Quick, what comes to mind when you hear the word “spring?”

Let us count the ways we know spring has arrived… the sight of bright green buds, sturdy seedlings, a profusion of blossoms, song birds chirping away, and young farm animals frolicking in the mild weather. Around the world, spring is seen as a time of rebirth and renewal.

Of course, to experience all the many sights and sounds of spring, we count on a stable climate. And at the latest California Climate & Agriculture Summit, (hosted by the California Climate and Agriculture  Network, CalCAN), we were reminded that climate change is making it so that the weather you expect is not necessarily the weather that you get. This increasing unpredictability makes farming a whole lot more challenging.

Frog Hollow, a 133- acre organic farm in Brentwood, California is renowned for growing legendary fruit. Much of it is stone-fruit, including peaches, nectarines, cherries, and apricots. As Farmer Al Courchesne told us, stone-fruits require “chill hours” or a minimum period of cold weather after which the tree will blossom. Most of his trees require 1,000 hours of such cold. No longer sure if the orchard’s chill hour needs will be met, Courchesne is grafting over to trees that require fewer chilly nights. Meanwhile, a badly timed rain can cause fruit blossoms to contract a fungal disease and rot. According to Courchesne, this happened to every single last apricot blossom in 2010 and again in 2011 when warm tropical storms, atypical in spring, hit at precisely the wrong time.

Full Belly Farm’s Judith Redmond reminded us that farming depends on stability at “every stage.” This includes pollination, fruiting, and harvest. Redmond has farmed in the Capay Valley, northwest of Sacramento, for decades and called erratic climate a “central challenge” for today’s farmers. “It’s all interconnected, and converging, and complex. We’re going to adapt and figure it out” she said. To do that, we need a system that thrives on holistic complexity: “Organic and sustainable farming looks at the long-run — the big picture of the whole system.”

Rancher Mel Thompson practices rotational grazing on his 700-acre lamb farm on the western edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. His grass-fed operation counts on rainfall that climate change is making more erratic. In response, he has been conducting soil-building experiments on Sierra Farm’s paddocks.  For Thompson, building soil builds abundance. “Abundance,” he said, “increases your options. It strengthens ranching and rural communities. It catalyzes cooperative activities and improves stewardship and this protects your basket of eggs.”

In the context of an unpredictable climate, Thompson’s calls for “abundance” sounds like a smart insurance policy. The question, however, is how we can go about building the soil that, in turn, creates the abundance? In one of CalCAN’s packed afternoon break-out sessions, retired Natural Resource Conservation Services (NRCS) Ecologist Richard King provided Summit-goers with a detailed answer. “Soil” he reminded us with the enthusiasm of a gospel preacher on Easter Sunday, “is alive!” King’s short tutorial on soil science is worth sharing: