Building a retaining wall/garden bed

We began construction today on the retaining wall/planting bed on the West (downhill) side of the greenhouse.  It will eventually be a 92 foot long planting bed (equivalent to 4.5 of our beds in the old garden) with a stone staircase in the middle and an access path next to the greenhouse.

We began by driving wooden stakes 7' from the edge of the greenhouse (3' of aisle plus 4' of planting bed) so that we could visualize where the wall would go.  Next, we started laying out the boards.  We are re-using boards we salvaged when we disassembled the greenhouses.  Eventually, (and hopefully) the wooden wall will be replaced by a stone wall.  For now, we're using what we have!

Driving in the metal pipe pieces - bottom boards are set and leveled.

Each board had to be leveled.  We started at the North end of the greenhouse and leveled the front wall to be even with the ground at the edge of the greenhouse.  As we worked toward the middle of the hoop house, we had to dig down and add boards to follow the slope of the hill.  Each board was leveled.  In the middle of the wall, we are setting aside 4' to put in a staircase using stone we have yet to bring up from Peggy's house (check out previous post on foundations falling from the sky).  For today, we worked on the north wall up to the staircase.

Once we had all the boards measured, cut and leveled, we cut several pieces of pipe to use as braces.  They ranged from 30" to 6 feet depending on the slope.  Each pole was driven in at least half its length in order to hold back the weight of the soil that will be behind this wall.  Then we started setting the bottom boards and pushing dirt in behind to hold them in place.

Once the bottom boards were in, we started laying up the rest of the cut boards.  To hold them, we have to back fill as we go.  We didn't quite get all that done, so there is still a lot of dirt to move from the pile into this bed. 

Aaron is working on the corner.  Boards have all been cut and are laid next to where they will be.

We did get the corner filled in and we decided to plant some of our volunteer sweet potato slips.   Yeah more food growing on the farm!  Eventually, this bed will house our asparagus and perhaps some more perennial plants.  We would prefer to have things growing here that will always have roots to help hold the soil.

Sweet potatoes!

A view of where we are - lots of backfilling yet to do and the south side hasn't been started.

In-ground refrigerator

Now that our farm has long term residents, we had to find a way to keep food cold for more than a day at a time.  We've heard of people digging holes and burying barrels to use as a root cellar in the winter, so we decided to adapt this idea to create an in-ground refrigerator.

First, Jeremy and Aaron dug a hole big enough to hold 3 large coolers (about 2'x5'x2'deep).  Then, they lined the hole with some 1" extruded foam insulation we had left over from building the greenhouse at our house.  The coolers were placed in the hole and more scrap insulation was placed on top.  Then a scrap piece of siding was added and topped with 3 straw bales.  A makeshift roof appeared using the scrap roofing from our home greenhouse.

Coolers in the hole with the top layers removed.

Top insulation

Bales with scrap roofing on top.  A board gets placed over these to keep them in place.

We've been very happy with its performance so far.  The ice that was put in around lunch on Tuesday was still partially frozen on Thursday afternoon!  We think that with a few improvements, it should be able to keep cold for 3 days at a time before the ice has to be refreshed.  When the highs get out of the 100's, it might even last longer than that! 

Woo hoo for low tech refrigeration!

Thoughts about work

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
-Thomas Edison

Over the last several years, we have undergone a significant shift in our attitude toward physical work.  We once considered work something to be avoided – it was uncomfortable, it made our muscles sore, it was hot, inconvenient and any number of other associations.  Shifting from that perspective to considering work like an old friend – something that validates us, gives us purpose and produces innumerable benefits – has taken a lot of thought, determination and adjustment.  I thought I would write a bit about how we got to this perspective in case it helps anyone else.

The first obstacle we faced was deciding that the effort was worth it.  For example, when we decided to build our first 4 garden beds the decision took a while and was made a bit reluctantly – the garden beds weren’t going to build themselves and we wanted fresh vegetables!  It probably helped that we couldn't afford to hire anyone to do it for us.  So, we went out on several fall days and created our first 4 garden beds.  We complained, we drug our feet and we made a great show of being glad to be back inside when we were done.  It took us FOREVER compared to what we would do today.  At the same time though, there was a sense of pride that we had done it and the vegetables were really good!  That made the decision to expand the garden the next year easier – we had already done this once after all.  The work didn’t seem as daunting and we knew the reward would be more fresh food.  Over time deciding that something is worth the work has continued to get easier.

