Aaron and I for yet another weekend, attacked the greenhouse project!  We had to take some time to eyeball and think through the end walls.  The posts you see that frame the doors were too long.  Everything else has fit perfectly and despite the aggravation of dealing with the manufacturer it is indeed one stout structure.  The problem we discovered was in the weight of the roofing and wall trusses.  In an effort to keep me from taking him to court, the manufacturer upgraded the framing steel from 16 gauge to 12.  It is seriously heavy.  I think the design software he was using didn’t take into consideration the sag that would happen because of the added weight.  Aaron sat down and did a few diagrams and we came to the conclusion that the added weight pressed down the roof and made it shorter than expected.  We went back and forth for most of a morning.  After all, this project wasn’t cheap.  Now we are considering cutting two pretty important pieces. It turned out that we were correct and all is coming together fabulously!

We got the front and back doors attached.  Today I finally got to move and fill the 12 raised beds.  They had been weathering in the outdoors since last February but they held up pretty well.  After watching the mice scatter after moving the tarp over the dirt we had delivered back in March, I set to placing and filling the beds.

Tomorrow, Aaron and I will put up the last 4 steel braces on the front and back and then install the fans and vents.  When that is all done, Zina and I will add the last of the plastic panels and check this project off the list as DONE!

I am so glad to see how well this has come together.  It has been such a ridiculous comedy of errors to even get the thing to the property.  This marks the last of my seriously huge projects that I will be doing myself.  There are a few others, but I am so tired of building things that I am going to treat myself to the use of contractors.  I’m spent.  Its time to just farm.

Next up once the permits are issued:  The solar array.  Should be up and going in a couple of weeks!

I have been playing a bit of hooky from work this last half of August.  I usually do as I used to take off for archery elk hunting.  Aaron came back from town today and there must have been damned near a tornado.  No sooner do we say that it looks like the greenhouse stayed up for the day we were gone that we saw the unattached plastic…. EVERYWHERE! There was even a piece behind the house in the wheat field over 100 yards away!  This is what it looked like:

Needless to say we kind of freaked until we discovered that none of it was damaged.  A contractor once told me that the need to pick up a sheet of plywood is directly proportional to the velocity of the wind!  No truer words were ever spoken!  These pieces of plastic are pretty light and pliable.  They must have just lifted up from the wind during the thunderstorm and they turned into kites.

It was MUCH cooler today so Aaron and I set to it.  We got the rest of the roof on and the side walls.  We had one incidence when the wind took one of the panels and threatened to rip two others off.  Wind SUCKS!!  Especially out here!

BUT!  It looks awesome.  I will not disclose any of our “errors”  As far as all readers are concerned… it is absolutely perfect:

Tomorrow we will start building the door wall frames and begin placing the raised beds who’s boxes have been sitting outside since last February!  Finally!

Yesterday we got the roof two thirds of the way on.  Not a couple of hours later, Godzilla El Nino arrived with a vengeance and doesn’t look like it will go away in the next three days.  Today, Sunday, it is currently sunny but muddy as all get out from the grid killing thunderstorms we had yesterday afternoon.  We have pulled the truck under the new roof along with the tractor and put Zina’s car in the barn as we are expecting the possibility of tennis ball sized hail.  Hopefully that is the exception to the rule, but the forecast from Denver to Des Moines is for raucous and nerve wracking thunderstorms.   Best to be prepared. The pre-solar system, JAZ Farm off grid back up system, got put to the test last night.  The oil lanterns and candles lit the house.  The little generator was put to work keeping the freezers running and my marine battery/inverter gave us a little power for other things as well.  All I know is that when the power is out one comes face to face with the reality of how many stupid electrical things we rely on.  No one in our family today now doubts that the solar system with the battery backup is a bad idea.

So here are the latest construction pictures of dad and the kid.  Its been a lot of fun working with my son.  He has come a long way this year and I hope it continues.  Today we are cleaning and such indoors and then will be celebrating Zina’s birthday!

Saturday’s work:

Saturday evening the sky put on quite a show.  We have only detected one drip in the roof so far.  Nothing a little caulking won’t cure!

Aaron and I have had fun working together to build the greenhouse.  It has been fun having some help for once and watching him be an independent young man.  Rarely have I had someone to stand and scratch my head with and wonder the best way to proceed.  It was interesting to see the 20 year old assert his opinion about how things ought to be as we tackled the logistics of putting up the plastic on the greenhouse roof peaks.  He took a year off of school and I got him a job working as a waterproofer on construction sites.  Because some of the greenhouse needs caulking to waterproof the roof he got the nod.  I debated some points with him and, of course – as a dad will – lost.  We needed to make sure it was done correctly because once the roof is on, there really isn’t any way to go back and fix it save taking off all the plastic panels…. which just ain’t happinen’!

We got our system down and got the most difficult part of the roof put on.  The very top peak panels need to be very straight so that the others all fall into place.  Of course this means being at the highest point on the ladder (I hate ladders!) and also trying to make sure everything is aligned.  I think we did pretty well!  It was HOT!! So after each row we went into the air-conditioned house and drank a quart of water.  A third of the roof today and a third Saturday and then Sunday and the roofing will be done.  After that we place and fill the beds, finish the plastic on the side walls, build the ends where the doors will be and get the new drip irrigation in place.  Hopefully we will have some cool weather crops in there for the fall!

