Greenhouse came in the other day. It was a happy day at the Zydeco Ranch. The nice Amish guy had to take all backroads to cross the valley so he wouldn’t have to get the oversize permits. At least I think he may have been Amish. He had the straw hat, garb, and the beard to fit the part. His brother-in-law had similar outfit on, but drove the truck, and the BIL’s wife was in a polo shirt and worked at the co-op, so I wonder how much Amish they are. I was hoping they would bring it on the back of a buggy, but whatever.
They did a heck of a job on it. They matched my roof metal trim to the building and even stained the wood to match the cabin’s wood. They came, dropped it off, moved it about 10 feet to get it into the proper position, and even wrote up a work order and informed me that they didn’t charge sales tax, but they paid sales tax on all of the material. Very ethical.
It’s hot in it. HOT. Without the window open or the screen open on the door, it got painfully hot in there during the day. I was extremely impressed. I am hoping it takes minimal heat in the winter to keep it above freezing so we can grow veggies in it when it’s -30º outside.
Beautiful wife thinks I should reconsider putting the chicken coop in there. I was thinking of using the north face to enclose an area for the chickens. My idea behind it was I could properly store the food in the greenhouse, I could heat the house for the chickens and plants using one heat source, and it would use the area under a proposed shelf, so no dead space in there. Further, if it got too bad outside, I could let them roam free in the greenhouse for a day without freezing them. She doesn’t want me to cut a hole in the side of the greenhouse. She doesn’t like wasting space for chickens in there. She’s worried that the chickens would get loose in there and eat our plants and roost at the top of the greenhouse. But mainly worried that I would destroy the greenhouse by putting in a halfass chicken coop mess in there.
She wants to move the chickens to the barn. Replace the tack room area with some nesting boxes, and hang some feeders. I don’t know. My issues about that are I have the chickens for their eggs. If I let them run like that, they may find a better spot for the eggs. Now I have to have an egghunt every day for my breakfast. Further, my dogs can jump the fence into the goat pen. That means now I have to count the chickens each day to make sure they are still around. Even if we insulate the barn better, it will still be ice cold in there. (The goats are happy all the way down to -10º before they get cold.) It just seemed less work to put the chickens in the greenhouse.
I think we may come to a compromise. I might move the existing coop that is built against the house and move it to the chicken run near the greenhouse. Got some extra logs that I can use for the back wall.
Our house, from where the greenhouse is.
The garden I have so far. In the foreground is the old dish for TV. They put in a new one and left the old on the ground. Might use it to make the crazy neighbor think we have hidden cameras along the driveway.
Greenhouse, as seen from the porch. We moved it after this pic so it would be lined up with the fence.
Inside. It's 12x16 in the inside, 192 sqft, 8 shy of having to buy a $500 building permit.
Floor bracing, so it will stay square. Good construction.
Nice greenhouse, Mudbug. I like your place. Thanks for the pictures.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful! I look forward to the day when we have a nice place to do that.
ReplyDeleteI would be excited too. Very nice.
ReplyDeleteGreat job
ReplyDeleteStephen, you and yours are always welcome to visit and go skiing here in the winter.
ReplyDeleteLila, you will have a place like this one day. You can even buy the property next to us dirt cheap if you want.
MDR, Thanks. I'll make sure to keep everyone updated on the plants I put in it. And we are trying to send you rain. We have lots of snow planned for Texas this winter.
Matt, Thanks.
I bet you have a hell of a view of the stars at night. Flat like that, it would be the whole bowl of the heavens. I like your place, lots of room to make it whatever you want to. You are getting it all done from the looks of the pictures. Do your goats really do ok at minus 10? I had goats and I had to pen them up inside when it got down into the 20's, they hated cold.
ReplyDeleteColor me jealous! That's a sweet greenhouse.
ReplyDeleteAH,
ReplyDeleteWhen we moved here, I finally got to see constellations and the Milky Way. It was utterly amazing.
The only complaint I have out here is that there are no trees on the property to make into firewood.
The goats are great to about -20 then they get pushy about heating the barn. As long as we get them out of the wind, they are happy.
The lack of trees here give me a surface wind of about 10mph on average. Mostly, we get 30+ winds, and gusts in the spring up to 80mph. We are seriously thinking about wind generators and a few solar panels.
It's a nice valley, roughly the size of Mass. Flat as a board. It was a huge lake for eons, so the soil is a sandy, sandy loam. The valley holds, as a conservative estimate, 4 billion acre feet of water, making for a groundwater level, with all the valley pivot sprinklers, of about 4 feet.
The weather here is great. It does get cold here in the winter, but 0*F at 0%humidity still feels warmer than South Louisiana at 35*F.
Nice...real nice. You have a pretty piece of property also.
ReplyDelete