The next challenge was integrating work into our self-image.  We both saw ourselves as academics.  We did well in school, we liked school, we liked to read and discuss and debate.  How does that jive with wanting to go get sweaty with hand tools?  How can these 2 things go together?  It felt a little like telling the class nerd that the school was depending on them to win the basketball tournament. It just didn’t fit.

Then we discovered that there is no end of things to learn!  Learning to use a tool or build a raised bed is a different kind of learning than reading a book or taking a test, but creates the same sense of satisfaction.  We found that we could use our love of books to learn about anything we wanted to try and then we actually got to do it!  There is such a sense of satisfaction in taking something from abstract words on a page to something you can see, touch and feel.  We became hooked on finding new ways to learn and apply that knowledge.

We also had a perception that somehow people who did physical work were special and separate – they must have some kind of training that let them do that kind of work.  Our grandparents had grown their own food, but they grew up doing it.  Clearly someone taught them what to do and that’s how they became good at it, right?  We didn’t have any training or any special skills.  We didn’t even know anyone around us who did any of these things.  How would we know where to start?

We still occasionally run into this one when we contemplate trying something new.  However, after trying quite a list of new things over the last several years we can confidently say that none of it was nearly as hard as we thought it would be.  There isn’t anything we’ve done that any adult willing to try couldn’t do.  That only makes sense when you think about it.  For millennia, people survived on what they grew themselves.  That means that growing food has to be something that everyone can do, right?

An interesting side effect of work being this accessible is the sense of self confidence it breeds.  The skills don’t take long to master and from then on you have a skill you can use, teach and rely on.  When I think about how this might change people’s view of themselves and others around them, I have to wonder if having the opportunity to be good at something would make people more confident in themselves.  I think of this particularly for our children.  My kids will always know that there are tons of things they’re good at, even if none of them relate to current social norms.  It is my hope that this confidence will form the foundation they will need to go through life.  They have value – concrete, real and tangible value and ability.  That’s a powerful thing that more people should have (in my humble opinion).

So what’s the moral of this story?  Do more work!  Just kidding…mostly.  Changing our perspective from "hating" work to enjoying it has opened up a whole new worrld for us.  We are happier, healthier and more secure in our lives.  Being willing to do work has allowed us to meet so many amazing people and try so many cool things that we now can't imagine a life where we aren't working.  Work is our friend - we like it!

The cavalry has arrived!

Just when we were looking at the to-do list and coming to the sobering realization that we were either going to stop sleeping or delay some things until next year, an amazing thing happened.  A wonderful woman we met at the clay plaster workshop called to say that she had two friends participating in the Worldwide Opportunities in Organic Farming (or WOOF) program in the area and she was wondering if we needed help on our farm.  Seriously?  YES!  Of course we could use help on our farm!

So last weekend we met up with Aaron and Sara to look at the farm and talk about what we could offer in exchange for their time.  The WOOF program's normal arrangement is that the WOOF'er works for 4 hours a day in exchange for room and board at the farm and an education in the things the farm is doing.  For our part, we take the responsibility to feed and house them and to help them learn about everything we're doing. 

So now Aaron and Sara are camping at the farm with arrangements to be able to come to our house for laundry, hot meals and showering.  We're providing food either that they can prepare on the farm or that we have prepared ahead of time.  Aaron has already finished painting the north end of the greenhouse and finished priming the south end.  He did a fabulous job - much neater that I am with a paintbrush!  He's also taken over the daily goat care and regular garden watering which is a huge relief.

Aaron and Sara

Check out the awesome paint job!

Over the course of the 3 weeks they plan to stay, they'll have the chance to learn about how to do swales both on contour to retain water and off contour to move water, how to plant trees, how to create lasagna garden beds, how to plant a vineyard and probably a few other things.  For our part, we'll be able to get several garden beds built, create the vineyard for our grapes and get our new fruit trees planted.  Those were going to be a struggle for us amid all the other things we have to do so its fantastic news!

We can't express our gratitude and appreciation enough.  Sometimes the cavalry really does come riding in!

