Oooooh We Got a Cold Snap!
Dear Farm Community -
The row cover and hoops have been painstakingly set out. Greenhouses are sealed up tight. The heater is on in the seed house keeping our little babies warm enough to survive these cold below-freezing nights. We are in our first COLD SNAP!
The winters always become a beautiful (read: labor-intensive) dance of opening and closing greenhouses, covering and uncovering crops, checking and double checking our weather apps, and of course the nightly prayer that the wind doesn’t blow any row cover off and we don’t pull up to the farm the next day to any disasters. May our sandbags be heavy and the wind gentle! May our propane be full and the seed house door shut firmly and securely! May our trucks start when we turn the key and the walk-behind too! Our prayers don’t always work, but we do our best and often that’s enough.
If you’re wondering what row-cover is, it’s the fabric that makes up the ghostly looking worm in the photo above. We set out metal hoops along the planted beds and cover them with long strips of white translucent fabric that helps to capture heat and passively warm the plants in the winter months when it gets cold. Typically we will uncover the plants in the daytime and open up the greenhouses when the temperatures are higher, but occasionally during cold snaps we will keep the greenhouses shut and the row-cover on all day too. Row cover is especially important for our winter-time field crops like carrots which don’t have the added protection of a greenhouse. While it’s a lot of work, it does make it possible for us to grow in all 4 seasons here in Georgia - something that’s not possible in the majority of the country.
Thank you to everybody who filled out the 2024 CSA End-of-season survey! We had our planning meeting for our 2025 CSA and we are excited for what’s in store. Full details about the CSA year ahead will be included with next week’s email and our on-sale will be upcoming in the next few weeks. We’re looking forward to another year sharing the bounty with you all!
In the meantime, we encourage you to dream about all of the flowers in the year ahead!! We are now accepting DIY Flower Bucket orders for 2025! If you or a friend has an event planned for 2025 and a creative DIY spirit, you can check flowers off of your to-do list! Our DIY flower buckets include materials to make 1 large centerpiece OR 3 bridesmaids bouquets OR 6 small centerpieces OR 25 bud vases. It’s a beautiful and affordable way to get stunning local flowers. Check out our website and be sure to fill out our flower questionnaire so that we can curate the perfect flowers for you.
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Last week you all met Carter, the owner and founder of Diamond Hill Farm. This week get to know Carolyn (aka me! hi!)
Know Your Farmer:
Carolyn
What is your role on the farm?
I am the Communications Manager for Diamond Hill Farm & one of our lead farmers. I work in the fields for part of the week, run our market stand at the Freedom Farmers Market with our very talented and wonderful market helpers, manage the website and instagram, write the newsletter, and design our merch, signs, banners, flyers, and more :) While I started on the veggie crew I have been doing more flower stuff lately which has been lots of fun!
Please share your farming journey!
From ages 5 to 26 I was dead-set on becoming a veterinarian. I spent over 10 years volunteering and working in the veterinary field and in 2021 my partner and I moved from Philadelphia, PA to Athens, GA for me to begin veterinary school at UGA. Before classes started I had a real reckoning with that vision of the future and realized that, for many reasons, it wasn't the direction I truly wanted my life to take. In figuring out what direction I DID want to go in, I realized after talking with my chicken-and-mushroom farmer sister (Shoutout Honeymoon Farm in Oxford, PA!) that farming just might be a good fit - I love being outside, caring for plants, getting dirty, doing physical work, and working farmers markets for her was always so much fun .... so I took the biggest scariest leap of faith and left veterinary medicine to start working at Diamond Hill Farm. Three years later and I'm still smiling with dirty fingernails and so happy to be a part of this team!
What makes you passionate about organic farming?
Over the last few years as I've faced some health challenges, it's become more and more apparent to me that food is the original medicine. It all begins with food, and we unfortunately live in a society where the vast majority of us are so disconnected from the source of our food, and so much conventionally grown produce from the industrialized food system just falls short when it comes to quality and what our bodies actually need, not to mention the environmental impact of those farming methods. There was just a moment for me when I realized that eating whole, organic, nourishing food is a major priority for me in life. That ideology ties into so many more surrounding health, spirituality, and environment, and all of those things make me so passionate about organic farming.
What do you like to do when you're not at the farm?
So many things! I love to paint, sculpt, paper mache, and experiment with visual arts, dayhike, backpack in the mountains, and travel to new places. I love film photography, sewing quilts, mending clothes, and working with my hands on loads of projects - usually half a dozen are in-progress at any given time. I love learning about the human body, the mind-body connection, and all things ~healing~. I love the Grateful Dead with an intensity matched only by other Deadheads. I cook almost every night (with some pretty great local produce), and love doing kitchen magic like fermenting kombucha, making my own yogurt, and learning about herbalism. Kundalini yoga is also a big part of my life! I just love learning about everything on this earth!
What’s something you’ve done on the farm that you are proud of?
I am proud that despite a spine injury in April of this year I have managed to adapt, listen to my body, work hard on my health, grow in my different roles on the farm, and continue contribute to our collective successes.
What is a small thing on the farm that you are grateful for?
I am grateful for the farm’s frog-loving culture. If someone finds a frog, we always show each other and I think that's special. I'm also grateful for the frogs.
What do you think about when you’re harvesting?
I'm usually listening to a Ram Dass lecture on spotify or an audiobook about how to reset my nervous system or something.
In your opinion, what is the best season and why?
Fall! We finally get relief from the oppressive Georgia summer heat, and the amount of veggies growing is insane. In early to mid fall, EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE! Tomatoes! Lettuce! Beets! Potatoes! Turnips! Sugar snap peas! Arugula! Peppers! Cucumbers! Agriculturally speaking, Fall in Georgia is a wild time to be alive and eating local. And we all get absolutely bonkers euphoric that first breezy 65-degree day on the farm.
We’re all in the pack shed finishing up a big market harvest and you’re handed the AUX. What do you play?
Definitely a complete 3 and a half hour long Grateful Dead live album... Maybe Nassau May 1980. Or Veneta Oregon 8/27/72.
What’s a favorite Diamond Hill Farm Memory of yours?
Farmer Emma and I wrote an entire song called "Lettuce Jail" which is about when you have to harvest and wash 200+ heads of lettuce. The song has a renaissance fair kind of vibe. Then we wrote a song called "Kale Jail" which is about when you have to harvest and wash 100+ bunches of kale. That one is more of a Johnny Cash vibe. I also loved when our former farm manager Eli told us that “it’s not jail it's called harvesting"
What is something you want people to know about our farm?
We love love love seeing and hearing about what y'all do with our produce and flowers!!! It's seriously the best to see photos of your beautifully prepared meals on instagram and hear at market about the amazing recipe you cooked with our produce last week, or how much those sunflowers bring you joy. Do not underestimate how much that means to us! :)
Thanks for reading!
Diamond Hill Farmers
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