I have this habit of dreaming stuff up and then actually making it happen.  Most of what I make happen involves time, money and back breaking work.  The projects for 2015 are no different it seems.  Any new work on the farmhouse has gotten to the point that it is stuff that needs to be contracted out.  We have plans to install a wood burning stove, solar hot water, and eventually solar panels (although our electric bill here is pretty meager).  The heating and hot water are the two biggest expenses as propane is never going to get any cheaper.  Those things need to be professionally installed.   The farming infrastructure, however, still falls to my back and hips.  This year is going to be no different.  I just got off the phone with the manufacturer to order our new GREENHOUSE!

Ironically, because it needs to be assembled on relatively level ground, it is going in the area we laid out for the pig pen.  The pig pen is going to move over by the garden which actually makes more sense as they will have access to the garden when we want to have them go in and root around in the fall.

The greenhouse is coming in a kit.  It looks like it is a pretty straight forward assembly job but as with everything else I do it seems it will be bulky and heavy.  I am drafting my son and one of my other farmhand volunteers and according to the owner, I should be able to have the frame up and anchored in a couple of days.  Delivery is supposed to be sometime toward the end of December.  If true, then we very well may have the thing up and operational by spring planting.  Should that happen then we will not be planting the garden in the city this year.  It will likely get dismantled, salvaged, the dirt smoothed flat and Xeriscaped with pollinator oriented plants.  Zina will be happy because I will not need to hack back the ash tree that is back there as it has sprawled over the years and shaded large portions of that garden.

We will still be starting the seedlings in the grow room, but when they start to get lanky and need to be hardened off we won’t have to suffer from the pain of watching them get destroyed by hail.  Allegedly this thing can withstand 100 mph winds and golfball sized hail.  They have several pictures of ones they put up in Colorado and they look to be pretty stout puppies.

We will be adding ventilator fans to it and I have a solar charger that can power them so it won’t be grid dependent.  As with the garden in the city we will put in raised beds and drip irrigation for efficiency.  With respect to keeping it cool, the manufacturer suggests putting up shade cloth over it that lets a certain percentage of sunshine through but also helps keep the building cooler during the blast furnace of summer.

I guess, as I always say, if it isn’t fun I wouldn’t be doing it.  Should this all work out not only will we have the kind of harvest we had this past season, we will also have pork, eggs, chicken, our own home ground flour, and all the salad fixins you can shake a stick at.  Not to mention, just a really nice place to go hang out and meditate on my belly button.

Woohoo!