Little Big - Our Hoophouse
As we’ve been seeding our first successions of flowers inside, Mark and I have also been working on a big piece of our farm infrastructure outside: our hoophouse.
It may seem obvious, but a hoophouse is pretty essential in our growing climate. For a lot of flowers, fruits, and vegetables (especially the longer day crops), we are able to get a jump start on the season by being able to grow up seedlings in a warm and controlled environment.
As a small farm that intends to grow most of our stuff in the field, we don’t need a ton of hoophouse space. So, ours is kind of little by most farm standards - but she’ll do a lot of work for our plants! Since the structure is small, we were able to get the hoops up, end walls framed, and plastic on in a little more than a weekend. I feel very lucky that Mark has both a construction and farming background - because he made this process go a lot smoother and more quickly than if I had tried to tackle it on my own.
Right now we’re just using pallets and concrete blocks as benches for flats of plants. We’ve since added more structural support and purlins, and our next steps are to lay weed block fabric and add a ventilation system.
Until then - we are enjoying the warm space for our baby plants. We’ve even christened our new hoophouse: Little Big. She may be small, but she’s powerful!