Winter Update from Colvin FamilyFarm! 
Hello folks!With a mild Winter thus far it doesn't seem like Spring could be far off, especially with all the "signs" of Spring that keep turning up on the farm! However we're battening down the hatches and waiting for a couple of good Winter storms to remind us we do live in the mountains of East TN.
Thank you so much to those who have already joined up for the 2012 CSA season, we are doing everything we can to make this season the best ever! Thanks for helping us fund pre-season expenses!
Adam Colvin
1-866-865-8329
www.ColvinFamilyFarm.com
February at Colvin Family Farm:
I don't have any pictures yet, but we are purchasing four hives of bees from a natural beekeeper in Georgia this Spring! A project we've considered for a couple of seasons, we decided that just for pollinating our vegetable crops it would be worth trying (of course the deal was sweetened by visions of our own safe, raw honey!). Honeybees are amazing creatures--according to the American Beekeeping Federation (ABF), a full one third of your diet is dependant to honeybee pollination!
It's been a mild Winter thus far, with just a couple of minor Winter Storms, but it has been extrodinarily wet! We had a solid nine inches of rain dumped on us in January, and it doesn't seem to want to dry up! It's important for it to dry out enough for us to be able to work up a couple of acres as we have onions, early brassicas (cabbage, cauliflower & broccoli) etc... to go out soon, and we can't plant in sod!
Even though we've had generally mild temperatures so far, we're trying to prepare for when Winter hits because...
...we have more than thirty thousand baby vegetables in the greenhouse that need to be kept from freezing!
Our old trusty "double barrel" heater, along with us boys spending watches of the night monitoring the fires, will keep our greenhouses warm and the transplants happy!
A Baby broccoli plant.
Baby Red Cabbages.
Okay so it's two pictures of the cabbage--I couldn't help it, they came out nice :)
Baby Swiss Chard plants--this is "Bright Lights" chard, so you can see yellow, red, pink, and orange baby plants!
This is a closeup shot of a miniscule baby lettuce transplant--hopefully one day, it will make a family a good sized salad!
Mud has been an issue everywhere, and the greenhouse is no exception! Thanks to one of our shareholders, and Green Mountain Coffee, we have burlap sacks to go to, so we "shingled" the greenhouse path with sacks--thank you GMC and Mr. Russ!
In preparation for the season, Caleb has been busy bushogging the new property...
It looks much, much better! We can't wait to start planting!
Large V's of Sandhill Cranes are flying over the farm all day--another sign of Spring, we love watching them fly over!
I love the zoom on my new camera :)
That's it for this month--thanks for reading, and join us on facebook for more pictures, regular status updates, and to "interact" with us!
