This year as spring approaches, the uncertainty of the season makes the gardener and farmer in me anxious.

In this area every year brings some uncertainty: we get warm weather followed by snow; more warm weather followed by below zero temperatures, and frost is possible well into June. But the winter that is this week melting all around us has been more unstable than most.

We had some good snow falls. I was able to ski out my back door just last week, and after last Tuesday night, the snow banks were pilled as high as they ever get. But since January, each time we got snow, the temperatures climbed so that within days the snow melted and almost disappeared. Much of this winter, there were too many green patches to ski.

Yes the driving was easy. Most days. We had less white-outs. But there were mornings when rain fell on snow making the back roads incredibly treacherous. School buses were cancelled regularly.

And more important, most winters I look out at the thick layer of snow on the pasture by the barn, and I know that the moisture will bring growth as soon as April arrives. The question that haunts me: will there be enough moisture this year?

There may be. The stream that runs under our lane has kept flowing all winter. Fall rains filled our swamp to capacity and more. Then, because the ground did not freeze before the December rains and the January/February snow-falls, moisture soaked in. And if the pattern of system moisture reaching our area continues, I think we may have enough moisture for crops, for hay, for gardens, and perhaps even for lawns.

But I don't know. What I know is that most years it is lake effect snow that builds up the moisture on our lands. So I think that we all need to pay attention to what is going on with the land this spring and summer in order to protect the plants we depend on.

Because on our farm we have cut back on the number of animals we have, we are not that worried. We have a lot of hay to harvest, we are not planting grain, and if we do not get a second cut, we will manage. But more and more land in our region is going into crops--beans, corn, and grain--and yield in these fields will be affected by the amount of rainfall the area gets.

I wonder, are we paying attention to the health of our neighbourhood? Not just the people down the street but the land we depend on.

A couple weeks ago, I took time to read Wendell Berry's essays in The Art of the Commonplace. Berry is a farmer, novelist and environmental thinker living in Kentucky. There was a lot of good stuff in what I read, thoughts that will keep me pondering. One of the reminders that caught my attention was that our neighbourhood includes animals and plants, people, and the air, water and soil we depend on.

Often reflections on community remind us to widen our circle, to look beyond the relationships that first come to mind to include a broader range of people. Some remind us to remember the living beings we share the ecosystem with. But Berry expanded the lens to include the non-living part of our environment. He pointed out that the physical world grounds our neighbourhood.

When we think about human health, we know that the quality of the air is important. A few years ago when we thought about acid rain, we realized that this weather phenomenon drastically affected the health of maple trees. Berry points out that we also need to think about the health of the soil because the quality of nutrients and the vitality of the microbes that live there are essential to all plant growth.

If we hope for a healthy neighbourhood long-term, we need to pay more attention to the whole ecosystem, locally and globally. That is a lot to keep in our heads, but we can each make a start. Perhaps we start with planning for tasty ripe tomatoes this September by applying compost in our garden, watching for a late frost, paying attention to how much rain falls, and making space for the pollinators who visit. This attention to what is right in front of us may teach us how to care for the larger neighbourhoods we are part of.

Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister and writer living near Walters Falls.