Spring forward? Yes, please! The days are getting longer and every now and then a breeze brings us premonitions of apple blossoms and strawberries. Unlike winter, springtime is all action, all the time, on the farm. Ewes and cows keep farmers up into the wee hours, dropping lambs and calves at the least convenient time. It's true! Ask a farmer when the lambs drop, and they'll answer "2am in the rain" or "noon, over the stream, hidden by a bush." Orchard branches need trimming to ensure strong, healthy fruit trees. Greenhouses are bursting with seedlings getting a head start on the warming trend. Where the ground is unfrozen, soil needs to be tilled, cover crops turned, and fertilizer spread.

Spring has arrived!
By the book, an astronomical one that is, spring begins on the Vernal Equinox, generally March 21st in the Northern Hemisphere and September 22nd in the Southern, and goes through the summer solstice (June 22nd/December 22nd). Meteorologists skew a little earlier by declaring spring to come on March 1st in the Northern Hemisphere and September 1st in the Southern.

For many cultures, the arrival of spring is an important time punctuated by major festivals and holidays. Many cultures, particularly in the East, celebrate their New Year in conjunction with the pastoral promises of the first day of spring. In the West, religious holidays devoted to rebirth mirror the natural happenings of a birthing and planting season. For the rest of us, spring starts when the snow turns to rain, the days get longer, the sun gets warmer, dormant bulbs throw off starts that promise flowers, and root vegetables are exchanged for fresh greens!

After months of storage vegetables, locavores can count on spring to liven things up a bit! All kinds of greens, including spinach, lettuce and all the leafies in the Brassica family (mustard greens and turnip greens), are generally the first crops to hit the market. Greens are followed by asparagus, spring onions and garlic scapes. Depending on your climate, strawberries (and most likely shortcake!) may not be too far behind.

Buy local! That's what it's all about...
Buying local gets easier as spring rolls around, but the local craze can still be confusing. Because of this, Sustainable Table took the winter to write a new "Eat Local, Buy Local, Be Local" section that is all about local - what it means and how to shop local throughout the growing season. So, grab your reusable totes and head on out to your local farmers' market, your first CSA pick-up or neighborhood farm stand! Here are some recipes to help you craft your shopping list:

Garlic Scape Compound Butter - you'll be spreading this on everything in no time!

• One stick of softened butter
• One bunch (4-5 stalks) garlic scapes
• Sea salt - to taste

Rough chop the scapes and butter. Combine in food processor. Add salt to taste. If your mixture is too stiff, add a little olive oil and continue mixing.

This compound butter is wonderful to saute vegetables, like broccoli or green beans, to season meat or fish, or to make fragrant and springy garlic bread. The scapes have much of the flavor of garlic, but with a gentler touch.

Spring Salad with Green (Spring) Onion Bacon Vinaigrette
For the salad: your favorite spring mix, lettuce, or spinach
For the dressing:

• 4-5 strips of bacon (local meat, eggs and cheese are almost always in season!)
• Balsamic vinegar
• 1 large or 2 small spring onions
• Salt
• Pepper

Over medium high heat, fry bacon until crispy. Remove from pan and chop into small pieces. Turn heat down to medium and saute fine chopped spring onions until they start to caramelize. Add balsamic vinegar to cover the bottom of the pan (careful - liquid will make a big splash when first added). Whisk the sauce together, being sure to get all the tasty bits off the bottom of the pan. Take off heat, salt and pepper to taste. Dress salad while dressing is still warm. Top with bacon bits. Strawberries make a stellar addition to this salad if they're in season.

Shop at home. Grow your own!
If buying local doesn't quite fill your fix for fresher-than-fresh produce, grow your own. Starting a garden and growing your own food can be immensely satisfying and spring is the perfect time to get started. Whether you have a yard waiting to be cultivated or a window box looking to work a little overtime, you can grow your own food. One tricky detail that all farmers and gardeners face is what to plant when. For more than 190 years, the Farmers Almanac has served as a guide for answering this all-important question. For example, a quick glance at the Gardening Calendar for 2009 shows that April 1st is not a good day to plant because seeds could rot in the ground from wet soil. Whereas the 10th and 11th are good days for planting root crops, sowing hay and planting flowers. On the 19th and 20th go after the weeds and, on the 30th, go crazy: plant tomatoes, beans, pepper, corn, cotton and other above-ground crops. Decide what to plant and talk with farmers and gardeners in your area. They may have other time-tested words of wisdom to guide your first harvest. Also, check out our brand-new "Grow Your Own" page for a pile of additional resources.

Busy, Busy Bees
Once you get your garden going, you may want to contemplate how to draw in some bees to ensure that all your crops are properly pollinated. Bees spread pollen and nectar on their body, which has an electrostatic charge, bringing it from flower to flower wherever they are working. With almost one-third of the human food supply dependent on them for pollination, bees have their work cut out for them in springtime.

Historically, wild hives of bees managed crop pollination. Gardeners and farmers traditionally planted a wide variety of flowers in close proximity, and minimized pesticide use, to attract bees to their crops. Today, consolidation in agriculture has driven many farmers to rent hives for a matter of weeks at just the right moment of budding. As a result, beekeepers, or apiarists, manage traveling hives that bring their pollination magic to farms and orchards throughout many regions of the country. However, sustainable farmers and gardeners alike are working hard to ensure that traditional beekeeping techniques don't disappear. To learn more about bees and bee keeping, check out the American Beekeeping Federation.

Lately, there is significant concern over a phenomenon that has come to be called Colony Collapse Disorder. CCD is a phenomenon where whole colonies of worker bees completely disappear. Beekeepers' records show that periodic disappearances have happened throughout the history of the industry but a name was coined when huge numbers of colonies in North America disappeared over a matter of months in 2006. No one agrees on the cause of CCD - in fact many argue that it is simply the result of developments in modern agriculture and the erosion of the bee's natural ecosystem. Theories run the gamut from pesticide use to radiation from cell phone use to a side effect of genetically engineered crops.

Turn waste into gold - start a compost pile
Don't waste all that hard work from your bees. Once your fruit and veggie plants have budded and enjoyed a friendly pollination visit from your local bees, make sure that the fruits they stand to bear grow as strong and healthy as possible. Most plants need extra nutrients in addition to what is already found in the soil - particularly if the same piece of land is used season after season to grow the same crops. Don't despair; the solution is right in your kitchen - albeit in a most unlikely spot. One side effect of eating local food, particularly through a CSA or farmers market, is that trash cans may start to overflow with organic matter. Organic matter, like carrot tops, spines from leafy greens, stems from herbs - basically everything from a plant that doesn't get eaten, makes fantastic compost. Homemade organic compost will help gardens, window boxes, and houseplants flourish in the summer sunshine. To get started, take a look at our article Vermicomposting 101, Organic Gardening's "Build a compost pile", or City Farm's step by step slide show on composting with worms - a great option for apartment dwellers and landless folks. For more info, check out these videos: How to Make Compost with the Kitchen Gardeners International and Setting Up a Worm Composting Bin by the Compost Guy.

No matter if you are slicing and dicing in the kitchen or planting row by row in the garden, springtime is irresistible. When the trees pop with blossoms and the birds sing, it's time to stretch and stroll. And eat!

- by Laura Edwards-Orr