O’Neill: The chain of seed to harvest requires constant attention

Casey O’Neill is a farmer and owner of Happy Day Farms in Laytonville, Calif. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mendocino Voice. If you’d like to write your own column for The Mendocino Voice, send your idea to info@mendovoice.com.

Spring setup is like a mountain that we climb each year, and the differences in weather make for wildly different conditions year to year. There are more challenges with new efforts, but there are also better strategies and techniques for surmounting the hurdles. The physical labor gets just a fraction more difficult each trip around the sun as the body ages, but we learn new skills to work smarter, not harder. We build teamwork and capacity for shared effort with friends and neighbors, and somehow the work always gets done.