Invincible Spring

To be fair, as I sit here writing this, a gale-force, bitter wind is howling across the flats and shredding the night air with icy talons.  An accretion of ice makes walking an extreme sport.  Wind chills have plummeted to -3.  But this is a blog about spring, according to the title...  if even just to remind ourselves that spring will come, despite the frozen grip winter seems to have on us this year.

Spring is tucked into the expectant mothers filling our "maternity ward" with a sound we like to desribe as "wildebeast crossing the plains," grunting with largeness, ready to burst with young.  Once a year, the does put on a fantastic display of late-pregnancy chatter.  It only happens in spring, and last time I walked through the barn, the wildebeast were in full conversation.  Welcome, spring! (Let me tie my hat down tighter, though... this wind-driven ice hurts my ears...)

Spring is also quickly revealing itself with the promise of another busy kidding season.  Not wanting to count the ... um..... chickens before they hatch (kids before they hop?)... expectant mothers are not enough to prove spring is rallying for a wonderful reveal.  Let's find it in the soft, downy quiet of a newborn kid.

Or in the daily excitement of saying, "how many?"  and, "what colors?" that we ask anyone who has been to the barn more recently that the others.

(It's also in wondering how two beautiful bucklings will stay in the barn, and not be smuggled out under jackets of the grandchildren for pets...)

Spring is in unpacking the kid scale and weighing in newborns during evening hours, while neighbors watch The Bachelor season finale, and not minding one bit that we have no idea what people are talking about in television land.  This is so much more real than reality TV!

Spring is in the tender hands that cradle newborn kids for shots, 

or simply because, sometimes, there is nothing sweeter than a baby snuggle.

Spring is in fastidious record-keeping as the kids arrive as quickly as they can be counted, some days, and in junior farmers practicing this important job, too.

Spring is in the sun having strength again when the wind quiets down.  It's in watching over the does while basking in the sun, only to have the chair occupied by spring-fever goats the moment the spot is vacated.

(That white stuff behind the frolicking goats?  That's just another climbing hill for them....  and..... Nitrogen..... this is a blog about spring, remember?)

Finally, spring is in the fact that there are 40+ kids tucked away in the barns tonight, including many beautiful new doelings yet to be caught on camera, and more on the way.  It's in the fact that this blog will be filled with "Kidding 2014" photos before you know it. 

Winter was hard, sometimes.  It has left its mark on the to-do list that didn't get completed because snow removal was a frequent chore. 

 It left a dent in the wood pile, the ice-covered equipment, and the pot holes in the roadway that could swallow a tractor.  Winter's relentless cold dug deep.  We said goodbye to a favorite doe, and see the edges of winter-weary on a few other animals here.  But it also meant moments of bird-watching with grandchildren, catching up on reading, and the shrieks of laughter ringing over the clover field quietly resting beneath a blanket of snow. 

 Despite the cold, the dark, and the snow, the seeds of spring have been planted.  

Albert Camus spoke this poetically when he wrote, "In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer." It isn't about the cold relenting, the harsh windy ice storms of winter being replaced by gentle spring rains, or even the fields once again greening in the warm days ahead.  No, the shift in seasons is about something much deeper- the thing that gives a famer the strength to face difficult days, long, cold, hours, and even winter's losses:  spring is a quiet well of hope that must be ever-present- And it is the promise that we never work this land alone; that light will return on the horizon.

  It always has.