March Farm News, 2026
Spring has fully sprung in the Palouse! The days are longer, the sky is bluer, and the fields are waking up as the sunshine clears away all the cobwebs and mental cloudiness of winter.
The hills are alive
Spring in the Palouse isn’t just a change in temperature; it’s a high-definition sensory overhaul. It’s the season where the landscape stops looking like a charcoal drawing and starts looking like a Windows XP wallpaper, only better. The winter wheat has sprouted, turning the hills a shade of electric green so vibrant it feels like someone cranked the saturation to 11. The wind’s sharp, personal vendetta against your face has finally calmed after its months-long campaign, and as you relax you realize you’ve been physically tensed against the chill for months. You see the sunset again, now that it’s not already dark when you leave work, and you swear there’s never been a more beautiful horizon.
The rolling hills of the Palouse seem endless, these sweeping dunes formed over millennia from silt-sized sediment formed by windblown dust, and then carved by prehistoric, cataclysmic flooding. From a photography or geological standpoint, it’s a marvel. For the temporary residents and passers-through, it’s mesmerizing. For the luckiest among us, it’s home.
Weather rules all, yet follows none
The weather here is famously variable. We’ll bundle up in the bright and crisp 35° morning; shirk all our layers by lunchtime only to be surprised by a sudden hail or snow event; and then sigh in wonder over a double rainbow at 5:00. We often say there will be all four seasons in the course of a day, and everyone knows not to pack away snow boots before May. It keeps us on our (usually damp, and frequently muddy) toes.
This year, we were nearly washed away with extreme rains in the middle of the month: 4.4 inches fell over only four days, and the resulting river floods were second-highest on record, being beat out only by the epic fast-melt event in January 1997.
We are going into the spring growing season with a definitely super fully full water table, to say the least!
The beginning (again) of all good things
Spring in the Palouse is our annual reminder that some misery and discomfort in the winter is a small price to pay for the beauty and peace of this place—and was it even all that bad anyway? Already we’ve forgotten the gloom and are fully embracing the renewal inherent to the season.
The landscape here works hard, and after months of dormancy the burst of green feels earned. The optimism and promise of the season are heady as we plan out the planting of spring wheat and legumes. We're antsy, wanting to JUST GET STARTED ALREADY, but the unpredictability of the skies has taught us to be patient (and humble!), or before you know it your tractor is stuck in the mud and your seeding drills are all clogged up.
And hey, while you're checking the forecast take a second to look at those hills. They’re putting on quite a show.
Happy Spring, friends. See you in the next one.
