It's cold, there's still 24" of snow on the path to my henhouse, and there are icicles longer than my daughter hanging from the eves. A perfect time to think of spring and to apply the lessons learned from this winter.

I have two main projects for this coming spring - first I'm going to take the trees we're felling in a week and log them up - but this year, I'm cutting them MUCH LONGER - a full 26" long, which is 2" shorter than the depth of my wood stove. Less stacking, less splitting, less work. We had cut them to fit either my fireplace or wood stove - 14 to 16" - forget that. The fireplace is great, but I'll re-cut some already split stuff for upstairs.

The second project is to get my garden started MUCH earlier this year. I've got a bunch of old windows, I'll be laying out coldframes in my basement shop soon and starting my herbs indoors this year.

What's your spring looking like?