“Hoolyloop house”

It only lasted a few days.  Almost three year olds have an annoying habit of loosing some of the cure ‘ism’s far too soon.  When two, our little one called hula-hoops ‘hoolyloops’ and would correct you if you said it right.  I mean, she’s a kid, she knows what they are really called, right?  Well as we finished the hoop house this spring, she did manage to mispronounce ‘hoop house’ enough to take the name on.  For a while.  She now corrects us “no daddy, da hOOp houtse”  “Dilly Daddy”….  Ah kids.

So here it is, in pictorial story.  I’ll narrate (just in case you can’t tell plastic from grass, and a pipe from a board).

Site selection

Starting the sleeve, finished with the 2×4 for a coushin

Neighbors helping out.. I love our neighbors.

The added benefit of the screw into the ledger through the PVC, it kept the hoop from digging into the ground.

The helpful little farmer.

These people are the three reasons I farm. Growing our own (eggs, chicken, veggies, honey, milk etc) lets us feel like we are giving them the best we possibly can. We started with cold frames in the hoop house for two reasons, 1- chickens 2- they are that much warmer, and 3- the ground is still too wet to work (oops, I suppose that’s three)

The legs are from an old picnic table, it would be in here, but the wood finally gave up the fight against the PNW’s wood killing weather. The legs are GREAT though!

Here we have the clean out crew at work. So far I have hauled out a big load of ‘thatch’ and they are getting into bare dirt in places now… And as soon as the ground drys out I’ll kick them out and direct seed.
There it is so far! I am sure you’ll see more of this summer!

Edit: It was brought to my attention that this pile of photos needed some hard metrics and explanations…

The size of this house was 11.5′ by 30′, dictated by the size of the 6 mil plastic that I could get pre-cut (at 24′ by 50′).  My logic was to have two feet on either side to secure, and 10′ hanging down at each end to tuck in and secure in the door way.  The PVC is 1″ schedule 40 and as my day job is as an electrical PM and estimator, I was able to coerce a supply house to deliver 20′ conduits (so I don’t have a joint at the peak) to the farm.  It cost me an additional $6 total.  The peak of the roof is at about 7′ 6″ (depending on how deep the low spot  you are in is), and if I had made the house a full 12 or even 13′ wide, I would probably still be able to walk around in it no problem.  The pipes that we drove into the ground were 1 1/4″ cut down to 2′ 6″ and pounded about a foot and a half into the ground.  As there is so much of them above ground, I think they help keep the 1″ ribs running vertically a little further from the ground (and that helps with the headroom).  The ridge pipe (a 3/4″ pvc pipe) is there to keep the ribs at the same distance apart, and to give me a place to hang plants, or tie up tomatoes.  The two side ones are for the same purpose.  They ridge poles are screwed to the ribs (careful to have the screw not be long enough to reach all the way to the plastic.

The 2×4 on the bottom probably could have been 2×6’s, but I was trying to stay under a $300 budget.  The support pipes have a 3″ wood screw through them, into the 2×4, and this acts as a stop for the 1″ ribs.  The plastic is rolled around the second 2×4 and they are screwed together, sandwiching the plastic between them.  The main purposes for the 2×4’s at the bottom are for 1-weight, to hold the entire thing down, 2- give a place to secure the plastic 3- provide an anchor for the support pipes.

I could have done the entire thing solo, but it was really nice to have a couple of extra hands to keep moving with assembly as I head scratched my way through some ‘engineering issues”.  I was able to get the plastic over on my own, but took my time with it.

If I was to do one thing differently next time, it would be to have the perimeter prepped, so that the 2×4 sits in better contact wit the soil.  There is a bit of an air gap, ad I can feel the cold air coming in with the wind.  I assume this gap will be filled by soil as I bring manure into the hoolyloop house.

Our Turn!! Hooping it up at Adalyn Farm.

