I was thinking the other day that spring is supposed to be a transition time. And it is, it is. But since moving to our farm 4 years ago, spring has felt like a push. I don’t mean that in a bad way. Motivation is at its peak, and I have lots of energy.

But here’s the thing: it’s go time. There’s an invisible force that pushes me out of bed every morning with an intense desire to get things done. Spring is here, and the growing season is on.

April has been all about bed preparation – picking out rocks, shoveling manure, working it in with the wheelhoe. And planning.

We’ve thought a lot about summer, staring at bare trees and trying to remember where shade will fall. Every year, I find it a little unnerving to try to wedge something as dynamic as a farm into neat little boxes on a page.

But it’s a fascinating process, too. It took us a few years to figure out a system that works for us, because we are not in-the-grid kind of people. But it’s flowing now.

An overriding theme always seems to emerge in the planning process, a quiet thread to guide our work, and 2025 is all about flow for me. I want things to follow a gentle, steady movement flowing this year.

But this year I’m thinking of how flow can apply to things we can’t touch, too. Ideas, processes, that kind of thing. And it’s more than that. The way I see it, flow is also about the intagible It’s-okay feeling that underrides challenging days.

Here’s an example. We let the sheep out into the garden for the first time last week. Oh, the joy! They were so happy to finally eat grass after so many months of hay.

A side note: we always let them out in the garden before letting them out on pasture. The pasture needs time to grow and establish itself, and a herd of sheep on pasture definitely slows the growth of the alfalfa, grass, and clover that will feed them during the summer.

We also want them to stomp through our garden space before planting. That way they can leave their golden droppings (manure = gold!), eat the surrounding grass, and lightly break up the topsoil with their hooves.

In any case, they promptly escaped.

This, I’ve learned, is what sheep do.

When we first got sheep, each time they escaped we became as distraught as they were. We would run around and try to herd all the panicked sheep back to the barn. This works, eventually, but it’s not fun.

This time, Rony told me the sheep had escaped as he was bringing the wheelbarrow into the garage. He did not leave the wheelbarrow outside. He took the time to bring it in, and then we walked to the barn. I scooped some oats into a bucket, and Rony and the kids went around behind the sheep. I called them. They came running and followed me to the barn. Easy peasy.

See? Flow. (And oats.)

In addition to planning our season, we’ve also been working on our upcoming Introduction to Permaculture workshop. We’re cleaning out the top floor of the barn. I love spending time there – it’s a bit like a cathedral. And there is a family of ravens living up in the corner. She goes in and out of the cracks in the barn, which makes me feel better about having cracks in the barn!

It’s been fun hearing the babies getting louder and louder. The mother is quite protective and has a favourite perch just outside the barn. She’ll squawk like crazy if anyone gets too close.