Spring season.
Those two words are spoken throughout the office all year long with layers of meaning delving far beneath the surface. Sometimes they are uttered with dread. Other times with a level of excitement or intensity. No matter how the words “spring season” roll off the tongue, we spend all year bracing for it, preparing for it, and gearing up for it. At the end of the day, we ultimately love it.
For the general population, spring tends to represent longer daylight hours. Afternoons and evenings spent working in the yard. Fresh air and warmer temperatures. Flowers blooming and grass needing to be cut. Working on that summer tan and perhaps that summer body. Winter is gone, spring is here. All seems right with the world again.
For those in the produce world, the implied meaning behind “spring” is deeper still. For starters, spring equals planting season. It means freshly plowed fields with freshly planted produce and freshly mown grass nearby. It means gearing up for what we know will be the busiest time of the year. It means long days and late nights. Everyone is coming out of the winter slump and ready to get to work in the springtime weather – dealing with the pollen the best we know how.
Here at Southern Valley, spring season means coming back to our roots. Back to what we know best. Back to where the idea for Southern Valley was conceived and brought to life. Each season – and the change in farms that comes along with it – holds a special place in our hearts, no doubt. But spring season can’t help but seem almost like a homecoming each year. After farming in Yucatan all winter, our sights are set on the farm where it all began. The farm where so many of us spent our childhood summers. The farm that still surrounds so many of our homes. The farm close enough that we can drive down the highway each day and can see what is being planted and harvested from our truck or car window. That very same farm where we are constantly stuck in “traffic” behind tractors and trailers full of produce lumbering in and out of the fields.
We love spring season and all of the joys and challenges that it ushers in. One thing we seem to know well at Southern Valley is that just as surely as the sun rises each morning, spring season will come. It does every year.