They arrived about 11:30 from Penn Yan. The truck, trailer, and one of the Penn Yan men who works with these hoophouses. We had two helpers, plus Chico Braun and helper Andrew came over, since Chico also had a hoophouse in the trailer.
This is VERY different from our other hoophouse. This one had welded side panels which bolt together and sit on top of the ground. It will be held down by large screw anchors. The sidewall panels are 5 feet high and 24 feet long.
The arches also were welded together. They are 20 feet wide. The bottom sides drop into holes in the top of the sidewalls.
We unloaded, then had lunch and they left to deliver Chico’s, probably about 1 o’clock.
Amazingly, here is what it looked like at 3:30. I say “amazingly”, because our other hoophouse started with laying out a perfect rectangle, pounding 2 1/4″ posts into the ground, bolting metal tubes onto them, then putting up heavy curved tubes and joining them at the top while they wiggled around. It took several days to get to this point. There is still a lot of work to do here. Tony put the purlin up later this afternoon – a metal strip fasted to the center top that stabilized the arches in position. Next is drill holes in the top sidepiece to screw metal channel for “wiggle wire” that will hold the plastic in position. And drill and place eye-bolts to hold webbing to hold the sides close to the frame. And the plastic. And the endwalls. But, this is definitely the easiest hoophouse to put together I have seen of heard of. It is made by a farm family near Penn Yan.
I may actually be able to plant into it early next week, though it is late for anything to grow this fall. There are some head lettuces in the field that have just been sitting there, not growing noticeably. I may dig them up and see if the warmth of the hoophouse gets them going. I have a lot of lettuces in plug trays in our other hoophouse that were waiting to be planted, but I think most of them waiting too long. We’ll see.
Anyway, this made for a very good day. In spite of the fact that I said I’d feed them lunch and the soup did not get warm on “Simmer Select low” chosen to keep it from scorching, and the bread was not done yet since I was busy in the field and didn’t start preheating the oven until after 11. They were gracious about it and ate cool potato-leek soup.
