coming in nicely — I just popped the first small pod into my mouth as I strolled through the vegetable garden after my Monday evening piano lesson. 

If I’m honest, I’ll admit that spring is the time of year where I’m most likely to have mixed feelings about homesteading. In spring, I come out of my winter funk and I am ready to twirl on a mountaintop a la Julie Andrews, but at the same time, I am faced with the truth that spring delivers hard, hard work. Animal housing must be cleaned, gardens weeded and prepped, seedlings hardened off and transplanted, bees set up, not to mention the extra tasks involved with raising baby animals on the homestead. Everything seems to need fixing or cleaning or extra TLC as the snow melts, and in the meantime, we’re trying to wrap up our school year. There isn’t really much time to play in the springtime.