May 14th, 2010
I tried to get this out yesterday, but our trusty "old faithful" laptop up and died on us in the middle of creating it. So, I am now creating this on our new Dell Inspiron Desktop computer. It is about as much better than our old computer as the DSL connection is over our old dial-up!
Please let me know if I'm boring you with all of these pictures--I can't believe how easy it is to load this thing down with 30-40 pictures, and I will try to restrain myself if you all aren't able to make yourself read all of the way through it!
We've had an extremely busy week--this time in May would probably rank #1 as the busiest time for a diversified vegetable producer as so many vegetables "suddenly" can go out at the same time! Yesterday we put in Sweet Potatoes, Winter Squash, Watermelons, Cantaloupes, Popcorn, and others (pictures will be up next week). This week we also got out all of our Summer Squash, Sweet Corn and Cucumbers!
I hope that you enjoy the newsletter--hope to see you all at one of the markets tomorrow!
Adam Colvin
Colvin Family Farm (CNG)
www.ColvinFamilyFarm.com
Farm Update--May 9th-15th
Our potatoes are starting to pop up! This 3/4 acre patch right here should yield several tons of potatoes this season!
We planted three varieties--Russet Burbanks (a regular white potato),
Chieftain (a red skinned potato),
and Adirondack Reds (not only is this potato red skinned--it is red clear through the center!).
Our early patch of Summer Squash and Snap Beans.
Caleb told me that he was going to plant some beans and squash back in the third week of April (way way early for up on the mountain). I told him that he could waste the seed if he wanted to etc... but he has had the last laugh as those beans and squash that he planted could be 3-4 weeks earlier than our "early" batch of beans and squash! (this picture by the way is of a row of beans).
A row of Yellow Straigtneck Squash.
A new picture of our Onion patch--the paper mulch is working pretty well on the onion patch--on other vegetables we've had trouble with the wind ripping it when it is wet--still experimenting though!
I hope you all like Spinach! Because next week...
...we will have a lot of it! This is a picture of one of our two 150 foot long 3 foot wide beds of spinach. Right now they are just shy of big enough to pick, so they will be brought to market for the first time next week!
Another angle on the greens beds.
Radishes--a bunch of them! You will be seeing radishes out of this bed within a week or two--mild, but zesty!
Head lettuce is coming along in several different beds--Red and Butterhead, Romaine, and Looseleaf.
These collards were planted to raise full-size. hopefully we will have them large enough to harvest within another week or two.
Winterbor Kale--spaced to raise to full-size. A lot of this will be sold through the "Three Rivers Market" in Knoxville.
Napa Cabbages,
Boc Choi,
Turnips,
and Mustard are looking great!
We just planted another 200 foot bed of Carrots.
Our early chard bed that came in didn't come up very well--due mainly to the operator of the seeder (yes myself) who just didn't know what he was doing.
The collards,
and beets however came up sort of spottily because of us not keeping the soil moist at all times--it's extremely important yet extremely hard to keep the soil moist so that no hard crust will form over the seeds, and they have a soft moist layer of soil to push through.
Our worm bins--set up to harvest "wormcasting tea" that we use as a foliar fertilizer. Feeding leftover vegetables to the worms makes it so that we can use the nutrients in the vegetables to raise more! Sustainable farming practices in action!
A close-up of the inside of a worm bin.
And a closeup shot of the worms.
This is a picture of a freshly planted bed of green onions.
Within a week they start to sprout.
And by five weeks you have a bed of green onions ready to harvest!
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