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I was up early this morning, weeding the raised beds in the hoophouse. The cold-hardy greens are growing faster now, and the lengthening days are providing lots of sunlight for them to soak up and turn into green and growing plant energy.

Being away for two weeks offered me a lot of clarity, and absence definitely made my heart grow fonder of my life. I love being back to cooking on a wood cookstove, back to soaking up the sunlight and warmth in our house on winter mornings thanks to passive solar design, back to my community and my family, back to walking across the muddy fields and even back to weeding. It's good to be home.

After 12 days of cooking three meals a day for 30-60 people, it's so luscious just to make a small meal for myself and Christopher, to pull weeds, to check on the tiny spinach and carrot plants in the cold frames. These small mundane activities feel so good after being away from them. I feel powerfully, intimately connected to the land here, and glad to be back in my own homeplace, touching growing things, watching a Cooper's hawk fly low over the pastures, hearing the first Red Wing Blackbird of the season.