36F at 6 AM. Today Cammy and I got out the shovels and dug potato trenches. We dig long “straight” trenches about a foot deep, line the bottom with a healthy dollop of compost, and then wait for 60F to plant the potatoes that are currently in crates in our living room feeling toasty and warm and beginning to sprout.

In the evening, we met up with Steve and Marilyn Meyerhans of the Apple Farm in Fairfield. Steve was gloating when we arrived so we knew something had to be up. It was. Earlier in the day Steve had been walking in their orchard near a block of big, old Cortland trees planted in 1916 when he happened to look down and, voila!, there was a rusty, crusty old tool in the grass. It was a hand-forged, cleft-grafting knife. Was it set on the ground by some grafter of the past who got distracted and forgot about it? Maybe it was the last graft of the season and forgotten in the spring fever of everything else on the farm. By the time next grafting season came, it was gone. “Where did I leave that knife?” From the look of the rust, that was probably about 1920 (or so). Steve had walked past that spot 500 times (or maybe 5,000 times) over the years and never noticed it before. It must have been buried and worked its way up with the freezing and thawing of the ground this spring. Very cool.