What to do when a foundation falls from the sky…

Most of you are probably unaware, but we have been deeply embroiled in a debate about the foundation for our future house.  Both of us would like to have a stone foundation for a variety of reasons.  A stone foundation means we need A LOT of stone – many, many tons worth.  Buying that much stone would be completely out of the question for our budget which leaves us with the unappealing prospect of quarrying it out of our woodlot.  Digging and moving that much stone would take all winter when we need to be working timbers and means that we would need to clear a road into the woods to be able to get the stone out.  We would also have to dig up a large chunk of the ridge which would mean clearing several trees and figuring out how to get rock up the ledge to the top tier of the ridge.  Ugh.  Thus our debate – do we quarry on our property or do a traditional concrete foundation?  We’ve been going back and forth on this issue for several weeks.

Then, this past Sunday we saw the following ad in the Lawrence Journal World:  “Scythe - includes spare blade. Also barn stuff. All for $50.”

We’re always looking for good tools and even a cheaper, heavier scythe would be put to good use on the farm, so we called.  It took until Tuesday to make it out to look at the scythe. 

When Jeremy arrived, he met the current owner - a wonderful older lady named Peggy.  She took him into the barn to see the scythe and proceeded to tell him that the “barn stuff” listed in the ad included all of the following:  a small stock tank, a garden cart, a digging/pry bar, a cider press and a hand cultivator.  The scythe also turned out to be 2 scythes, 2 blades and a hand held brush cutter.  Wow!  Jeremy expressed his gratitude, put the scythes into the car and explained that he would have to come back with our truck or the hatchback to get the rest.

Fast forward a few hours.  I get home from work and Jeremy shows me the scythes.  They’re all a bit rusted, but in very salvageable condition.  All 3 blades are stamped blades, not forged blades which means we will either have to peen out the edge a fair bit or continue to sharpen them with a file (and much more often).  Jeremy rattled off the list of other things we needed to go pick up and my eyes kept getting bigger, and bigger and bigger.  The scythes by themselves were easily worth the $50.  I’m sure it was evident on my face that I couldn’t believe our luck.  After dinner, we got in the matrix and drove back down to pick up the rest of the “barn stuff”.

Everything miraculously fit into the back of the matrix with the seats folded down (we were surprised to – this is why we bought a hatchback).  After loading, we went to the house to tell Peggy thank you and so that I could meet her.  When we got there, she was rolling a small compost tumbler out of the garage which she said we were welcome to have as part of the “barn stuff” also.  We inquired about a set of scaffolding that was in the barn and she replied that she had bought it for $15 and would be happy to sell it to us for $15.  Sold! 

As we were saying goodbye and getting ready to drive home, we complimented her on the stone facing on her house.  She explained that the stones came from the foundation excavation.  Then she said that they had dug up a lot more stone when they recently re-did their water line and the stone was piled up at the end of a road into the woods (she pointed the road out).  If we could use some stone, we were welcome to it. 

At this point, I’m about to fall over in shock.  Did she really just say that she had free stone?  That all we needed to do was go pick it up?  I looked at Jeremy and could tell that he was thinking the same thing.  We calmly say that we’ll walk over and take a look.  What we found was 2 piles of newly dug rock.  The first was about 6 feet tall and 8 or 10 feet around.  The second was about 4 feet tall and 6 or 8 feet around.  There was also a 50 yard long, 2-3 foot tall windrow of older stone that had clearly been dumped there many years ago.  In total, we were looking at enough stone to do the bath house foundation, the house foundation and likely the root cellar and barn foundations.  It was all right there at the end of an easily drivable road, piled and waiting to be picked up.  We couldn’t believe it.

We walked back up to the house to talk to Peggy.  We asked if she was talking about just the new stone or all the stone.  She laughed, looked around the yard at all the stones growing out of the ground and said, “take all you want – we have no shortage here!”  Apparently the older stone came out of the foundation to the house when it was built in 1980.  We asked if we could please pay her something for it and she flatly refused.

From here the only possible sticking point would be if we needed to move stone right now.  We had planned to quarry stone in the winter after we finished the bath house.  Taking a few weeks (at least) to move stone now would mean delaying that project to the point that we could easily run out of non-freezing weather.  So we asked how long we had to pick up the rock.  She said they weren’t going to sell the house until next March and we were welcome to pick it up anytime between now and then. 

