Start with the Livestock, Not the Seed Packets

On a smallholding, spring rarely arrives in the tidy order the catalogues suggest. The ewes lamb before the ground has warmed, the hens start laying with enthusiasm, and the grass begins to move just as you were beginning to wonder whether it ever would. The temptation is to chase everything at once. Resist it. Livestock come first because they cannot wait, whereas a seedbed can usually be nudged back a week without disaster.

Walk your fields and pens each morning with a notebook. Check body condition on ewes, watch for the early signs of lameness in the flock, and make sure water troughs have not been fouled or frozen overnight. If you are lambing, have your lambing kit assembled and within reach well before the first ewe bags up: gloves, lubricant, iodine, stomach tube, colostrum, and a heat lamp that you have actually tested. A headtorch with fresh batteries lives by the back door from March onwards.

The Kitchen Garden: Soil First, Seeds Second

Before you sow anything, deal with the soil. Winter rain compacts bare ground and leaches nutrients, so fork over beds gently rather than digging them to death. If your soil is heavy clay, work in well-rotted manure or homemade compost a fortnight before sowing and let the worms do the rest. On lighter, sandier plots, a mulch now will save you endless watering in July.

Then think about your sowing order. Hardy crops go in first because they can shrug off a late frost:

• Broad beans and peas sown direct once the soil is workable, though cloche them if the forecast turns bitter.
• Onion and shallot sets pushed into firm ground with the tips just showing.
• Early potatoes planted in trenches and earthed up as the shoots emerge, fleece at the ready.
• Salad leaves, radish, and spinach under cover for the earliest cut.

Hold back the tender things — courgettes, beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes — until the risk of frost has genuinely passed. In most of the UK that means late May, and in the north it can mean early June. Sowing a month early rarely gains you a month of growth; it usually gains you a tray of dead seedlings.

Fencing, Gates, and Water: The Unromantic Essentials

Spring is the only sensible time to repair boundaries, because by June the grass will be waist-high and the nettles will have opinions. Walk every fence line with a pair of pliers, a reel of wire, and a hammer. Look for sagging stock netting, rotten posts at the base, and strainers that have shifted in the wet. A ewe will find the one weak spot in a mile of fencing, and she will find it at dusk.

Gates deserve a proper looking over too. Oil the hinges, check the latches actually catch, and mend any gaps underneath where lambs or piglets can squeeze through. If you keep poultry, this is also the moment to check that fox-proofing has survived the winter.

Water is the job everyone forgets. Clean out troughs, check ballcocks, and flush the lines from any standpipes that have been sitting idle. Algae and debris build up quietly, and a sluggish trough is a disease risk in warm weather.

Greenhouse, Polytunnel, and Potting Shed

Give your undercover space a proper spring clean before it fills up. Wash the glass or polythene inside and out to let in maximum light, sweep the floor, and clear out overwintering slugs and snails that have made themselves comfortable. Ventilation matters more than most people expect; on a sunny April afternoon a closed greenhouse can hit 30°C and cook your seedlings.

Sort your seed stash ruthlessly. Old parsnip and onion seed germinates poorly, so buy fresh. Check that your compost is this season's and not a sodden bag from two years ago. Pot on anything that is rootbound, prick out your tomatoes and peppers, and get your hardening-off routine established: out by day, in by night, for at least a week before planting out.

Poultry, Pigs, and the Rest of the Holding

If you keep hens, spring means red mite. Strip and scrub the coop, dust the crevices with diatomaceous earth, and check the birds for lice around the vent and under the wings. Egg numbers climb with the daylight, so adjust feed accordingly and make sure nest boxes are clean and dry.

Pigs are straightforward in spring but need shade planning now. Repair arcs and huts, check that wallows will hold water, and confirm your electric fencing is pulsing properly. If you are buying weaners, book them early — good stock sells out by April.

Finally, make a realistic list and pin it somewhere you will see it. Ten jobs a week, crossed off as you go, beats a heroic weekend followed by a fortnight of ignoring everything. Spring on a smallholding is a marathon run at a trot. Keep moving, keep notes, and enjoy it — the long evenings are coming.