It's a sure sign that a new growing season is on the horizon when we start processing applications

for this year's interns and doing phone interviews. Bekka and Jess(until recently Sol) are our intern

coordinators this time around and are doing a great job of keeping the rest of us up to date on all the candidates. The intern program has become an important part of life at Sandhill Farm. As you have probably noted in reading this column, many of our interns become part of our "extended family" and

return for visits or to participate in sorghum harvest. We are looking forward to meeting and working with the 2004 crew.

With nine inches of snow on the ground and the possibility of more in store for us, it is sometimes hard to remember that the world will turn green again in the not too distant future. Our seed orders have arrived and the gardeners are dreaming of perfect tomatoes, just enough zucchini and bugs that want to take long vacations during the summer. The hot, weedy, and pest-ridden reality does disturb those winter dreams at all.

Stan and Gigi, along with Renay, headed south to East Wind Community to do a labor exchange on January 26. The Federation of Egalitarian Communities, to which Sandhill and East Wind both belong, has a program that promotes work exchanges between its members. This program enables a crew to come from East Wind every year for sorghum. One of the benefits is that it forges strong ties between the different communities.

East Wind has a sustainable forestry program and Stan helped out with that while there . He and Gigi also did some shifts in East Wind's nut butter production facility. East Wind is a major producer of natural and organic nut butters.

Stan and Gigi had time to visit with friends and enjoy the community's active social scene. East Wind has a large membership which includes a number of children. It was a fun experience for Renay to spend time with a bigger peer group.

Laird came home on February 2 for a brief stay of two days before heading out the door again. He headed off to Colorado on the train to work with two cohousing groups and will be back on the 17th. He also plans to visit with a friend in Boulder and see a cousin who attending college there. We are looking forward to having him here for a while starting later in the month.

We hosted our first visitors of 2004 on January 29 and 30. Chris and Sara are students at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. Visitors are also a big part of our scene here and we enjoy meeting all the folks who come our way during the course of each year.