So, in short, we went looking for a scythe and found a foundation.  Unbelievable.  Absolutely unbelievable. 

In other news, we will be spending our winter ferrying many tons of rock from Peggy’s house to the farm where it will get sorted and stacked in preparation for building the foundation.  If any of you have some free time and want some good productive exercise – let us know! 

The Straw is Home!

Sunday was the day.  We spent about 4 hours moving straw from the farmer's barn into our hoop house.  It was 105 when we started and 90 when we finished, so you can imagine how much fun it was to be heaving bales!  By the end, we were racing dark to get the last load into the hoop house.  In fact, we loaded it using the red glow of the trailer's tail light and unloaded it in the reflected glow of the truck's headlights.  Enjoy the pictures!

First load in

second load in

third load in - getting dark

All in!

Jacob was our man on top rolling the bales down to Jeremy and I

Third load in the hoop house as we start to unload

I don't have a picture of the last load after it was unloaded because it was long since dark.  I will try to take one next time we're at the farm.

Beginning the orchard

On Friday, we took advantage of Pine's clearance sale to purchase 12 fruit trees.  For those who are local to Lawrence, I would encourage you to check out Pine's as soon as you can!  They have an amazing variety of really nice flowers, herbs, perennials and fruit trees - all in really nice shape considering the heat.  They are a family operation and they take great pride in their plants.

The trees were loaded gently into the back of the truck and then slowly driven to the farm, much to the chagrin of everyone behind us on Hwy 24.  Sorry guys!  Once at the farm, we unloaded the trees onto a tarp close to the greenhouse where they will stay until we get their new homes ready. 

In all we purchased:

2 pears (early gold, Bartlett)
3 plums (blackice, blues jam, waneta)
2 apricots (moongold, sungold)
4 peaches (redhaven, baily hardy peach, reliance, elberta)
1 apple (McIntosh)

With the exception of the apple, we got one of every variety they had.  With the apples, we were more particular.  First, we think both our apples survived the transplant so we already have a gala and an arkansas black apple.  Second, we desperately need resistance to cedar apple rust.  The McIntosh is the only one with CAR resistance in the bunch, so its the only one we bought.  Next year for spring planting we'll probably hunt through the catalogs for other varieties with CAR resistance to help round out our apple trees.

With a little luck, these trees will provide fruit for us in about 3 years.  After sampling peaches and nectarines from the farmer's market this weekend, we can't wait!

Greenhouse is done! Almost....

No, we aren't quite finished, but we're really, really close!  All the doors are installed, the hardware that locks them is installed and a good chunk of the primer coat is on.  All we lack is finishing the primer coat and doing the final paint coat.  As it is, we have a building that is functionally complete.  Woot!

Jeremy installed a person sized door inside of the 10'x10' doors on the north end.  The primer coat is done on this end.

Aboug 1/3 of the primer coat is done on this end

Also, we managed to spend some of our karma today.  We have developed a theory that the more we work, the more good karma we build up.  Then occasionally it gets spent on really random good things like free wood stoves.  We don't really get to pick how it gets spent, it just kinda happens.  This is our going theory anyway.  So today, I arrived at the farm straight from work dressed in slacks and a dress sweater.  I realize very quickly that I have forgotten to bring work clothes with me and we are supposed to paint.  Uh oh.  Luckily, I'm wearing an undershirt, so the sweater is saved.  The black slacks I figure are probably toast.  There is no way I'm going to spend 3 hours painting white primer on walls while going up and down ladders without getting any paint on my slacks.  Oh well, I will just have to break down and buy a new pair (I hate clothes shopping - this was a painful realization).

So I paint for 2.5 hours.  At the end, I look at my slacks to see how bad the damage is and I find.....nothing.  No paint on my slacks at all.  My shirt has several flecks on it, but nothing on the slacks.  Not even a speck.  I almost fell over - that just doesn't happen!  To prove I'm not lying - here's the picture of Catherine and I in front of the wall we painted today. 

