Sarah Goes Farming: Greenhouse!

Aaron is doing a wonderful job of constructing the greenhouse. I have been helping as much as I can, but he's doing most of the work. Here are a few photos of our progress:

Here is Aaron looking at the concrete we got to stabilize the poles.

It's a bit of a mess in the beginning, but this is our first pole, the one we measure all others off of. I think it's the King post or something. Anyway, Aaron dug the hole and the orange thing attached to the pole helps us make it plum.

The pole in the hole.

The cement in the first hole. Wanda was hanging out with us and while my back was turned she slipped into the hold and made this funny footprint. It looks like a duck footprint to me. I had to carry her over to a bucket of water and wash her little foot off so the cement didn't dry on her.

Aaron checking the second pole. (The Queen post?)

All holes dug, poles lined up, cement solidified and arches assembled. This last pole could not be installed like the others because it landed between two important pipes. So I hand dug a hole and we used a mallet to drive it into the ground. That's what Aaron is doing in this picture.

After the pole was driven as deep into the ground as we could make it go, we had to trim the top off with a pipe cutter. That is the tool I am using in this photo.

Here I am with the pipe I just cut off.

The bones of the greenhouse.

We had to put up the middle bar. It has a name but I can't remember what it is. The photo I don't have is that I was on the taller ladder at the other end of the greenhouse clamping down the other end of the bar that Aaron is attaching to the arch.

I was able to climb down after using the clamps to keep the bar in place while Aaron bolted the bar into place.

This greenhouse will have roll-up sides, so next up is installing the baseboards and headboards for that.

The seeds have been planted for this first round of test vegetables and I'm keeping a close eye on them. Here are the flats they are planted in:

The numbers correspond to the seeds in that section. We have it all written down, don't worry!

The rest of the farm is doing well and we are enjoying the warmer weather though sometimes I think the world will never get green again. I know it will, of course, but it just seems like everything has been gray and brown for so long. That's one of the nicer things about living further north. You get snow, so the landscape changes more in the winter. The snow we have gotten here never stayed for very long and it wasn't much.

Last Saturday I attended a beginner beekeeper class put on by my local beekeeper association. It was a great class but it made me realize that I'm very far behind on my bee schedule, if I want to keep bees this summer. And I really do! I joined the club and through them found someone who was selling bees. I'll be getting my Queen and her ladies around May 20th. I've ordered two packs of bees. Most beekeepers with any sort of experience recommend starting with at least two so that you can compare the two hives in case something looks off with one of them. I won't have any honey to sell or share this fall, but next year I will. It takes the bees a while to create excess stores of honey and a new hive will need all they have created in their first year to get them through the winter.

The last bit of farm news is that we found out that our sweet friend Carl the cat (of the Goon Squad) has FIV. Luckily for the other cats in the colony the strain he has is not as contagious as others. He can still share their food bowls and do grooming with his sister Lucy. The other cruddy news about Carl is that his teeth are in terrible shape. He's got ulcers in his gums and it just looks crazy painful. To clean his teeth is approximately $480. I can't afford that, so I don't know what to do. I found out about the FIV from the emergency vet, not the usual vet that we go to. So on Monday, I will talk to our regular vet and find out what I can do for him.

So not to end on sad news, here are some recent fun photos from around the farm: