Update

I have a feeling this may be a really bad year for agriculture. Why? Available evidence and the weather thus far seems to indicate as much. We had a really cold winter here in the South. That almost never happens, these days. Then it warmed up around the first of March and stayed warm –I’m talking 70 degree days, with a couple of days in early March that were around 85. Then Monday and Tuesday of this week we had another hard freeze. Now, that would not ordinarily be a problem –our frost-free day here is technically April 15, and we usually get a couple of frosts in early April. But because the weather has been so warm everything has popped –including the fruit trees. There may be no peaches this year. Sigh. To make matters worse, all the rain we’ve had has swamped a lot of early spring vegetables and made it too wet to plant more. The early corn can’t go in right now because the seeds would rot in the field. Later on we’ll probably have droughts.

My rented farm is doing well. The greens are doing okay, but I planted them after the last round of torrential rains. Everything else is still in pots in my office. I knew better than to go ahead and put out my tomatoes like so many folks have been doing. I had the feeling we’d have another frost or two. I finally got an offer on the house, which is a very good thing. As long as it passes the inspection it’s sold and I’ll get a bit of money out of it.

The first copy of Walk-About came in yesterday. Am I ever excited over that! It looks wonderful. It’ll be in stores soon and I’m taking a bunch of orders from people I know. For once, most things are looking up.