Spring Has Sprung

Across the Fence #544

The weather has been wonderful lately. The sun is shining, the temperature is rising, and green is starting to replace the drab, brown landscape. Spring is in the air and I see people outside working, walking, running, and biking, after being cooped up inside during the long winter.

It reminds me of the days when farmers kept their cows inside the barn all winter. When spring arrived they were finally allowed outside again. I can still smell the barn and cows when I think about it. As we unhooked their stanchions they seemed to know that spring had arrived and they were free to go outside again. At first they stumbled on weak, unsteady legs, as they hurried to get to the door. I can still see them running and jumping around in the barnyard, free of the confining stanchions after a long winter. 

Then the head-butting and fighting began as they reestablished the pecking order to see who the new leader of the herd would be. They would put their heads together and push against each other, first in one direction and then the other, until one cow was able to dominate the other and she finally gave up and went looking for a weaker adversary. Eventually, all 22 cows would go running down the cow lane, their tails in the air and their udders swinging from side to side. When they reached the pasture they’d turn around and come running down the cow lane, back to the barnyard. Then back to the pasture they’d go, running and jumping with pure joy at being free of the confines of the stanchions and their stall in the barn. We knew their milk production would be lower that evening.

That’s how we feel when these first lovely days of spring arrive, as free as the cows being let out to pasture again. Shorts and t-shirts come out of storage, snowblowers and shovels are put away and lawnmowers are fired up to see if they still work. People venture outside without three layers of clothing to get the mail, and they don’t have to walk like a penguin to keep from slipping and falling on the ice and snow. Yes, spring is a glorious time. If we had tails like the cows, we’d lift them in the air and go skipping and running around our yards, yelling, “It’s Spring! It’s Spring!” at the top of our lungs.

Soon the smell of manure being spread on the fields will be replaced by the wonderful smell of a new-plowed field. There’s a freshness that goes right along with spring’s arrival. When I encounter that smell, I see a deep, long furrow in my mind; the cool, black, turned-over soil on one side of the furrow and old vegetation or last year’s corn stalks on the other side, waiting to be turned under. Birds follow the plow, looking for a meal, as the worms and grubs suddenly find themselves exposed. Once again, nature provides, and some must die so others might live. The fresh smell of earth turned bottom-side-up also brings images of arrowheads, as a young boy follows the plow, hoping to spot one in the new-turned soil.

Many fields seem to grow stones in the spring. We never had a problem on our farm, but many farms harvested a good crop of stones each spring. They sprang from the ground as if the farmer had seeded them in the fall. A stone boat pulled behind the tractor was soon piled high with the new harvest on some farms. Those stones were usually taken to the edge of the field where they were piled up and became the stone fences you can still see in some places. 

Spring was also the time for farmers to mend their fences. Fence lines were checked and new posts replaced old and rotting ones. New wire was strung where needed. Today you can hardly find a fence anywhere that would need repairing. Most have been torn down to make larger fields. 

When I think of the title of this column, “Across the Fence,” I think of fences in a positive way. It’s where neighbors on both sides of the fence met and talked. The main reason for fences on the farm was not to fence your neighbor out, just to keep your cows from straying onto his land. There’s nothing like a herd of cows, trampling and eating their way through a cornfield, to add a bit of tension between neighbors! Heaven forbid if they got in your tobacco field. A herd of dairy cows trampling my father’s tobacco field would have brought out the heavy artillery! As Robert Frost said, “Good fences make good neighbors,” and they keep stray critters from being harmed too.

Yes, the call of spring is in the air, telling us to come outside, soak up the sun, splash through puddles of water, breath in the many smells of the awakening earth, and refresh our spirit after a long winter. There’s something uplifting about a spring day. It reminds us that life is always changing and renewing itself, and a new day is coming. It’s just over the horizon. You can hear it in the sound of the running water and the many smells that remind us that spring has sprung.

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