Colvin Family Farm

Apples, apples...more apples! This week has been the week for us to put them up. We hauled six crates (4'x4'x3') of "Yellow Delicious" grade outs from the Oren Wooden's Apple Orchard here on the mountain. Most of them were stored in a bin for hog food throughout the early winter, but we also processed twenty bushels into apple sauce and juice. Total yield for this week was 44 quarts of apple sauce, and 52 quarts of apple juice. Our shelves are pretty well stocked for Winter as we have a total of 188 quarts of Apple Juice, way over 50 quarts of Apple Sauce, more than 200 quarts of Green Beans, and a bunch of Tomatoes, Summer Squash, Potatoes, Meats, Jams and Jellies canned. We have sixty pounds of fresh venison packed in the freezer, a 350 lb hog ready to butcher--I think we're ready for Winter! It is also a busy time of season as we start to catch up on maintenance projects that we got behind on during the busy season (okay one of the other busy seasons). Projects to get done include the final season's mowing and trimming, making sure to get around everything everywhere so the farm looks good all Winter. We are also planning on ripping out some temporary raised beds we had built in front of the greenhouse, changing the oil in all of the vehicles, checking the antifreeze in all of the vehicles and tractor, organizing all of the farming equipment that is coming in from the field etc... etc... Hope you've had a productive week!

Adam Colvin
Colvin Family Farm (CNG)
www.ColvinFamilyFarm.com
A Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) serving the Knoxville, TN area

It has been a slower week--a heavy rain all day Tuesday pretty much slicked stuff up to where we couldn't do much outside. The temperature has been hovering between the high 30's at night to the low 60's during the day, and the farm has slowed down. It seems to me that a farm is cold-blooded, during the colder seasons activity slows down, slower, slower, and almost stops, then as the days get longer and warmer things speed up faster and faster until you can't keep up with it! Farming makes for an interesting life! However during the dryer moments we are working on getting more field ready for next year. A large brush pile that has set in the middle of our field for years now is slowly yielding to the tractors persistent scraping, leveling out a valuable portion of our field. Next year according to our calculations, we are going to need as much garden space as we can squeeze out! Also a lot of planning is going into next season. Some of our plans for next year include raising wheat so that we can sell local flour at market, also we hope to grow oats that we could roll and sell as oatmeal! A mixture of the two run through our hand crank grain mill on the crack setting would make the best cracked grain cereal! Popcorn, Pinto Beans, Flour Corn--one of the best ways to keep excited about what you do (in our case raising vegetables) is to try something different! And it's looking like next year will be one of our most exciting ever!

Adam Colvin
Colvin Family Farm (CNG)
www.ColvinFamilyFarm.com
A Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) serving the Knoxville, TN area

This week Caleb and I were able to attend a workshop in Chatham County, North Carolina. The workshop was entitled "Taking Your CSA To The Next Level," and the speaker was Elizabeth Henderson! We were really excited to learn from this lady as she authored the book "Sharing The Harvest, A Citizens Guide To Community Supported Agriculture"--the book that inspired us to start our CSA back in 2003. We learned a lot of things that will be helpful to us (and you) next season, and were tickled to be able to talk with Mrs. Henderson some!

This week also marked the end of our Summer Crops--Peppers, Okra, Beans, Summer Squash and several of our herbs are no more as frost crept across our farm 3 times. It has warmed up already--but the damage was done. Some people think that this time of year is sad--watching the earth slow down, turn brown, and die--but I like to look at it as a much needed time for the earth to rest, getting ready to jump back in the Spring for a whole new season. Winter is a necassary time of year for farming--if we don't have a good cold Winter, then the bugs will be real bad. Also Winter is a time for farmers to slow down, look back over the season--lessons learned, friends made, new places discovered. But my favorite thing about Winter is the looking forward to next season--dreaming (properly known as planning), the implementing of lessons learned last year, the visiting with friends made, the use of new places found last year. Ultimately the working towards a better season than last year--I love this time of year.

Adam Colvin