Part of me says that if we're going to spend good karma on something, slacks are not really my first choice.  We have much bigger projects coming up!  However, since I don't really get a say in the matter, I'll take slacks and be happy.

South Doors are on!

Jeremy built and installed the south doors today - don't they look awesome?  Tomorrow we'll hopefully do the North doors and start painting.  The end is in sight!

Greenhouse Build - Part 4

Sunday morning was wonderfully still.  This is important since our goal was to put the 4000 sq. ft. piece of plastic over the hoops.  One must realize that a 4000 sq. ft. piece of plastic functions much like a sail and in a strong wind can easily lift a person several feet into the air.

We started by installing the channel on both end walls.  This took about an hour and we had help again.  Doug came back (we were surprised too) and my brother, Scott, came up.  Between the 4 of us, we got the channel on and the site ready in about an hour. 

Channel on the South wall

A friend from work, Brent Ragsdale, came to help put the plastic on about the time that we were done with the channel.  It was finally time to cover the hoops!

We spread out the plastic in the field next to the greenhouse and managed to immediately poke a hole in it on one of the cedar stumps in the field.  Fortunately, Doug had some amazing tape in his car that we used to patch over the hole.  Then we were ready.  We all fanned out on the edges of the plastic and started pulling it over the hoops.  It took a lot of pulling, lifting, fanning and yelling from one side of the greenhouse to the other, but we got it over the hoops. 

Patching the hole

Laying out the plastic

Pulling it over the hoops

Once it was in place, we started locking it down into the channeling.  We did the east wall, then the west wall, then the 2 ends.  Locking in the plastic took much longer than we expected – almost 2 hours – but was mostly uneventful.  All of our helpers got to enjoy actual shade inside the building before leaving for the day. 

We finished up at the farm around 1:15 and gratefully headed for home.  Lest you think that the greenhouse is actually finished, we still have to build and install the doors and paint the end walls before the structure will be legitimately weather tight and finished.  That will have to wait for another day.

Covered!

Greenhouse Build - Part 3

We began another productive weekend working on the greenhouse Friday evening.  It started with a trip to Home Depot to pick up lumber to frame in the greenhouse doors.  While there, I ran into my brother who generously offered to use his truck to move the greenhouse siding.  That saved an extra trip to Home Depot Saturday morning and meant that we had all the materials we needed to finish the greenhouse ends on site.

Scott saves the day by bringing the siding to the farm

Around 6:30, we were joined, thankfully, by Doug Dubois who was an enormous help for the whole weekend.  We would not have gotten the ends done this weekend without his help.  We managed to re-measure and mark the south wall, assemble and square up both door frames and measure and mark the North wall.  We would have gotten more done, but we discovered a few key things about electricity.  First, our small solar panel does not keep 3 batteries charged when we’re running a circular saw.  Second, you cannot run a compound miter saw on 3 partially charged batteries.  This discovery was very disheartening as it meant we could not do any of the cuts needed to finish the end walls.  Fortunately, there were enough other things to keep us busy until dusk.

So, you ask, does that mean that the end walls couldn’t get done?  Of course not!  Several years ago, we were given a generator that had never been opened.  We have stored it since then and decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to break it in.

Early Saturday morning, we made a trip to storage to pick up the generator and then we went to the farm.  When we took the generator out of the box, the instructions said it was produced in 1989.  Most things that are left to sit for 23 years show some signs of wear and don’t function terribly well, so we were pretty nervous as we went through the start up procedure outlined in the owner’s manual.  After all, our ability to continue making progress on the greenhouse depended on this piece of equipment working.  We shouldn’t have been worried – it started right up and ran like a champ all day.  Woo hoo for electricity!

Please let the generator work!!!!

With our newfound power, we managed to get all the pieces cut for both walls, get the walls assembled, erected, attached and apply sheathing to the outside over the course of Saturday.  That would never have happened without some help though.  Doug came back and helped all day on Saturday and another friend, Daniel Diliberto, contributed 4 hours to the cause.  All of that means that it took 38 labor hours to get the end walls constructed and installed on Saturday.  Did I mention that the high was 100?  Yeah, it was a long day.  We cannot say thank you enough to the folks who came to help – it wouldn’t have happened without them.

