There should have been a column last week but yours truly was busy crunching numbers in preparation for our annual planning. I took on the job of community accountant recently and had

to do the work while also learning a new bookkeeping program. It left me somewhat breathless, but everything got done in time. Everyone was good-humored about my hogging of our main computer and my husband kept the cups of tea coming.

It is our custom every year to have a retreat where we are all home and we have a chance to meet and talk things over together. This year we decided to split the meetings into two parts. The first part was held February 28 through March 1 and focused on our interpersonal relationships and how we handle them both in and out of community meetings. We invited David Kunin from Ganas Community in New York City to be the facilitator. David did an excellent job of both facilitating and skills teaching and we feel we got a lot of benefit from having him here.

The second part of the retreat focused on our planning for the year at hand. We talked about our finances and our work and management areas. We are fortunate in having a great pool of facilitation talent at Dancing Rabbit and Tony, Cecil and Alyson came over to work with us during the three days of meetings this past week.

I mentioned in one of my previous columns that we have a long-standing custom of a hand-made calendar for each month. They are created by our members, interns and visitors. Gigi made the one for March and she left room on the right side of the calendar for all of us to write in the signs of spring that we have observed. Some of the comments are: "hanging laundry outside"; "geese overhead", "sprouting onions and brown garlic"; "fewer layers of clothes" "peepers"; "windy" and "windier". I'm sure all of you have your own list.

One of the primary signs of spring at Sandhill the maple sap flowing. We join with folks at Dancing Rabbit in cooking the sap from our taps and theirs into syrup. It is done here since we already have a sorghum cooking operation. Stan says that it looks like it will be another light harvest this year again this year, which is disappointing. With careful rationing, we should have some of the yummy stuff available until next year's season.

Stan attended the Sweet Sorghum Producers conference in Kentucky during the week in between retreat sessions. Our friend Kris from East Wind met him there. After the conference ended, Stan went to purchase some of the equipment we will need for the conversion of our sorghum operation to steam later this year and brought it back with him.

Laird has been home this month and keeping himself busy. He has had some report writing related

to his process work to finish and has also been pitching in with the ongoing work on the farm. He and

Gigi have doing the taping and bedding of the sheetrock in the Sugar Shack room in preparation for painting the walls and finishing up the project.

Jo has been in Columbia the past few weeks doing an off-campus term internship with Ceilee. She has been shadowing him in his business. The two of them came up for a visit last weekend. Laird left this Saturday evening to spend the weekend with them and will bring Jo up with him so she can catch her train early Tuesday morning back to school in New Hampshire.

Our friend Dan Kelly came over from Canton on March 5 and gave us a mini-workshop on fruit tree pruning. Chad from Dancing Rabbit came on another day to work on the fruit trees around the Dharma pond and also passed on some of his knowledge. Growing our own fruit and vegetables is very important to us at Sandhill and we are always expanding our skills in this area.

We did end up having another birthday party for Jess at home on February 27 with cake and games. Gigi's birthday is today (Sunday) and we are going to get together after supper and read excerpts from the books we are each currently enjoying. I'll let you know what the list is in the next column. We also want to wish Chad at Dancing Rabbit a happy birthday.

The thoughts of all of us in the group are with Sue who is back in Michigan again. Her father is gravely ill and she flew there Friday to be with her family.