February at Colvin Family Farm

With more than a foot of rain, we have had a wet, wet, wet month here on the farm. All through the month we kept thinking It couldn't get any wetter, but we kept being proven wrong! Despite the inclement weather your brave, sacrificial, hard working (let me pause this spiel a moment for you to go find a box of kleenex) sweet, nice, caring farmers (calm down I'm joking :) have kept ourselves busy slogging through the mud to do what can be done above water. It has been an exciting month watching things take shape for the new season! One of our most memorable activities was when Isaac, Caleb and I spent five days in Little Rock, Arkansas prying information from experienced farmers at the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group's (SSAWG's) 2013 conference. We had a great time making sure our instructors were busy :) and networking with other natural farmers from the Southeast. Since we are constructing them on worked ground (no sod) it was too wet to work on constructing our hightunnels. However we were able to finish up one of the greenhouses on the home farm, and frame in another to prepare for the Spring planting rush. It is amazing that we already have 130,000 plus transplants started for the new season! Another very exciting (for me anyhow) project was drafting the plans for and purchasing the supplies for a brand new 2,000 square foot packaging facility for the new farm. Below we've got a bunch of pictures from the month, I hope you all enjoy! I've recently swapped from small (320x240) pictures to larger (640x480) images in the newsletter/blog. Is this too big for you all? Is it slowing the emails down too much? Thanks so much to all of you for making it possible for us to do what we love! We are excited about the new season! Adam Colvin Colvin Family Farm (CNG) www.ColvinFamilyFarm.com There are many Greenhouse pictures this month--if you want to see some non greenhouse pics scroll towards the bottom. 2013 CSA Program Be a part of a 25 week seasonal cooking and eating adventure and change the way your family eats in 2013! Join Today! Pricing/Payment Plans ----------------------------- February in Pictures In the first picture, I had to show that we have had some actual Winter weather :) However it has stayed a very exciting Spring weather in the greenhouses! I hope to transplant the Kohlrabi (forground) within the next couple of weeks. I couldn't be much happier about how these flats of lettuce seedlings are growing out :) Onions, Spinach, many different brassicas (Cabbage, Broccoli, Cauliflower etc...) There's a lot of potential setting on these greenhouse tables! Boc Choi (foreground), lettuces and more... This is a closeup shot of some of the early Spinach transplants..planting number one... ....our second planting.... ....and our third planting. Our fourth hasn't come up yet, but the idea is to (hopefully) keep Spinach coming in regularly for the entire Spring season! A 288 flat of tomatoes--we're actually starting to pot a few up for a planned transplant of March 14th in our high tunnels. We'll see how that works :) While I've majored on the big and the pretty there are plenty of flats that are still small and just coming up--like this celery.... ...this Lettuce... ...and much more (chard, cauliflower, kales, etc.. in this picture). A large project this month was finishing greenhouses. Since we have already over filled our other greenhouses this became imperative! Other than running the stovepipe on the woodstove, and a couple of the tables, the first new greenhouse is ready to put flats in! Totally un-farm related, but this is a beaver lodge out in the middle of about twelve acres of beaver dammed pond/swamp behind our property--cool huh? Another non-farm picture, I found the first bedraggled little blue violet of Spring on a hike behind the home farm. We were privileged to visit Hines Valley Farm, a small Certified-Organic farm in Loudon, TN this past month. In this picture owner/operator John Ledbetter poses in a field next to his high tunnels. Thanks for having us John! I promised little brother Levi that I'd put a picture of his first snowman in the newsletter. He did a pretty good job for a little fellow! At the 2013 SSAWG conference we got to talk with our local sales representative (Rod Heyerdahl) from our favorite supplier Johnny's!

