This season we built 4 high tunnels at our farm site on Vernon Drive. The site is a brownfield - a former gas station that is still under remediation contracts with the former tenant. The soil is contaminated and we grew everything off of the ground in raised beds. The above photo is a panoramic shot of the site after we had cleaned it up and before we started building. There were a few folks living on this sits over the past few years, so there was quite a bit to clean up.
Assembly
We got our high tunnels from B&W Greenhouses. They come in hundreds of parts - lots of assembly required. It took us a few days just to assemble all of the arches. We then mapped out where all the posts had to go, drove in the posts with sledgehammers (and the help of a jackhammer on the pavement parts) and then started to put up the arches and attach all the purling. Big lesson here: rent a laser level, measure everything at least three times and pay attention to the details. The tunnels all work but there are certainly some wonky parts. Also - we built these in the month of may and it rained most every day, cold and pouring rain.
But I really learned a lot. I've used a drill growing up but never really felt like I knew what I was doing. But two weeks into this process I was saying things like "let's use the impact driver with the 3/4 inch self tapping screws." My father was impressed!
Up, Up and Away!
Once we got all of the pieces together we had to pull the plastic onto the greenhouse. We pulled the plastic on one of Michael's strawberry houses at Foxglove Farm but we had a team of people who knew what they were doing AND no wind. When we tried them at Vernon we had two folks who had done it before and knew what to expect and a team of exhausted farmers that weren't sure what we were doing. And some light wind.
To pull the poly up you lay it out accordion-folded along the length of the house. You wrap a rock in the corner of the plastic and tie a rope around the rock, leaving lots of rope length to pull on. We tied rocks at both ends and also 2-3 throughout the length of the plastic. We had around 6-8 people helping to pull the poly. Starting on one end you can toss the corner with the rock in up and over the arches (the rock just gives some weight to the corner so that you can toss it.) Someone on the other side should grab the rope and start pulling the corner down on the other side. Someone should be inside the house with a long stick (a broom works well) and they push up on the plastic from inside the house to move it over and down towards the other side. As the plastic starts to slide down you throw over the next rope. Most of the people helping should be on the opposite side, pulling down on the plastic. Be sure to grab it in bunches rather than just pulling on a bit of it - it's really easy to put your finger right through the plastic and you are really pulling hard to get the plastic down.
As you pull more plastic you are getting yourself into dangerous territory - this 200 ft sheet of plastic is essentially a gigantic sail. Just a small gust of wind can catch the plastic and really create a dangerous situation.
At one point I was holding down the plastic on one side and the when the wind came I was lifted fully off of the ground. Make sure - If the wind comes - just let go! I have heard horror stories of folks not letting go and getting lifted and thrown 20 feet up and away.
The first day we tried to pull it up we had two unsuccessful attempts. The following day we had less wind and more people and got two houses pulled before planting our tomatoes.
These hoop houses are one of the things I am most proud of this season. They were physically and mentally exhausting, but to look back at what our team did is pretty amazing. And they add such value to our operation - we dry farmed our tomatoes and are able to do some serious season extension at this site.
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