We've had a great week!

Our main objective was to get our Fall crops planted--which we've succeeded in doing most of them! Sweet Corn, Cabbage, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Brussels Sprouts, Spinach, Carrots, on and on and on....we look forward to the Fall as that is most always the best part of our season!
Another goal was to get our grains in, however rains have delayed that until it dries enough for us to bring it in without having to worry about mildew!
We did come up with a better grain cleaning system however! Scroll down to the bottom of the newsletter to see pictures!

Hope to see you at market--have a great weekend!

Adam Colvin
www.ColvinFamilyFarm.com

CSA members: Final payment is due this week--please contact me with any questions!

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Week 13 at Colvin Family Farm!

They've got it made! I remember when I was just a kid (now I'm the ripe old age of 19) that I wanted to hurry to grow up--but those were the days! Barefoot running around in the front yard, wading around making a dam in the creek, climbing trees, exploring our property, picking berries--nothing to worry about!



But I'm blessed to have many memories from being raised on a farm, and I've learned to enjoy today, learn from yesterday, and do the same thing tomorrow!



We've had a lot of trouble this year with getting healthy good-sized transplants--Tomatoes, Eggplant, Peppers etc... The problem? Our seed starting formula--it's what we've had the most trouble doing by organic standards. Our first attempt was to make our own media, compost, topsoil etc... but we ended up spending way to much time weeding our weakly looking starts. So we tried several different medias Fafard, Sungro etc... and each time we couldn't raise a good looking plant! So we finally broke down and purchased...



...Johnny's Selected Seed 512 Mix--a compost based growing medium that works! Success after 6 years of trial and error!



These tomato plants are only 8 days old from seed! they're already showing their second set of leaves and they all have healthy purple stems and healthy sets of baby leaves!



We've been busy this week planting more than 20,000 plugs of fall crops--late season tomatoes, fall broccoli, collards, cabbage, cauliflower etc... We're looking forward to having our full variety of crops this Fall!



A head of Cabbage in the field



Our tomatoes are starting to slowly eek their way into production (5 weeks late).



This is one of my favorite wildflowers--"Garden Coreopsis" (Coreopsis tinctoria) is a beautiful yellow flower with maroon blotches right next to the center of the flower.



Cosmos are one of Mom's favorite garden flowers...



...Bees like them too!



Another of Mom's favorite flowers are day lilys. This is a picture of a double day lily--two buds opened on one flowering stalk!



The thresher that we purchased did an acceptable job with knocking the grain out of the heads, but we still had lots of hulls and chaff--so Dad came up with a simple cleaner--it has 1/16" mesh on the bottom of the larger box, and the "smoosher/slider" is made up of 1/4 inch hardware wire. You load the large box with a layer of uncleaned grain and slide the "smoosher" back and forth working the grain over the small mesh. The cleaned grain works it's way through the small mesh into a tray or tub underneath.



As you can see, it doesn't do a perfect job, but mostly what is left can be cleaned by sifting it in front of a fan.



And this is the final product--rolled oats!