Winter has arrived here also

Looking around at blogs, a lot of people are talking about winter having arrived. It is here too. -10 F this morning at 7:30, no idea how cold it got. We have more than two feet of fresh snow over the weekend. And tonight there might be freezing rain to top it off.

I like to leave the snow on the stock panel structures as insulation. But with the recent fiasco with the garden green house, I didn't risk it. I cleared the snow off each with a push broom. Which is not hard, but it can get deep on the backside.

But the wood is all stacked and dry. What a difference from last year. Last year we were burning birch that I cut from standing dead trees late last year. I was hoping the standing dead would be a little drier than green wood. And I am sure it was, but not enough. Those birch logs were frozen and we tried all winter to have them warmed up and dried out a little before we put them in the stove. This years wood is mostly oak that I cut early last spring. Some of it was standing dead, others were nuisance trees that would threaten the new fence. But more than anything, they have been under cover all summer and are dry dry, ready to go in the firebox. If the fire dies down, you can just stick these logs in and they catch. Not like last year, trying to nurse a fire back up with tomorrow mornings kindling. A little preparation prevents poor performance as I have been told.



Certainly glad I fixed the snow blower prior to this weekend. I did clear a lot of snow. I have been known to put things off on occasion. Just lucky on this one, I guess.

Greenhouse CatAsTrophe

We've been having a tough time in the greenhouse. These are some leeks from the greenhouse. Yes, those are teethmarks on them. Somebody, probably several somebodies are using our greenhouse as their own winter larder. Probably voles or mice. They have wiped out the greens and other starts. It's been discouraging. We're not sure what to do different for next year. I don't really want to do a foundation. Maybe we had the plastic on too soon, we should have let the ground freeze. It will take some thought for next year.

The rodents aren't all. If we were too far ahead putting on the plastic, we were too late with the bracing cords. On Thursday night we got a small snow storm and then heavy rain. Freezing rain. We were luckier than people north and south of us, there 25,000 power customers without it and we only lost it briefly overnight. But the waterlogged snow was too much weight for the inadequately braced greenhouse.

In the past we have braced the greenhouse with cords that act like spokes, maintaining the curve of the greenhouse. If there are enough of these cords, the strength of the 1/4" steel that makes up the cattle panel will hold the shape of the greenhouse under extraordinary snow loads. I have gone out and cleared 3 feet off the greenhouses in the past that did not collapse them. We didn't have near enough bracing in the greenhouse this year, though and this relatively small storm took us down.

The lucky thing is that the snow didn't entirely crush the greenhouse or kink the wire. If it had been kinked, straightening it without totally disassembling the greenhouse would have been next to impossible.

As it is, the wire is bent, which dramatically decreases the greenhouse's strength. The design depends on the flat panel in a stressed arch. It is curved, but not beyond it's plastic deformation point. So it is trying to return to a flat panel. The internal cords prevent it from returning to a flat panel and transfer the load further down the structure.

Since the greenhouse was not completely crushed and we could still crawl inside, we we're able to lift it back into shape. As we lifted, we tied new cords. After the initial round, we went back and tied more to correct where we were still out of shape. Then again, often untying the first ones. It's a process like tuning a bicycle wheel. You work slowly, making small corrections in many places.

Since the wire had been bent, though, just getting the arch back wasn't enough. We'll have to also need a vertical brace because the wire is no longer straight and won't carry the vertical load. That's the 2x4 on the end. It carries another 2x4 that goes the length of the greenhouse and another post on this end.

We still have work to do, and we won't be starting any new plants in the cold weather. But at least we'll get a jump on spring in the greenhouse.

Annual MVM Harvest Festival

Things are getting cold.

A week and a half ago we got our first hard frosts. Three or four in a row. We had been having glorious late fall warm days up until then. A week ago Friday there was ice in the buckets, first of the year.

The cool weather coincided with our annual harvest party dinner. Every Year, as long as I have owned the house, we have hosted a Harvest Festival Potluck dinner. Fall is my favorite time of year, the best time for parties. It's always inviting to go into a house on a cool fall evening that smells of roast turkey and other season favorites. A lot of the food was local, but we failed in our quest for a local turkey. The closest we came was someone an hour away who could order us a "local" turkey that has been frozen since last thanksgiving. We'd be meeting the delivery truck there, less than three days before the party. And it would be a big turkey. It was going to be dicey as to whether it would thaw in time, and I didn't like the idea of all that driving around for a "local" bird. So, we went to fancy coop (not our regular coop) and got what we could get. That's the one downfall of our timing, it's not close enough to get in on the turkey mania.

It's gotten cold enough that we have recovered the greenhouse. My wife has been growing peppers and other warm crops in the green house all summer. We opened up the ends for ventilation and pollination but kept the body of it on to control the soil moisture and elevate the temperature. It worked out well, giving us the best crop of Anaheim and Jalapeno peppers yet. But with the hard frost we needed to close it in and get the winter layer of plastic on. We still have almost two months of greens to go for this year. Then the greenhouse will serve as a place to winter over cold hardy plants until early next spring. The greenhouse will warm up a month before the surrounding garden, giving us a leg up.

