March may be the strangest month of all on our New Hampshire vegetable farm. We never quite know where we are in March: rain or sleet? mud or snow? The work horses start shedding their winter coats, but then the snow flies again. As for the farmers, our March question is always: to wool or not to wool?
We’ve been wearing our woolies for months: woolen long underwear, woolen socks, woolen shirts, woolen pants, woolen hats, woolen mittens. Dare we take off a woolen layer or two? Dare we bare a head, a hand, even, gasp, a wrist?
Luckily, March also means the greenhouse is up and running, and we dash across the driveway, into the tropical greenhouse, and unlayer all our woolens. (Well, we leave the long underwear and socks on. Our daughter, when she was small, solved the March problem by leaving all the woolens on except the socks, and then going barefoot in the snow. Wool hat on the top … bare feet on the bottom.)
Then there is the sketchiest March proposition: dare we take the woolen blankets off the bed?
When we first moved to New Hampshire, twenty years ago, we had the winter woolen blankets, plus two heavy comforters. Then we had the summer white cotton bedspread. It only took us one round of seasons to give up the foolish notion of seasonally changing bedcovers.
Firstly, we spend far too much time in the summer dirt for a white bedspread. Secondly, as soon as we took off the woolen blankets and the heavy comforters, gleefully welcoming spring and summer, winter came visiting again. Now our bed looks the same all year long, though we often take off one comforter in the hottest minutes of the summer.
This March, we are in an even bigger wool quandary. For years I have been saving all the woolen shirts that are too far gone to wear. Some wonderful sustainable idea was surely going to come to me. The germ of an idea finally did come, last winter, when I gave my fellow farmer a homemade gift certificate for Christmas. We’re big on gift certificates: everything from homemade bread or brownies to my very dear fellow’s offer to fill a hot water bottle for me every night in the winter. (That gift I now request every year.)
But last winter’s certificate for my fellow was the funniest one of all: “What? A secret project. When? I haven’t started it yet. Where? Right here in the house. How? I’m still figuring it out.” It took a year for me to sort out all those small details, and now the old woolen shirts are turning into a woolen quilt for my fellow.
First I cut all the non-holey parts of the shirts into seven inch squares, and then my daughter and I spent a lovely afternoon on her college vacation making up the design. We spread out all the squares and shuffled and shuffled for hours until we found our favorite pattern. Then my daughter made a map of the design, which was wise, as our projects tend to take years to complete. (Plus, one of the kitties loved this project, and contributed greatly to the design shuffling.)
Now I am actively sewing the quilt together, after we got our 1932 Singer fixed (by the nice people at the tiny Moses House in Keene, which is both a quilting and a sewing machine repair shop, in case you need either).
Here I am, solidly in my March farmer woolen muddle: do I hurry up and sew the woolen quilt together, so my fellow can enjoy it in the snow/rain/sleet/mud time of the year, or do I hurry up out to the nice warm greenhouse, forget the wool, and sow onions and tomatoes and eggplant and peppers?
Sew? Sow? Hmm. March. None of us can ever decide what to do.
Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, March 9th - 15th, 2022