Adrienne Young is down to earth. On a phone interview from her home in Nashville, it sounds as if Young is doing the dishes and tidying up the kitchen before she pushes back a chair on a wood floor and sits down to talk.

Young is about go to a special producer’s only farmers market, only locally grown produce and goods, but she takes time out to talk about her third CD, “Room to Grow,” running her own label (AddieBelle Music), sustainable farming and how it all fits together.

After working on “Room to Grow” for so long, Young says, “I can’t wait for it to get out on the radio and to start to get back on the stage and playing music.” Young has an extensive tour schedule, including some big summer festivals.

And she has plans in the works for a fall tour to support a movement that’s close to her heart. “We’re going to be donating a portion of each record to the Save a Seed Fund, which is something AddieBelle Music started with the American Community Garden Association. A portion of the sale of each CD will go to a non-genetically modified seed fund to community gardens across America.”

So, how does sustainable farming fit with making music? Young thinks for a moment, then says slowly, “It’s just a genuine, honest attempt at creating an authentic exchange with our listeners and knowing that within my music I try to instill ideas and thoughts that will offer comfort and potential for being a perhaps a jumping off point for new philosophies.”

That may sound serious, but the music is buoyant. The opening track of the CD sets an optimistic, thoughtful tone and is a good introduction to some common themes that come up for Young. The chorus asks, “Why can’t I let go? I’ll always wonder, all that surrounds me. I am a river, forever changing.”

It sounds like a very personal song, and Young explains what it means to her. “As the old saying goes, you can’t step into the same river twice. I think when we understand that life is about change, and that’s really the primary basis of our existence.”

“Then things can go a lot easier, but I think that we, or at least I, can get caught in not being in the moment, but living in my head. Then you end up missing the only thing that exists, which is in the moment.”

The seventh-generation Floridian who moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University and study music business. After graduating magna cum laude, Young stayed to make music.

Her first CD “Plow to the End of the Earth” (2003) gained critical acclaim and attention in the Americana world. Her second, “The Art of Virtue,” (2005) was inspired by her interest in the writings of Benjamin Franklin. It also met with acclaim and upped the expectations for what the young musician could do.

And when it came time to record her third release, Young knew just want she wanted to do. She produced that CD, which was recorded at Levon Helm’s studio in Woodstock, N.Y.

When Young talks about why she wanted to record there, Young says, “I was trying to find a place that was away from familiar scenes because I wanted us to be able to focus on the record, and Woodstock, N.Y. is a beautiful area and very conscious.”

“And Levon Helm’s studio is run by a wonderful man, Justin Guip. It’s a beautiful old barn, and it’s been restored, and the sound is great. It’s really conducive to live tracking versus overdubs, which is what I wanted to do for this record.”

The recording was just the beginning. “Then we went to Richmond, Va. to Sound of Music Studios and worked with Bryan Hoffa and put the Virginia stamp on it. We ended up working with the Virginia Department of Game and Fishery.”

Young explains that the department created a wildlife action plan to preserve and support wildlife habitat. She was part of an effort to gain funding for the plan that had been required by Congress. “This spring those were all finished, and we were able to go and sing ‘America the Beautiful’ on the steps of the Capitol.”

After that side trip, Young returned to Nashville to do the final overdubs that finally pulled Will Kimbrough back to the project to record backing vocals. Kimbrough writes songs with Young and co-produced the previous CDs. Kimbrough, who has released his own CDs, is a busy musician. He co-wrote several songs with Young, including the opening track.

The 14-song CD is a showcase for Young’s strong vocals and musicianship - she plays banjo and guitar on several tracks. Young also wrote or co-wrote all the songs except a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man in Paris” and Dusty Owens’ “Once More.” One of the standout collaborations is midway through the CD, the somber and reflective “River and a Dirt Road” written with Mark D. Sanders and Michael White.

“That’s the one people like,” Young says. “We play that at shows, and that’s the one the people always come up and ask us about.”

Young can’t say enough good things about Sanders, whom she has collaborated with on all three albums. “He’s an absolute genius. He’s written for Lee Ann Womack and Garth Brooks and Martina McBride. He’s the real deal. Michael White, I actually didn’t know. It’s one of the only writing sessions I’ve even done like that where you just meet someone and sit down. We were out in Colorado. Mark has a place out there, and he had people out to write, and I was fortunate to be invited for a couple days.”

“And we sat down and that just kind of popped out. When you write with Mark, you talk about a lot of things, and he’ll just be holding the guitar, then he’ll just start doing something, and it just comes out perfect. He is total genius.”

That songwriting story may sound as if Young is in the heart of established Nashville music, but she says that’s not the case. She doesn’t spend much time on Music Row, and, in fact, networking is hard for her.

“You’re on the road so much, and you have a life. For me, I’m not an industry person, so I have to be cognizant of going to events and such and mix and mingle. I don’t know…I generally go to the woods every day. If I don’t go, I get pretty stressed out.”

There’s a lot to stress out Young too. All three of her CDs have been released on her own label, AddieBelle Music. She says it take most of her time now. But at least she was well prepared for the challenge.

“I studied music business at Belmont University, and I just remember one of my teachers saying, ‘Find a niche in the market that isn’t being filled. And find a way to fill that niche with something that is authentically you.’”

Young says that has been her beacon. She says she asks herself, “Who are you and what do you care about and how do you translate that into something that will stand out in a world of saturation, media wise?”

When asked if there are advantages to running her own label, Young hesitates, but says, “It’s not that it’s necessarily an advantage. It’s just that it’s complete creative control.” “But I wouldn’t say that’s an advantage because a record label is made up of a team. So when you get a record from an artist, if it’s not from their own label, it’s not just that artist. There are many, many hearts and hands that go into that record, from the artwork to the song choices to the engineer to the band to the producer.” “I would say that the reality of it being your own label is that what I’ve created up to now is me. I mean obviously we work with great engineers and others, but it hasn’t been influenced as much as it might be were there a bigger engine behind it. I’d be interested working with some other folks on the next one because I spend most of my time on the business portion, and I’d really like to spend some time on the music.”

Music and food, food and music - it’s all part of the same do it yourself and do it with integrity plan that Young lives by.

“The seed was when I was a teenager and ended up spending a lot of time on a farm with a wonderful family in Gainesville, Fla. It was the first time that I really helped work in the garden and then brought the food in for everybody to eat at night. I just witnessed the energy that everybody exuded and the joy of the family.”

“It awed something in me, not only the health benefits of eating food without pesticides and the taste and the freshness and the nutritive content, but the actual feeling of connection with the land and with one another and connecting with the grand cycle of life. That simple experience that had been for thousands of years, until the 20th century when we lost a lot of our farms and the foundation of what life is about.”

Does Young have her own garden? “Oh yes I have a beautiful garden,” Young says with pride. “Tons of squash -all kinds of different squash, lettuces, greens, tomatoes, flowers, amaranth, strawberries, carrots, beets, radishes, leeks, garlic, I’ve got tons of stuff. I call it the back 40, but really it’s 40 by 40 feet.”

Young is busy cultivating her garden and creating her music. She’s sustained by both activities. “I received a little letter yesterday from a woman I met in Washington, D.C. I was up in D.C. a couple of months ago lobbying for the farm bill. She works for the government and said she’d been listing to my CD and said she loves the music and the content and that it had really helped her get through the death of her mother a couple of month s ago.”

“You get so caught up in the all these little business part of it and making it happen and getting the shows booked and getting the interviews, then you get a note like that and you remember that’s what it’s about you’ve communicated with someone on a soul level. That’s why we’re here. It’s why we’re all here.”