February Update from Colvin Family Farm! 
Hello Folks!I can't believe how quickly time is flying by! Signs of Spring are all over the place, and we're enjoying a few days in the high sixties and low seventies. Robins showed up by the hundred on February 1st, the maple buds are starting to show red, some crocuses are blooming in Mom's flower garden, and geese and sandhill cranes are flying north--Spring is just around the corner! We've been busy starting vegetables in the greenhouse to make sure we're ready for our early Spring markets and our CSA startup in May--most seed orders are already in, and we've got our shipment of seed starting mix as well as most of the other supplies for 2011. The only other "big" purchase for the early season, is our fertilizer order from McGeary's Organics in Lancaster county Pennslyvania.
I hope you've got to check out our new website! I just yesterday sorted out the biggest glitch (that I've found) that made pictures lose their description, and "go wacky" when you clicked on them.
I've also implemented a neat idea (borrowed from another farm) a "share size calculator." What size do you need? Check it out on our website now!
Looking forward to the new season--I hope you enjoy this farm update!
Adam Colvin
1-866-865-8329
www.ColvinFamilyFarm.com
February at Colvin Family Farm:
Signs of Spring:
Crocuses--these flowers are an early Spring treat!
Or you could look at them as a "teaser," Spring's a comin'
Closeup shot of the Red Maple buds...
The trees are already slightly tinged red.
Sandhill cranes flying North--we probably have thousands of these birds fly over each Spring and Fall!
Most of the seed orders are in...
We've got our seed starting dirt in...
And the early Spring transplants are already up!
Broccoli, Cauliflower, Collards, Chinese Cabbage, Lettuces and more!
We heat the greenhouse with wood--The three oldest boys (myself [Adam], Caleb and Isaac) take turns every third night sleeping out in the greenhouse. This is a very effective "thermostat" of sorts, when the temperature drops to an approximate 55, it wakes the sleeping person who stokes the fire, and checks everything over.
Dad ran the stovepipe out the front.
After being cleaned out, our farm pond has filled up nicely and is ready for the season!
We've got some land already tilled up and ready to plant our early Spring crops!
The view out of a hickory tree off the back side of our property
Another view out of the hickory
Some limbs got in the way of this shot, but it shows a pretty good view of the "farmyard."
The strawverries seem to have been growing throughout the Winter!
A bed of strawberries tucked underneath their row covers.
We're excited about our new (to us) combine! With easier harvesting/threshing, we'll be able to handle much larger acreage of dry beans, wheat, and oats!
Dad really enjoyed driving the combine home.
We hauled our new (again, "to us") Massey Ferguson 165 Diesel tractor home from just East of Nashille this week. We have really needed the extra horsepower and traction that this tractor has for some of our equipment! We also now have the added benefit of if one tractor breaks down (let me rephrase that to "when" one tractor breaks down), we won't be in as much trouble as we are when we depend totally on one tractor.
Dad grew up using his Dad's (my Grandpa's) Massey Ferguson 150, this is one step above the 150, but it's still has a very familiar feel to it!
This shows some of the size difference between our MF 35, and our new MF 165. We are really excited about starting this season!
As we plan on expanding substantially from last year, the only way we can possibly do that, is with better more efficient methods, and better more efficient tools. We are always changing our methods, tweaking good ones to make great ones, and swapping great ones for unbelievably great ones, but this year we've really taken a step to get some more efficient tools. We now have two dependable tractors, a combine that will make it possible to harvest and thresh our grains in large quantities, we're fixing to put up another greenhouse, we've done a lot of work with our irrigation plans/equipment, and we bought two Jang Clean Seeders (pictures above). These seeders are super exact in seed singulation and spacing, we have plates/rollers for pratically every size/shape of seed, so that we'll be able to get things planted FAR more efficiently this year, while fertilizing in the same pass!
