Sunday, March 29, 2009

Haygrove Skinned!

What a fantastic thing to wake up this morning feeling my aching bones, knowing that I earned every single sore muscle yesterday accomplishing the project that had been nearly 2 years in the making!  
What an amazing day - we had so many people come out and help us.  No small thank you goes out to our friends that woke up early on a Saturday to help us!  Nick, Jane, Rob, DD, Ron, Glenn, Becky, Adam & Emmett.  You should know how grateful we are to you - this wouldn't have been possible without your help!  We got the most perfect possible day that we could have gotten - sunny, warm, and windless.  Blessedly windless!  We had a plan - we had job assignments, and the whole process took us 3 hours - a whole hour less than we anticipated!  The order of operations went like this:  hoist the sausage of plastic onto the top of the house, flop one end over and clip it into place, pull the sides down, pull it taut all along the length, rope the tension into it, then rinse and repeat until we were done.  It went exactly according to the plan, and having no complications with the weather was icing on the cake.  All that remains now is to build the doors (simple plastic ends) and the plastic skirts along the outside.  We plan on prepping the beds this week, and seeding in them next week!   Here's some fun pictures of the process, as well as some more great videos.  Enjoy!
Spencer giving the order of operations - note the frost on the ground.

Hoist the plastic on the ridge, and pull down until it is evenly draped.

Drape that plastic!

Cinch it taut!

Secure the ends with clips.

Rope it!


Here's a video from the day before - threading the plastic down the middle bay.

Skinning the first bay of the hoophouse...


Skinning the last bay.

5 comments:

KW said...

YAY!!!!!!
and with the unravelling of the plastic, you have unravelled a new chapter in Half Pint Farm. I am so proud to to see you guys accomplish this great feat! Carpe Diem. -k

mara said...

Thanks, Kevin!! We do indeed feel like we're starting a new chapter here at HPF! I keep saying, "I feel like my farm just grew up!" It's awesome. Can't wait to start growing in it! Wish you were here!

Thomas said...

Wow.

That must be a huge load off your mind! Congrats!

Happy Planting.

mara said...

Thanks! We're pretty excited!

Anonymous said...

Nice job! Thought you could pull the poly down the leg row using a rope and another tractor from the other end... but this seemed to work for you! Best of luck with it.