Since that frost we have had heavy rains. The leaves are down. We raked the neighbors lawn yesterday and filled our leaf bins. It's really fall now, no more swimming down by the river.

Some nice weather

We had a string of at least two weeks of good weather that spanned all the important days of kidding. Going into April, my wife pointed out that last year we had three significant snow storms in April. Not this year. We are completely melted out except the patch of snow on the north west corner that gets dumped on by both the house and the barn roofs. It is down from 8 feet to a foot and a half, soon to be gone. My mother in law looks to have won the pool on that, it will be gone before May.

The string of sunny days has been broken, though. It started raining at about 9 AM and has been going pretty steady ever since. The drainage over flow in the back yard is brimming. That's where the whole backside of the house and two thirds of the barn rain water ends up. We usually have two 55 gallon drums to catch it, but I haven't set that up yet this spring. Today's rain would have easily filled it.

We do have the spring line setup. When I bought this house the main house was still supplied by the surface well in a cleft up above the house. It will gravity feed into the firs floor of the house. One of the conditions to buy the house was to put in a drilled well, the state frowns on surface water. So I dug a line from the spring to the garden and we now have a supply for the garden that is separate from our drinking water.

We moved the greenhouses today. We had two greenhouses in the garden this year, one for the chickens and one for plants. During the coldest winter days, the plants go dormant since the greenhouse is unheated. But they are that much further along when temperatures do allow. This year, we got a solid extra month of growth over unprotected ground in the garden. Most people in this area are just starting to talk about working their gardens, but my wife already has greens to harvest, radishes, leaks, etc. All cold hearty stuff to begin with, but we are already getting daily salads out of the garden. So, today we took down the chicken green house and moved the plant greenhouse to a new set of beds. We also constructed two new raised beds in the garden to match the greenhouse foot print. The cold hearty stuff is ready to be out on its own and my wife will be moving tomatoes and peppers out to the new green house location. I am really impressed with the amount she already has growing in the garden. I'll try to put up some pictures when we takes some.

Out back, we are adding some new goat "pasture". Last year I put up a 75' square pasture for the goats and we tried to go rational grazing in that. But it was too small and we really weren't getting enough time between rotations. So I am adding another similar sized fenced area and then we will have two smaller pastures in between the two permanently fenced ones. That will give us a four month separation which is much better from a parasite perspective. Unfortunately, it is not optimal for forage nutrition, but the parasites are a more important consideration.

Stockpanel Arches

It's fall and time to think about coming frost and putting the garden together for the winter.



Over the last couple of years we have been working on developing a greenhouse design we like. We needed something that would extend our growing season into the fall, provide our chickens with a protected area in the winter, open the garden earlier in the spring and be easy enough to remove for the growing season. It also needed to be inexpensive.



From a couple of sources, we worked out the arched stock panel design we use now. My brother had been talking about arched hoop houses he uses to winter his chickens and a friend of mine showed me arched stock panel sheds he uses to house his yard equipment. I put the two ideas together into a hoop house made of stock panel over our raised beds to house the chickens in deep winter and a greenhouse on either side. And during the growing season, the plastic comes off the greenhouse and it becomes a trellis for climbing plants like beans and tomatoes. And since the stock panel is only staked down, it's easy to lift it out one panel at a time and set it up in a different location. Interestingly, my friend showed me the article he had gotten his idea from, an article about greenhouses... All my life's a circle, so to speak.



To make these stock panel greenhouses, we use three sections of stock panel (hog panel) 16 feet long and 52" wide. The panels are bent into arches about 8 feet in diameter set in a line to form a 12 foot long greenhouse. We drive a couple of 4 foot stakes that enter the stock panel 2 feet off the ground and go through the lowest rung of the panel. The stakes help define a 2 foot high vertical wall. A series of guy ropes (cords for geometry students) pull the panel in to form and stabilize the curve of the arch. This year, we also added some 46" spars that follow the same path as the guy ropes. The guy rope / spar arrangement use up about 6 inches of the headroom, but they also make the arch strong enough to handle our snow load. A couple of pieces of bailing twine lace the sections of panel together. A 10 by 9 foot piece of 6 mm plastic goes across each end and a 13 by 17 foot piece over the arch. Around the rim of the arch, we use those metal binder clips to clip the plastic to the arch. We run battens the length of the arch to keep the plastic from luffing in the wind. A couple of 8 inch long blocks of wood screwed to the battens from the inside secure the battens to the arch. For extra insulation, a second layer of plastic can go over the battens, forming about an inch of air gap between the layers of plastic. I frame up a door on hinges but it could also be just a flap cut in the end. A vent window will also be necessary to prevent over heating in warm weather.


Our 2006-2007 greenhouse as it finished the winter and started our spring plants


2007 tomatoes and peppers starting in the greenhouse in May

Frame for the second greenhouse going up on new raised beds in June

Young plants growing in the new East greenhouse as a trellis

West greenhouse with plastic removed and tomatoes and peppers uncovered.

Tomatoes and peppers growing in the west trellis in July. Beans hanging from the panels.

A variety of plants growing in the East trellis in July

The east trellis covered in plastic against frosts in September.