As Johnny Horton sang in 1959, “When it’s springtime in Alaska, it’s forty below!” It wasn’t quite forty below today, but it did look like Day One of the Iditarod. The snow came in with a vengeance. It started an hour after sunrise and was still going strong at dark. In the end only 6-8” fell, but it was still what I call a regulation snow storm.

Those spring snows: are they The Poorman’s Fertilizer? According to a friend, only snow after April 10th—the official Poorman’s start date—can be considered as such. April 10th is also the official “return of the Canada Geese” date. Every year I hear them fly over the orchard on the 10th. Maybe these two seemingly unrelated events are not so unrelated. (Like so many things.)

Though the ground is still frozen down under, the surface is softening up, and when this latest snow melts, much of it will be absorbed into Mother Earth. The plants will be glad for it, and we will too. The magic of Water. The snow this past winter has been almost entirely of the dry kind. We had hardly any days over freezing for all of January and February. But the snow today is the wet kind. It’s heavy. Were it dry, it might have been a foot deep. Were it rain, it would already be gone down the Sheepscot River en route to Wiscasset. This way it has a far better chance of getting put to use in the orchard. Give me snow in March!