Water

The garden center has garden retention tanks that can hold up to 13 thousand gallons of water. The rain water that rolls off the roof is collected in the tanks. 1 inch of rain = 10,000 gallons of water! We use the collected water to water our plants in the greenhouse.  What doesn’t fit in the tank goes back into the water table. We also have a water retention pond that reduces the rate that rain water enters our local streams and rivers, preventing erosion and flooding.

Recycling

Recycling is processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of fresh raw materials and reduce pollution.

We recycle just about everything on the farm!

Cardboard.  - We have a cardboard baler and all of the cardboard that is delivered to us is baled and recycled. Plastic, glass, aluminum, steel, cardboard, plant material, food waste, trees and waste wood, water and even the rays from the sun above and the heat from below our feet.

Heating with our Wood Chip Burner

Our green house and garden center is heated by our friend "Chip".  Chip heats the water for our radiant floor heating system.  With the addition of “Chip,” our wood chip burner, we recycle waste wood into fuel to help heat our buildings. Chip burns at such a high heat that the ash and particulate matter is much less, so we have a clean, more efficient system. We accept trees and branches from tree surgeons and gather them when pruning our orchards to make our wood chips.

Radiant floor Heat

Our Garden Center uses the wood chip burner to heat the concrete floors. The radiant floor heat is a very efficient form of heat.  By heating the concrete floor the heat is more evenly spread out and the floor holds the heat making it more efficient and requiring less fuel to maintain the heat in the building.

Geothermal Heating and cooling System

Only a few feet below our feet the earth’s temperature stays at a fairly consistent 55 degrees. During the winter when the air is colder than 55 degrees, our system collects the Earth's natural heat through a series of pipes, called a loop, installed below the surface of the ground. Fluid circulates through the loop and carries the heat to the greenhouse. This process uses much less fuel to heat or cool the water since the temperature of the water is neither too hot nor too cold. Our gift shop is cooled in the summer months by the geothermal cooling.  The 55 degrees cools the air it is then distributed through our cloth ducts that hang on our ceiling of the gift shop.

Christmas Trees

Linvilla raises up to 40,000 Christmas Trees! In one season, one green tree produces as much oxygen as 10 people inhale in one year. So, by raising Christmas trees we provide enough oxygen for 400,000 people each year! One adult Christmas tree can also absorb approximately 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year!

When the holiday season is over and everyone is done with their trees, we collect Christmas trees from around Delaware County and use them on the farm! We create a Christmas tree mulch and use it on our Blueberries! Blueberry bushes love the acidic mulch produced from pine trees.

Solar

Our greenhouse has solar panels on the south facing roof on the north side of the building. The electricity produced by the panels produces enough electric to run the garden center. The solar sun rays that come into the greenhouse  heat the concrete floor and the building in the winter months. They also provide the necessary light for the plants. While nice and toasty during the day from all the sunlight.

Our farm market uses a solar hot water heater on the roof of the Farm Market to heat all of the water used in the bakery, farm market and building!

Compost

Linvilla works with Kitchen Harvest to create our homemade compost. Some of the left over fruits and vegetables from the produce department get fed to the animals, the rest is used to make compost. Our compost is made at Linvilla from food scraps, non-usable produce, yard waste, plant waste, shredded leaves, and other compostables to create a highly nutrient filled compost.  Our compost is OMRI certified (Organic Materials Research Institute) as an organic material that may be bagged as a product called Ecoscraps. We are proud of our contribution of reducing food waste in the landfills.

Mulch

The leftover wood chips, twigs and leaves get ground up into mulch. The burner and mulch processing both keep brush from being trucked long distances and filling valuable landfill space. Our Mulch is available for sale and used around the farm. Mulch has many benefits, such as organic matter, ground cover to keep weeds away and it helps retain moisture in the soil.

Contour farming- Soil and water conservation

By using conscious farming techniques, we can mindfully tend to the land we are working on. Contour Farming is one of the ways we do that. Contour farming is farming with row patterns that run nearly level around the hill -- not up and down the hill. Contour farming naturally helps stop erosion. One of the places you can see contour farming in use here at Linvilla is in our Raspberry patch! Steve Linvill sits on the board of directors for the Delaware County Conservation District.

Fore the Planet Mini-Golf

This exhibition pairs important environmental issues with the fun of miniature golf. 18 unique educational holes explore butterfly metamorphosis, a tropical rainforest, evolution, dinosaur extinction, food chains and more!