Happenings on the Ranch

If you missed my first post in the Greenhouse Saga, you may want to read that first to get caught up.

So, we successfully won the bidding for a bargain basement price on our new greenhouse.  Now, the hard part: getting the darn thing home.  See, it was our responsibility to dissamble the greenhouse from its current site, transport it to the farm and reassemble it in it’s new home.  Not a small task.  We had until the end of October to get it off the property.  Since it was May, the beginning of our busy season, we would need plenty of time to get that accomplished.  We took our time.

Slowly, trip after trip, we returned to the property to take apart the greenhouse.  We took down all the plastic, pulled apart all the posts and beams, pulled the concrete out of the ground, rolled up the shade cloth, stacked the pallets and table bases, even the wood rails.  If there’s one thing we’ve learned while building this farm it’s that every little piece of material can be used for something.  We transported the pieces one trailer load at a time throughout the heat of the summer until, by mid-October, all the parts were there.  Then we started the task of re-assembling them.  Actually, this was much easier than pulling it apart.

We chose our spot and decided to only build half the greenhouse.  We would choose a different spot later to assemble the second half as a winter growing house.  The holes were dug for the concrete supports, poles put together, rails put on, and door and vents put in place.  We (meaning Arcenio) also put on a garage door to make it easier to move larger equipment and flats of plants in and out.  After several weeks, the entire structure was in place; except for the plastic.

Did you ever play with a parachute as a kid?  You know, when they lay the parachute on the ground and everyone gathers around the edges and lifts it up and down?  It’s fun, and if you get a really big gust of wind and you don’t weigh so much, you can get lifted off the ground.  If you can picture it, that’s why you wait until the calmest day you can to put plastic on a greenhouse.

The structure is 20′ by 48′.  The plastic needs to be rolled on in one big piece.  Of course, the structure itself is around 18′ feet tall at it’s highest peak.  That’s a rather large piece of plastic.  We waited for a day when there was no wind and went to work.  It took quite a bit of effort to move the plastic into position.  We started at the bottom of one of the long sides and grabbed the edges.  With the help of our neighbor, we slowly began to pull the plastic up the sides and across the top.  Mind you, none of us is 18 foot tall so this was quite a feat.  We shimmied, slid, jumped, pushed and pulled with that plastic to get it up over the top of the structure.  After about 45 minutes in unseasonable heat, we finally got it over the peak and were pulling it down the opposite side when it happened.  The wind.

It wasn’t really wind, per say, just a small breeze.  But, it was enough.  I stand a little over 5 foot, 7.5 inches and weigh around 125 pounds; not much weight when compared to the power of nature.  The breeze came under the loose plastic on the other side of the greenhouse, caught up in the side we were holding and, woosh, up I went.  Our greenhouse-plastic-turned-parahcute lifted me up a good six inches off the ground, but I refused to give in.  Arcenio was yelling, “Just let go!”  Heck no!  After spending 45 minutes sweating my tail off getting this plastic across the greenhouse structure I was bound and determined NOT to let go.  But, as the breeze continued and I bounced up and down off the ground, I finally decided there was no way I was going to be able to hang on without hurting myself or tearing the plastic.  So I conceded defeat and let go.  The plastic slipped back over the way it had come with so much effort just minutes earlier, flapping in the breeze as if laughing all the way.

My husband and I are both Marines and, hence, have a tendency to cuss like sailors when upset.  Let’s just say the bad words were flying freely at that point.  We flopped down on the ground and stared at the greenhouse with contempt.  We knew it was going to take quite a bit of effort to get this accomplished but it was frustrating to be so close to finished and then have to start over again.  As the breeze subsided we decided to give it one more shot.  Desperately, and as quickly as possible, we began to pull the plastic over the top of the structure again.  As the breeze began to pick up again we frantically scrambled to get the plastic in place.  Finally, with almost as much effort as before, we pulled it into place, weighed it down with cinder blocks on both sides and plopped down on the ground in exhaustion.  After a short rest, we set about securing the plastic in place along the wood rails with only the bottoms left loose.  The greenhouse was intact!  And I had managed not to fly up in the air a second time.  In hindsight, that was probably the least of our concerns.

Part three to come!

~Karin