I have a confession to make.  When it was 55 degrees on Tuesday and Mark had gone to town to do our weekly chicken waterer mailing, I snuck out and weeded a row of berries.  It wasn't on the list --- I was supposed to be pruning --- but the ground had thawed, and three years of organic mulches had turned the soil into black, moist humus.  The weeds almost seemed to jump out of the ground into my hands, and my fingers ended up just as black as the soil.

The chickens were overjoyed, and so was I.  Only later, did I find out that my bout of winter weeding was akin to self-medication.  A few years ago, scientists discovered that a bacterium in the soil --- Mycobacterium vaccae --- works like an antidepressant by tricking our brains into making more serotonin.  Maybe this would explain why the garden-obsessed among us go a little crazy at this time of year.

Feeling blue?  Go play in the dirt!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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