Hoophouse Take 1

One of the biggest projects on the list for the last year or two here at One Step at a Time Gardens has been to get a second hoophouse built.  Tim and Jan bought the structure a few years ago, and its parts have been waiting patiently in a seldom used corner of the barn.  We started putting the thing up last fall, and have diligently continued working on it over the last 10 days.  So diligently, in fact, that just yesterday we finished putting in all the requisite parts so that it would be ready for just the right day. A day that dawns blue and warm, with (and this is THE MOST IMPORTANT PART) absolutely no wind. 

This is uber important because trying to maneuver 100 square feet of thick plastic over a metal frame 90 feet long, 35 feet wide, and 16 feet tall is complicated enough as it is.  Adding in the slightest breeze, the slightest excuse for that plastic to pick up all that wind energy and start flapping around, is everybody's nightmare.  At least around here.  

Anyhow, a spring day with no wind on the prairie is like a day with no rain in Oregon in January.  It happens, but it's super rare.  Imagine our surprise when Tim and Jan came knocking on our door early this morning to say, this is it! This is plastic day!  Holy cow, we thought - what impeccable timing.  We just finished getting the thing ready for this day yesterday!  So up to the hill we went, skipping and smiling all the while.

We got everything ready - rolled out the plastic, laid out the wiggle wire. It looked like this:

We tied softballs into the plastic, and tied long ropes around the softballs. We lobbed the ropes up and over the frame, scrambled to the other side to start heaving that 200 lb. roll of plastic up and over.  We got a great start!  It looked like this:

We got the two ends secured, and were poised and ready to start locking in the sides and.....WHOOOOOSSSSHHHHHH.

 
A big.ole.gust.of prairie wind.  The kind that makes you think you might get carried on over to Illinois if you're not careful.  Sigh.  The ropes burned our hands as it whizzed through. The plastic flapped. And flapped. And flapped. It was loud. And panicky for a few moments as we rushed around to undo what we'd already secured.  Holes in that baby would be bad, baaaaad news.  So we let the plastic flap itself on over to it's original side and sat in the tractor bucket licking our (figurative) wounds for a while.  It was not plastic day after all.

In fact, it turned into repairing fencing day.  Not a bad day to spend a Wednesday, but definitely not as good as completing a six month project.  At least the dry run is over!