Work crew from the left: Daniel Diliberto, Jeremy, Doug Dubois

We ended Saturday needing to install the channels on the end wall that the plastic locks into before we could cover the hoop house.  Check out the next post to see how that went!

Plastic is here!

An odd title on a sustainability type blog, but there it is nonetheless.  We picked up the plastic to cover our hoop house today from Stuppy's Greenhouse Supply in KC, MO.  Now to get to the point where we can use it...

Unfortunately, when we finished the first end wall yesterday and raised it, we realized that we can't actually do math.  In other words, it didn't fit.  So, we get to start over on that wall and then we still have to do the other one.  *sigh*  Someday this greenhouse will get finished!  So, if you're bored on Saturday morning and would really like to come work on someone else's project in 100 degree heat (I know, sounds like fun doesn't it?), you're welcome to come out to the farm!  Let us know you're coming and we'll even have food for you.  If we're really good, we'll be ready to cover it on Sunday morning.  Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Garden update!

We've been very focused on building the greenhouse over the last couple of weeks, so I thought it was time to mention some other things going on.  More specifically, how our little garden is doing!

First, the bad news.  It looks like the only trees that survived the transplant are the 2 apples and a couple of the pit-started peaches.  The other dwarf fruit trees have given up the ghost between the heat and the off-season transplant.  Bummer.  We've also lost a few other plants but they will be easier to replace.  Our lack of success transplanting the trees has made me hesitate to move the 5 grapes and the blackberries for fear of losing them also.  At this point, we may leave them in the ground at home until the fall or when the house sells - whichever comes first.

Its not all bad though.  We have some delicious looking cantaloupe growing from volunteers in the soil we moved.  They look like they'll be ready to pick in the next week or two - yummy!  The variety is Honey Rock and they really are incredibly sweet - by far the best cantaloupe we've ever grown. 

Do you see the melons in the leaves?

Our first tomatoes are starting to turn red.  All of our tomatoes went in late this year, so we're behind everyone else in getting our first fruits.  We're so looking forward to the taste of fresh tomatoes from the garden again!  On another note, these 2 plants have continued putting on fruit through the heat wave.  We'll definitely be saving seed from these guys!

Tomatoes!!!!!

The strawberries and onions are also doing well (no pictures though).  The onions are starting to bulb nicely and we haven't lost very many strawberry plants to the heat.  Hopefully that means we'll have fresh strawberries again next year.

The blackberries at home produced a really nice crop of berries this year.  The two varieties of thornless blackberries we have each have their own strengths.  One produces larger berries, the other slightly smaller but sweeter berries.  Both are wonderful though.  The first grapes came ripe last week too - a really tasty white seedless table grape.  The grapes were small but delicious.  We're eyeing the other vines waiting for them to show signs of ripeness now!  The hardest thing will be cutting them back hard to move them knowing that we may not have grapes next year.

I don't think I mentioned this before, but this was our first year to have sweet cherries from our sweet cherry tree.  It is by far the largest fruit tree we have in town at nearly 15 feet but we had never gotten a cherry off of it.  Last spring we planted another sweet cherry to cross polinate.  I didn't see a single bloom on the new cherry tree, but apparently the old one knew it had company now.  The kids got to climb in the branches to get some of the higher up cherries and we all enjoyed the new fruit.  I'll be sad to leave this one behind now.  I guess I'll just have to plant more at the farm!

We hope your garden is growing well despite the heat.  Feel free to share your successes and challenges for this year in the comments!

Clay plaster workshop

On Saturday we took time off of working on the greenhouse to attend a workshop on clay/earthen plasters.  The workshop was on a wooded country site and was hosted by an experienced straw bale/cob builder in her 60's.  Over the half day we were there, we learned to chop straw with a string trimmer, mix and sift clay, make clay slip, mix plaster with our feet and apply clay plaster to a straw bale wall.  Along the way we met some wonderful and like minded people from around the region, some of whom we already knew.  It was a wonderful morning away followed by an afternoon catching up on house chores (laundry doesn't do itself, in case you were wondering). 

The crew! 

Shredding straw with a string trimmer - dusty work!

Wetting the wall before applying plaster

Mixing plaster by foot

Greenhouse Build - Part 2

This post should be called "Flipping cars and flipping bars"...

