I’ve spent the early days of my first season at Red Dog learning the flow of the greenhouse and all that this micro season within the farm entails, all while knowing that this fleeting experience will end after a few months of hard work and daily routines I’ve come to cherish. While tending to the various needs of these plants, I’ve come to recognize the ways I too have been nurtured and tended to in just a short time here. One morning after delivering plant starts to our neighbors at the Chimacum Corner Farmstand, I returned to the greenhouse to my new friend Viv saying, “Welcome home, oops- I mean welcome back.” I had already felt the warmth from the comment before they could correct themselves. A familiar phrase in a new environment.

The tables in our propagation house are slowly emptying out as our plant starts find their homes in the field and in our community’s home gardens. Yet, the expectation that this chapter will come to an end soon doesn’t shield me from feeling nostalgic for the familiarity of routine and friendship we’ve cultivated together while sowing seeds and growing baby plants as the cyclical nature of the season reveals itself in small details around us.

About a month ago, a single flat of Anise Hyssop sat at the end of the west table in the south. We left it there when we found a small bird’s nest with a few eggs nestled beneath the tall plants, eager in the following days and weeks to check in and monitor their growth. Eventually, one morning we noticed three baby birds appear, having hatched through the night.

As greenhouse season slows down and harvest season picks up speed, I find myself taking on new tasks and routines out in the field. This week I recognized the baby birds from the nest running around our tomato plants, still not able to fly, yet exploring this new terrain right alongside me on their new little legs. A reminder that the early stages of newness can feel clunky and frazzled, but are part of the cycle that will eventually lead back to familiarity, ease and routine. As the baby birds learn to walk, fly and search for food, I learn to prune tomatoes, move irrigation pipes, and harvest a perfectly ripe strawberry.

Our nursery is full of plant starts that started their journey alongside my own, ready for new soil to settle roots into, and I feel grateful for the ways I’ve been able to help them get ready for that next step.

~Sam