Freighter View Farms

It starts quietly, just a few trays tucked beneath the warm hum of grow lights, where tomato seedlings stretch up like sleepy children waking slowly from winter dreams. Peppers push through with determination, and the pale-green cotyledons of broccolini and cauliflower unfurl like tiny sails. It’s not yet spring, not really, but here in the glow of the basement, it has already begun.

If you’re starting seeds in Zone 6a like me, now is the time for your tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, and their kin to be well underway. By late March, they should be up and thriving, with strong stems and true leaves forming. Tomatoes need a solid 6–8 weeks before their garden debut. Peppers benefit from even longer. Broccoli and cauliflower, more cold hardy, can be started 4–6 weeks before your last frost, ready for an earlier planting under row cover or cold frame if you’re bold.

Because just above this basement grow setup, above the ceiling and through the windows frosted with the last of winter’s breath, the Bay is stirring.

The first freighter rumbled through the Saginaw River channel last week, slicing the steel-gray water like a promise. Migratory ducks whistle as they land in the cold shallows, their calls echoing through the still-bare trees. Canada geese have returned, honking and fussing over shoreline territory like noisy neighbors reclaiming summer cottages.

And I ache for it. Not just the garden, but all of it. The cool, muddy mornings when breath fogs the air and the robins sing anyway. The feel of soil loosening beneath my fingers as I kneel between square-foot beds, coaxing last fall’s mulch aside. The scent of wet earth and thawed compost. The first sunrise that arrives not as a concept on a calendar, but as light warming your face while coffee steams in hand and finches flit in the trees above.

Soon the broccolini will be tucked into beds near the sugar snap pea trellises. The cauliflower will find its place near overwintered garlic. The tomatoes will harden off in the sun, slowly, gently, and then rise in their warm cages, waiting to tangle with basil and marigolds.

This isn’t just gardening. This is a return.

A returning of birds. Of sun. Of life at the edges of the bay. A returning of us to the gardens that hold our breath and our hopes and all the little green beginnings we dare to start in March.