Friday was another day working in the heat.  We were at the farm about 7:00.  We put up the top rail of boards to stabilize the hoops then started putting the bottom boards on.  The plastic will eventually be attached to these boards.

We took a short break in the middle of digging out a rather large rock that was in the way of the east bottom boards.  While getting some water, Jeremy saw a small SUV flip over in the ditch right in front of our property (other side of the road).  He took off running with Jacob and yelled to me to call 911.  When we got to the car, it was upside down at the bottom of a 10 foot ditch - we thought for sure whoever was inside was seriously injured.  I was talking to the 911 dispatcher while Jeremy shimmied under the barbed wire.  The driver turned out to be completely unharmed and climbed out of the vehicle with no issues.  We walked with him back to our site and gave him some water while we waited for the police to show up (we had reported to the 911 dispatch that he was fine and an ambulance was not needed).  Over the next 30 minutes, there were 4 different sheriff's vehicles, an ambulance and a fire marshal on site.  It made for quite a crowd on our little road!  The car was pulled out of the ditch with no major fuss and the driver was picked up by his parents (he was 16) about an hour later.

This is the lucky driver - not a scratch.

This is the car.  You can't see the giant rocks it landed on in the picture.  It is amazing that the driver escaped uninjured.

Drama resolved, we went back to work on the rock!  It eventually came out and we got the bottom rail finished.  Around this time, a friend, Doug Dubois, came to help.  With his aid, Jeremy got the ridge pole of the greenhouse temporarily wired to the hoops while I finished bolting the bottom boards onto the poles.  Then we all enjoyed some watermelon Doug brought and had some lunch.

For the evening shift, Michael Morley came to help.  We got the channel bars installed on the west side of the greenhouse (to hold the plastic) and got some of the ridge pole permanently installed.  We were completely beat though, so it was not as productive of an evening as Thursday.  At this point, we have seen and messed with enough poles that we'd be happy not to touch another for a long time.

Mr. Morley and I working on channel

Michael Almon came as we were closing up shop and we shared some watermelon together.  We then took a quiet walk around the farm with Michael and Michael.  It was a very nice evening for it and a good end to 2 very productive days working on the greenhouse.  Here is where the greenhouse was as of end of day Friday:

Next will be framing in the end walls, installing channel on the east side and completing the ridge pole.  The end is in site!

Greenhouse build - part 1

Its been quite the productive few days for us!  We'll start with last Wednesday and Thursday.  For those who have been following along, as of last Tuesday, we had a level pad on the farm for the 20'x96' hoop house we were about to put up.  Continuing on from that point...

Wednesday morning we got up at a reasonable hour (read: early) and unloaded all the remaining greenhouse poles (mostly for the larger greenhouse) out of storage and hauled them up to the farm.  For those not priveledged enough prior to this to see the stack of poles required to erect a 36'x96' hoop house, here you go!

When we got to the farm, it was still not quite blazing hot yet, so we decided to do a little groundwork on the small greenhouse.  We took the precise corners we had measured before and started pounding in the six foot long anchor poles for the greenhouse.  We left more than needed out of the ground so that we could come back and level them well.  We felt very fortunate that only 3 of the 17 poles on the back side hit rocks on the way in - we had expected many more.  By the time we were finished with that, it was getting really hot and we were plenty tired.

Thursday morning we were up at the farm about 7:00AM.  Our friend Julie came out to help again and we managed to get the 3 problem rocks removed and the poles leveled over the course of the morning.  For anyone wondering why leveling 34 poles and removing 3 rocks would take 5 hours, I offer these pictures of the rocks and the thought of pounding poles 3 feet into dry clay. 

For scale, this rock is about 2 feet by 16 inches by 8 inches

We just finished digging out the last rock - you can see it at Julie's feet

This was a booger of a rock to get out!

We took a siesta from about noon to 4:30 to rest and recouperate through the hottest part of the day (did we mention that it was 105 when we left the farm and when we went back?).

Thursday evening, we managed to assemble and install all 17 hoops.  That was a really good feeling even though we were completely exhausted!  Did you know that if you sweat enough in the same shirt, salt crystals will form on it?  That was an interesting discovery...

Taking a break part way through - did we mention it was HOT?

All the hoops are up!

