Easter Sunday with my family had an interesting effect on me. I've realized that a Sunday spent with family can in no way shape or form be considered a day off. I thought things went well and it wasn't until the next day when I woke up and my body ached in an odd way that I realized I had been holding myself tight, much as one might clench a fist. I felt emotionally exhausted from the experience but I give myself credit for going to these things. For close to 18 years I avoided my family and family holidays. Since 2006 I've been to 3 Thanksgivings and 3 Easters. (I don't do Christmas.)

Sunday morning I had this really intense dream with Anita Baker, an R & B singer whose music I adore. The dream was really long. In the first part of the dream she and I were hanging out at a museum. We were in a grassy courtyard, on a sunny day, talking. Then her driver drove us to the shore. We we walking along the beach the talking. Then we went to climb some dunes and we were supposed to cross the dunes and I'm not sure where we were going to emerge. Anita took a few steps and I said, "Anita, I don't think I can follow you." She came back to me and said, "All you have to do is let go." In the dream she was a great listener and a wonderful conversationalist and she was very kind and sweet.

When I woke up from the dream I thought, "Wow! Anita Baker is so cool." My next thought was, "I think I'll follow her advice."

For the past 2 days I have been letting go. I'm not even quite sure how this works. When I have a negative or annoying thought I think, "Let it go." I'm going to keep at this for a couple of weeks and see what happens. Already I feel much less burdened -- which is a nice feeling.

Things on the farm are progressing. We've got trays of seedlings in the green house and trays of seedlings germinating in the downstairs bathroom. We had an "issue" a couple of weeks back. We emailed a scan of some leaves that had yellowed, fearing a mold or pathogen. Rob Wick at Umass who specializes in plant disease thinks that we had an issue that arose from the environment and that the cuticle was separating from the leaf. Needless to say, this "issue" struck the Fear of G-d into us. We quickly quarantined all the effected plants, dropped the temperature in the seed pod, and increased the ventilation. This brought about an end to the syndrome. Luckily the issue seems to have effected only the cotyledons and the seedlings became more hardy.

We've manured and plowed Hardwick. Petersham is soon to be amended and tilled up.

Funny thing is our first market days in May might be us sitting with baskets filled with fiddle head ferns that we harvest from teh forest. So much for farming when Mother Nature produces food without even batting an eyelash.