“Look old man … I got this, just hold the flippin’ ladder.”

The worst is over… the roof peak is on and straight!

The first third of the roof is in place!  Not bad for a couple of rookies!  The wind made us stop.  The panels are 4 feet by 12 feet and turn into sails when the wind blows.  Considering we were up 12 feet it was time to start conceding that we just weren’t safe anymore.  As it is we probably violated every rule OSHA has ever written!

The greenhouse frame is up and all squared, anchored, and plumbed.  It is all ready for the roof plastic.  We had to keep the door walls off of each end because before we enclose it we have to place the raised beds and fill them up using the tractor – which won’t fit through the door.  Also, when we put on the roof, one person (me) will be on the tall ladder and the other (Aaron) will be in the back of the pick-up holding it in place while I screw it down.  Once the bed boxes are in and placed we will assemble and cover the doors, end walls and side walls.

This was a huge project that has been hanging over my head for a year!  While the dealings with the company were absolutely a nightmare, this is a very sturdy, well built structure.  I have a hunch it will do quite well during our spring storms.  Hopefully, we will be growing greens and cool weather crops during the three non-summer seasons and that the more delicate plants won’t get creamed during our Rocky Mountain runoff spring storms.  That will keep out of the grocery store a LOT!

Thanks to Aaron for all of his work.  Sorry it was so hot and humid and heavy.  The sunburn will heal!

Of course during what has been one of the hottest weeks of the summer, we started constructing the greenhouse.  It is a pretty straight forward design.  Once we figured out which tab goes in what slot and how not to burn out one’s hammer drill driving self-tapping screws into 12 gauge steel, it just started to flow.  Aaron would disagree, of course, as he thought the trusses were pretty heavy (probably around 100 lbs. each I’m guessing).  They aren’t light, but the issue is more in them being awkward.  They like to wobble around a bit when trying to seat them in their appropriate ground rail pegs and we had a couple of them get away and crash to the ground thus making for good entertainment and freaked out looks!

As I write, it is over 90 degrees so we came in for awhile.  Now that the skeleton is up they all need to be screwed down and then the whole building needs to be squared.  After that we true all the trusses vertically and tie them in place with hat channel steel.  We should have the majority of the frame done by the end of the weekend.  Yet one more construction project getting under our belts!  Can’t wait to have the plants growing and the music playing out there this winter!

The length is 36 feet; width 24 feet; wall height 7 feet and roof peak 11 feet.  When the trusses were on the ground being built they were deceiving.  They looked much shorter than that really are.  This is a big beastie. You can kind of compare it to the height of the fifth wheel trailer in the background.  The trailer would just fit into it directly under the roof peaks.

Wow did we underestimate the labor involved with this project!  It is one thing to plant the wheat; its a whole ‘nuther thing to cut it, thresh it, and winnow it!

Next year we WILL have a scythe.  The field is 70 x 70 which is bigger than most suburbanite homes.  We are cutting the whole thing down with a hand sickle which means being bent over and cutting the stalks off at ground level.  We managed to get half down and then it started to rain.  So now we have to wait for the field to dry before we can do the other half.

Because we have yet to put up a barn for critters and hay and such (the barn we have right now being for equipment), the hay is stacked in our basement on tarps.  From there we thresh it (the removal of the wheat heads from the stalks) and then it will be winnowed (removing the “shells” of the wheat berries by letting wind carry them away), leaving us with the end result:  whole grain raised with no chemicals, no synthetic fertilizers, and no pesticides.

I planted the field with 25 lbs of red spring wheat.  It will be interesting to see after all is said and done, if we harvested more than what we sowed.

The wheat field:

The harvested wheat:

The farmer with his ass in the air!  HOT!

The foot powered (treadle powered) thresher:

Zina hard at it:

Yet another project almost completed. 1200 feet of Lumite laid down with 600 pins. The grass and weeds and BINDWEED out on the prairie have eyes and search for unsuspecting vegetables, delicate plants and small children. This should keep it out of the walkways. Not to mention the awful, devil incarnate goat head thorns! Our “bottom” two beds are the wettest because the garden is on a slight slope. Zina pulled buckets of bind weed out this morning. Now hopefully we will be able to stay on top of it now that most of the torrential spring rains have subsided. Whoosh it was hot!

It is starting to feel like the JAZ Farm is getting more and more completed.  We signed our life away this past Friday and are having a Solar Array put up.  This isn’t a completely off grid system but it has a battery back up.  The power company becomes a back up system as well and will provide us electricity when the sun isn’t shining very brightly or if we use more power than the panels produce (not likely).  If the grid goes down the panels keep the room of batteries charged up.  Out here this is important.  With all of the chicken and pork going into freezers and the fact that our well pump is electric, this system will keep us from losing our food and also ensure that we have water available.

In addition, I will be installing water harvesting tanks to catch water from the roof for irrigation, drinking and providing water to the greenhouse….. which by the way…. is actually HERE!  Now that the Lumite is done (there is some that we need to wait until the fall to lay because we can’t disturb the beds and the pathways are fairly narrow) I can start eyeballing the greenhouse and get the frames assembled.  It isn’t the full length we agreed to during the 8 month fiasco that was the wait time, but we did get the original length and upgraded steel.