January At Colvin Family Farm What are we up to during our "slower" busy season? Howdy everybody! Hopefully you all are winding down from a great holiday season, as we do so we are keeping mighty busy on the farm! Projects range from simple maintenance on trucks, greenhouses, and other farm equipment to big projects like putting up a 2.5 acre high tunnel (unheated greenhouse) and building a packing shed on the new farm. Amongst all of these projects we've been planning our 2013 season, making huge seed and equipment orders, and planting the first greenhouse of transplants for the new season! We're also trying to make time to update our website and other farm listings for the new season--one of the bigger website projects? Revamping our website's "pictures page." I am recoding the design to make it easier to view the pictures via a popup gallery. I am working on them when I find time, and currently have the 2011 picture gallery live! It's a lot of fun to look back at past season's pictures and laugh at "how we used to do it," or think through all of the challenges and triumphs of the particular season....I hope you enjoy leafing through the collection of pictures as they come out! Thanks to all of you for supporting our family farm! We hope that you all have a great Winter! Adam Colvin Colvin Family Farm (CNG) www.ColvinFamilyFarm.com 2013 CSA Program Be a part of a 25 week seasonal cooking and eating adventure and change the way your family eats in 2013! Join Today! Pricing/Payment Plans Through the month in pictures One of the most exciting projects on the farm is (of course) making the first plantings of the 2013 season! We got to plant more than thirty thousand transplants including Lettuce, Broccoli, Cabbage, Spinach, Tomatoes and more! This shot shows the first plants of the new season! Born on January 2nd, these Broccoli seedlings should be ready to transplant in less than eight weeks! Keeping the greenhouse warm is a huge deal right now...the seeds (especially for the tomatoes) need to be kept warm if we want them to grow into healthy transplants! This is our "semi-customized" wood furnace with a blower fan installed on the draft. This is a shot of the same table of broccoli this morning--it's growing out great! Cabbage transplants.... Spinach transplants Other than the exciting greenhouse seeding, we've also been doing some mundane chores. Cutting firewood is a large chore as we keep the family house, as well as our greenhouses heated with wood. Caleb headed up a project building a new hog pasture. We like to keep some hogs through the season to help recycle leftover crop scraps, this much needed new fence should cut the job title "hog chaser" from this years resume :) Unloading the fence posts and hog wire... Getting the posts set in line Stretching the wire with a "come along" winch and some tow ropes tied off to a tree, and two 2x4's screwed onto the end of the fence wire respectively. Then all you have to do is clip the wire to the fence posts with wire clips! Our dog rascal made sure everything was done right :) Mom's chickens have started laying, and the family is tickled to have our own eggs again. We have purchased a new (to us) 2002 F-450 truck with a 14' box this Winter. This will probably be the truck that Caleb uses this year. We were also blessed with a Case 580D backhoe! We've been using this thing all over the home farm to dig out stumps, level piles of dirt and a blue million other things...we really love it!

January At Colvin Family Farm What are we up to during our "slower" busy season? Howdy everybody! Hopefully you all are winding down from a great holiday season, as we do so we are keeping mighty busy on the farm! Projects range from simple maintenance on trucks, greenhouses, and other farm equipment to big projects like putting up a 2.5 acre high tunnel (unheated greenhouse) and building a packing shed on the new farm. Amongst all of these projects we've been planning our 2013 season, making huge seed and equipment orders, and planting the first greenhouse of transplants for the new season! We're also trying to make time to update our website and other farm listings for the new season--one of the bigger website projects? Revamping our website's "pictures page." I am recoding the design to make it easier to view the pictures via a popup gallery. I am working on them when I find time, and currently have the 2011 picture gallery live! It's a lot of fun to look back at past season's pictures and laugh at "how we used to do it," or think through all of the challenges and triumphs of the particular season....I hope you enjoy leafing through the collection of pictures as they come out! Thanks to all of you for supporting our family farm! We hope that you all have a great Winter! Adam Colvin Colvin Family Farm (CNG) www.ColvinFamilyFarm.com 2013 CSA Program Be a part of a 25 week seasonal cooking and eating adventure and change the way your family eats in 2013! Join Today! Pricing/Payment Plans Through the month in pictures One of the most exciting projects on the farm is (of course) making the first plantings of the 2013 season! We got to plant more than thirty thousand transplants including Lettuce, Broccoli, Cabbage, Spinach, Tomatoes and more! This shot shows the first plants of the new season! Born on January 2nd, these Broccoli seedlings should be ready to transplant in less than eight weeks! Keeping the greenhouse warm is a huge deal right now...the seeds (especially for the tomatoes) need to be kept warm if we want them to grow into healthy transplants! This is our "semi-customized" wood furnace with a blower fan installed on the draft. This is a shot of the same table of broccoli this morning--it's growing out great! Cabbage transplants.... Spinach transplants Other than the exciting greenhouse seeding, we've also been doing some mundane chores. Cutting firewood is a large chore as we keep the family house, as well as our greenhouses heated with wood. Caleb headed up a project building a new hog pasture. We like to keep some hogs through the season to help recycle leftover crop scraps, this much needed new fence should cut the job title "hog chaser" from this years resume :) Unloading the fence posts and hog wire... Getting the posts set in line Stretching the wire with a "come along" winch and some tow ropes tied off to a tree, and two 2x4's screwed onto the end of the fence wire respectively. Then all you have to do is clip the wire to the fence posts with wire clips! Our dog rascal made sure everything was done right :) Mom's chickens have started laying, and the family is tickled to have our own eggs again. We have purchased a new (to us) 2002 F-450 truck with a 14' box this Winter. This will probably be the truck that Caleb uses this year. We were also blessed with a Case 580D backhoe! We've been using this thing all over the home farm to dig out stumps, level piles of dirt and a blue million other things...we really love it!