More of hoophouse construction

Spreading out the cover....

Cindy getting ready to pull the cover over the top with the rope, attached with clamps.

Jordan & Elijah rolling the ends of the plastic up.

Pulling the other end of the cover tight with the tractor.

Laura standing in the doorway of the hoophouse.

Hoophouse arrival & construction

We received our hoophouse from a business in Kansas city called Stuppy. It arrived on a freight truck ready to be assembled.

Some bullet points about the hoophouse...
This structure is 150 ft. long and 30 ft. wide.
It has 50 columns to put in the ground, 25 on each side.
Under roof square footage is 4500

Our first order of business was to pound in 6 ft tall metal columns into the frozen ground and make sure they were level. Fortuantely the post driver with the tractor makes life much simpler.

The next step was to add the arches to the columns

After all the columns were put in place we could now start bolting the bracing to the top of the arches

Our first week we are able to get done with a big bulk of the work, but still having lots to accomplish before we can finally say its complete. Helping us were Nathan, Joshua, Michael, Sam, Elijah, and Cindy.

First pigs delivered to Polyface

We brought five big porkers on Wednesday to Polyface Farms, Inc. (the farm that is subcontracting us to grow for them). They weighed an average of 290. It is exciting to finally start an ending to the first batch of pigs we got several months ago. Unfortuantly I did not get a picture of them being loaded up or on their way, so I guess we will just have to wait for the next time around. Which will be happening every two weeks come beginning of April.