July 9th, 2010 Week 11

July 9th, 2010

Well, flitter---the power just flickered and I lost everything, but just the same I'm as tickled as can be! We are in the middle of a rain storm that's already dumped more than an inch on our farm! That is a huge load off of my mind as we've been combatting serious drought conditions on the mountain here! Almost all of our time has been spent hauling water around and watering everything! However we have sustained some damage--coincidentally we've had to (for the time being) drop our Wednesday market at Market Square Farmers' Market--I do apologize, but we are presently having to "hit it hard" to keep ahead of the Weeding, Watering, and Wvegetable Wplanting.

We hope that you all have a good weekend!

Adam Colvin
Colvin Family Farm (CNG)
www.ColvinFamilyFarm.com

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Week #11 At Colvin Family Farm
Cl


As previously mentioned, we've been hauling water this week--we can currently handle from 4-5 hundred gallons of water in one load with our motley assortment of containers--one 275 gallon water tank that we've owned for 8-10 years, 4 fifty-five gallon barrels, and other assorted "containers."



And yes, we do hand water at present--it is a lot of work (trust me), and it isn't as effective as "modern" methods, but we've been able to keep far enough ahead that things were alive when it started raining half an hour ago!



This is one of my ugliest brothers yet (mean too!) watering the red cabbage patch.



It is a large load off of my mind to have gotten this rain--there is more forecast throughout next week, so we need to get planting (yay we finally can get back to that)!!!!!!



Forgive me for all of the pictures, but I'm excited about it raining---notice the dead patches of grass where the rock is shallow in our front yard.



This is a picture showing our onion and garlic curing racks--they are in our little greenhouse. The top rack has shade cloth over them so that they won't get "sunburnt."



This is the first time that Mom has grown Hollyhocks--I've always looked at them in seed catalogs and wanted to grow them, and this is why! They are gorgeous! (and gorgeous is a #10 on my scale from 1-10 of "describing words"):

#1: Little Brother
#2: Horrifying
#3: Awful Looking
#4: Plain Ugly
#5: Not Good Lookin'
#6: Not Bad Lookin'
#7: Pretty
#8: Lovely
#9: Beautiful
#10 Gorgeous!



We planted a 5 foot belt of sunflowers around the edge of the fields that we planted with oats & wheat.



And the Oats and Wheat are ready for harvest. We did find time Thursday to get some of the Oats (oat field pictured) harvested.



We take a "corn knife" and grab a handful of grain, slice it and drop it in sheaves.



It is then hauled to the "mobile threshing unit" (also known as our truck) and...



...run through our foot powered thresher--it will still need cleaned, but this machine saves us a lot of time (approx. 6 light years a day), and is a big improvement over what we did last year (a stick, a feed sack, and lots and lots and lots of impatience). We are getting an Oat Roller and will soon have rolled oats so you can have a bowl full of local oatmeal for breakfast!