Enjoying prospects of spring's promise - Editorial Notebook

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Spring. Here at last with its new life, seeds being planted, shoots fighting their way from the earth, grass greening and animal babies of all kinds making their appearance.

Is spring the favourite season of most farm folk? They comprise too large and eclectic a group to generalize, but I’ll stick my neck out and say that spring must rank near the top – it’s in the top four, at least!

This season is among the busiest for our readers. But surely spring’s promise must have appeal, in this season when all things are possible and so much may lie ahead. Bumper crops. Growing herds. Bountiful gardens. Summer picnics. Opportunities to reconnect with the kids once they begin summer vacation.

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Here in the newsroom, spring brings a wealth of photos from our readers. Digital photography has made it much quicker and easier for people to provide us with snapshots from their lives, and all the spring activity on farms and ranches seems to spark the creative photo spirit.

Olive Foote of Elm Creek, Man., is one reader who appreciates the views we and our other readers provide of farming across Western Canada.

“Your photos still reflect the simple things that we enjoy so much,” Foote writes. In that spirit, she sent photos that show a recent spring activity undertaken by four generations of her family – Foote, her daughter Shirley Leask, Leask’s daughter Jenifer Freland and Freland’s daughter Mackenzie.

They gathered maple sap at Dawson Bay, Man., just north of Mafeking. Sap was collected in milk jugs, strained into cooking pots and boiled over an outdoor fire pit.

“In making maple syrup, not only is it using the bounty of the maple tree, but the milk jugs and the twine that hold them are recycled, the wood for the fire is a product of the forest and the gathering of the sap is exercise and activity in the garden of nature,” writes Foote.

“When we really look at our surroundings, we gain new respect and awareness of nature’s abundance.”

I think spring might be Foote’s favourite season, too. Below is her photo of the maple syrup collection party, which also includes Gavin Freland on the right.