New Life

Ben and I ventured down to the farm this weekend to find the hoop house steamy and very much alive at a toasty 75 degrees! There were even a few dandelions mixed in there. I have to admit that I was really relieved to feel just how warm it was despite the light snowfall outside! I knew the hoop house was a good purchase, it's just really nice to see that we did everything correctly and it's working really well! I can't wait to get seedlings in there!

I spent a good deal of the afternoon on Sunday peeling stickers 

off the banana boxes my mom so graciously collected for me during her afternoons volunteering down at the food shelf. These boxes were then laid out over the entire floor of the  hoop house. It was so sad to have to put cardboard down and smother the new life that had emerged in our absence, but we really can't have grass growing in the hoop house. Next weekend we are hoping to begin building the tables that will hold our seedlings so we need to have the grass under control. 

Now that the cardboard is down we will put a layer of mulch hay down on top of that which should suppress the weeds entirely.

This weekend Jake and Ben worked really hard to get the window and the door installed in the hoop house. I don't

 know what I would have done without those boys. 

I am not very handy and find myself much more useful on the vegetable growing side of things, although I am learning slowly. So, as you can imagine, having the boys there to aid me in the finishing touches of the hoop house was such a gift! Hopefully next weekend we can finish the roll up sides, and the structural aspects of the hoop house will be finished!

In addition to getting the hoop house opened up, I also moved Sunny's paddock from behind the barn to run on the uphill side of our plot and then open up out into the far field. In the space that freed up I was able to plot out the next chunk of land we'll be tilling up for use this season. In a few weeks Fred will be coming back to break that ground and incorporate lime over both plots, and then we'll be all set to start the season in the soil!!

Finally, and perhaps most excitingly, the garlic we planted last fall has broken through the

 mulch we laid, and it looks great! This is our first crop poking up through the ground, and we couldn't be happier about it. It's a pretty small amount, unfortunately not enough to give out in this year's CSA. Instead we are planning to save this garlic seed, and we're thinking we'll end up with about 400 cloves to plant this fall, which will be more than enough for next year's CSA. So I suppose that's something to look forward to!

Before I sign off, I just want to mention that we still have CSA shares available, as well as pork by the half pig, so please write us and check out our brochure. So keep spreading the word, we so appreciate it!

Cold Metal

After a 2 week absence full of entymology projects and other homework we were happy to steal away from Burlington and spend some time with the hoop house! It's always refreshing to leave the busy bustle of the city and get back to the fresh air of our farm. We can't wait til we can be there everyday...

Yesterday we started putting up the arches after dealing with the remaining four ground posts that we struggled with during our last visit. Two of them went into the ground fairly easily after some careful manipulation of the rocky soil, but two of them refused to go down any further. So, being the resourceful efficient guy that he is, Ben decided that it would just be easier and a lot less of a pain to saw off the tops of the poles instead of frustrating ourselves any further... I supported him 100%. So that's him above, getting ready to saw off the tops of the two poles to get them down to the right height.

This is Jake(my brother) and I trying to push one of the arches into the ground post... it's a lot harder than it looks. Trying to get a curved end into a straight pole is not impossible, but we found that it's certainly a lot easier with two people.

I have to mention, that after struggling immensely with different methods of trying to get the ground posts in the ground and finally succeeding, I was looking through the bag of hardware that came with the hoop house, and found a huge bolt with a large washer on it... it was included for us to put on top of the poles to separate the hammer from the poles when we were hammering, and I didn't notice it!! I said, "Oh no, Ben, look!" And he knew right away that I had failed to notice the one apparatus that would have made getting the poles in the ground 100 times simpler for us. He playfully put his hood up and curled up in a ball on the ground with his hands on his head... "Ben, I'm so sorry!" I laughed hysterically "I didn't see this til just now!!" "Don't talk to me right now" he smiled. One of my less intelligent moments, but Ben was so good about laughing it off instead of getting mad at me. I'm confident that after that situation we are going to be a great farming pair. Being able to laugh at ourselves when we make a ridiculous error like that gives me confidence that we can do anything together.

Once we got the poles into the ground we were able to put up the straight center pole that connects each of the arches together. Next Sunday we'll be buying lumber to frame in the base of the greenhouse as well as build the ends and a door. Hopefully, if all goes well, we can get the plastic on too. We'll keep you posted!

Rocky Start

The field was covered in frost when we awoke on Sunday morning, and it was beautiful. Yes it meant that we needed to wait a little bit before seeding winter rye in the field and it also meant that we needed work gloves in order to prevent sticking to the stainless steel piping that will eventually be the hoop house, but we were happy to be greeted by it anyway. It really was gorgeous.

Most of the day was spent trying to get the hoop house in order. (below is a picture of what the hoop house looked like when it arrived on the farm)We had to measure out the dimensions of the hoop house and set out the piping to be driven 24 inches into the ground before we started the long process of actually hammering the pipes in... and when I say long process, I mean that it took us the rest of the day to get 10 of the 14 pipes into the ground. This was because our soil is extremely rocky and we couldn't hit the piping with the sledge hammer directly for fear of warping the steel. We used 2x4's as a barrier between the piping and the hammer, but those kept splitting, then we used a hockey puck but that kept flying off of the pipes and eventually broke... there were other attempts, but in the end we just stuck with the splitting 2x4's.

Somehow in the process of hoophousing, Ben and I both ended up hurting our right index fingers doing completely different things. I mildly cut mine on the side of one of the steel pipes while trying to twist it into place, and Ben got his pretty good with a sledge hammer... after some jumping up and down and a quick sprint into the house, we were able to get him washed up and bandaged. Don't worry, he's okay. His finger is a little bloody and swollen, but we're pretty sure that's the extent of the damage... the moral of the story here kids, is don't put your hands anywhere near where you're about to hammer. It's likely to end in tears... and/or jumping up and down.

Ben decided to take a break from hammering and seed the winter rye after lunch . You can see him in the picture below bending down to refill his seeder with seeds...

At 4:00pm, 4 of the posts were part of the way into the ground, but were hitting a huge layer of rock that prevented them from going any further into the ground, so we gave up on those for the day and decided to screw together the arches instead. That way next weekend we can get the arches up and secured before framing the hoop house in with lumber and covering it in plastic.

So, what's the difference between a hoop house and a green house? Well, according to me, a greenhouse has a thermostat and a heating mechanism, and a hoop house is just an insulated structure without an added heat source. This particular hoop house will be used as a protective light environment for our seedlings to be started in. We might also grow some tomatoes in part of it. When it's all put together it will be 16ftx24ft and 8 ft tall... a sizable greenhouse indeed. We're really excited to get it up before there's snow on the ground!