After we got all the hoops up, we started drilling the holes to bolt them to the anchor poles.  We managed to use up the drill bit after about 28 poles - apparently drilling through over 100 layers of galvanized steel pipe is hard on a bit.  Who knew?

Stay tuned for what we accomplished on Friday!

Did that really happen?

Have you ever had something happen that made you look back and say “Did that really just happen”?  We had one of those this weekend. 

The story began on Saturday when Jeremy was reading the Merc News classifieds.  Someone posted a free wood burning stove and said that it weighs 450 lbs so come prepared to move it.  We’ve known that we want to heat with wood for a long time, so naturally Jeremy called to see if it was available.  We were figuring it would be a cheap cast iron barrel type stove, or an older and broken down regular stove.  We've called on stoves like this several times before and had yet to find something in working order.  Then the owner tells us it’s a soapstone wood stove that needs a new damper.  Soapstone stoves are usually really nice so we were very interested.  She also tells us that someone else has called to come look at it.  Disappointed but thinking quickly, Jeremy says that if that falls through she should give us a call.

Fast forward to Sunday.  We are resting after picking up the wood from storage that will hopefully form the bottom rail of the greenhouse later this week.  It’s hot and we are planning to work on sorting out the usable from the burnable in this large stack of boards in the back of the truck for the afternoon.  We’re tired from picking them up (pressure treated lumber is not light) and debating how much we’re really going to do this afternoon.  Then the phone rings.  It’s the lady with the woodstove saying that the first person can’t come look at it this weekend and she really wants it gone so do we want to come see it.  How can we turn that down?  If it’s in any kind of decent shape, it would make a wonderful stove for our house for FREE! 

We’re thinking about how we might get this stove home if it’s a good one and we decide it would be much easier to borrow my brother’s trailer with the ramp so that we could use a dolly to load it (remember it weighs 450 lbs).  We give him a call and explain what’s going on.  My amazing brother says,” the trailer’s not here but we can load it in my truck.  Brandon is here too and we have to go up to that part of town [where the stove is] anyway so if it looks good we’ll just swing by there and meet you.”  Really?!?!?!?!  We couldn’t believe our luck – with 4 adults surely we can get it up into a truck bed.

We get to the house and take a look at the stove.  The exposed cast iron frame has rusted a little bit – just on the surface though.  It will easily come off with a wire brush.  The inside looks great, all the knobs turn easily, glass is intact and it even comes with the flu pipe and back heat shield.  All the soapstone on the sides and top is intact, no cracks or dings.  It’s a great stove that cleaned up is going to be beautiful.  We can't believe it.  We say we’ll take it, get back in the car and call Scott to set up a time to come back for the stove.

The stove as we first saw it

We agree to meet up at 2:00.  Everything went mostly smoothly, although the stove was amazingly heavy.  We removed everything that could be removed to help make it marginally lighter before the big lift.  The 3 men in the group (Jeremy, Brandon and Scott) managed to pick it up and get it into the truck bed with only a little bit of swearing and one make-your-breath-catch moment where we thought it was going to fall on Jeremy. The unloading was less eventful and we now have a soapstone wood stove in our garage.   It was heavy.  Did I mention that it was solid cast iron with stone inlaid on 4 sides?  450 lbs was probably a slight understatement.  There’s no way we would have been able to move it without all 3 guys to help.  We can’t thank Scott and Brandon enough.

Removing as much weight as possible

Oh my god this is heavy!!

We made it to the tailgate...

Ready for the ride home...maybe it should just stay there.

We did a little research online later that night to see how much a stove like this would retail for.  As near as we can guess, the modern equivalent to this stove (ours was made in about 1992) retails for $2800.  Ours will need a damper, some quality time with a wire brush, some stove black and little bit of TLC on the stones before it’s in like-new shape, but I suspect our total investment will come out much less than $2800.  ;-)

This is a new stove of the same type.  Hopefully ours will look like this when its all cleaned up.

The cavalry that rode in to save the day!

The rest of the evening we just kept looking at each other in disbelief.  Did that really just happen?  Did we really just get an awesome woodstove for free?    How is this possible?  I checked this morning and it’s still in the garage – we didn’t dream the whole thing.  That really did just happen.  Amazing.