I got the coolest Christmas present from my wife this year.  The box was about 6×6 and an inch thick.  Inside were 12 flexible drinking straws and a chunk of plastic wrap, and a note.  “your own hoop house, just add water”.  I’ve been sinning thinking of the hoop house over at my folks farm.  Sin is bad, and with my wife’s help, I will overcome it 😉  I’ll try to remember to take some photos, but so you can see what we are in for, here’s the post from a couple years ago at my folks place…

August 2009
It was really fun last weekend!  My folks had some milestone birthdays and a whole pile of folks showed up for food fun and hoop housing!  Lots of people I didn’t know (that doesn’t surprise me) and lots of folks I did!  It was a great success!  I’ve managed a work party or two, and unless you are used to coordinating tasks and materials for 15-20 people it can be a bit overwhelming.  It really did go well, with all but the front door done and the plastic over the top!  Here are a few shots….

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Tractor er, sled.

I don’t know if it’s some kind of farming/homesteading/hobby farm benchmark but we did buy some chickens specifically for meat this year.  We opted out of the Cornish cross, from what we have read and seen, and our own bias for non-commercialized breeds.  We also have the benefit of having run some broad breasted white turkeys a few years ago and compared to the heritage breeds we raised they were kind of mindless eating machines, ‘the bag of hammers’ was how I usually referred to them.

So for chickens we chose Buff Orpingtons.  They are a dual purpose breed, we know they do well here (we have a handful of Buff layers) and if we want we can cycle out some older laying hens and use some of the pullets we have growing for meat as replacement layers.  We also have a handful of replacement pullets including some Andalusian that are a threatened breed.

Typically we start them in a crate/box/stock tank in our house till they are old enough to not paste up on shavings.  Then they go out to the ‘Brooder Box’ that sits on our front porch.  Once they are feathered out we put them in an A frame chicken tractor.  Only those are HEAVY and don’t end up moving.  Having watched Joel Salatin’s Chicken Tractors I decided to build two of them for us.  On a mostly flat 5 acres, my hope is that I can shift them to a fresh patch every day or so till they are either butcher or egg age, then they go in with the rest of our laying flock.  Or the freezer.

The Heffer Project has a great booklet on this that I got from somewhere.  Keeping weight in mind we didn’t add any wood that we didn’t think was necessary.  The metal roofing acts as bracing/stabilizing for the top and two sides.  From what I could find Joel makes his about 24″ tall.  Per our ‘animal comfort specialist’/farm manager I was directed to make them ‘bigger’.  So they are 36″ tall.  And that worked.  The metal siding come in 36″ with, and we had a roll of 48″ chicken wire from some long forgotten project.  The roofing came in at just under $400, and I probably could have saved some coin if I would have gone with craigslist, or all galvanized, but all the other structures on our property (save the house) have green metal roofing, and it was quickly available as well.  Ordered on Monday, picked up (thanks Dad) on Wednesday.  They went together quickly, with some scrap wood we had and about another $80 at the lumber yard.  I suppose the lumber tab was more like $45 as I picked up a big box of screws that I only used about 10% of, and a tube of calk for something else.  So if I can get 10 years out of these that’s only about $21 per year per unit.  And the roofing should last much longer, if it gets incorporated into other projects.  About 12 hours of my labor in construction, and another 4 from my brother in law (some of the birds are going to their house when they are grown up).  I suppose I did spend another $60 on the automatic waterers, but one of those will go into the main chicken yard when the pullets are done with it to save me some time and headache there this summer.  So they will see use year round, not just with these.

Here are some progress photos…

#1 is complete!  Just waiting on chicks!  That’s my brother in law, lending a hand.  Some of the hens are going to his house too.

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Wagon Wheels

One of the names we considered for our farm when we moved in was “iron wheel farm”.  There were four or five of these old steel wagon wheels.  They are about 3′ tall and weigh a ton.

One of the challenges I have had is trying to figure out how to move animal shelters around the property.  Without a proper tractor, ti’s a bit of a no-go, but I think with a bit of re-design work, I might be able to incorporate two or four of these wheels in a coop or loafing shed design and make it something I can drag behind our riding mower.

To say the solution has been kind of staring me in the face is a bit of an understatement.  If I can work out the details this could be a real boon.  I am part of the way complete on a new coop and would be able to move it around the pasture.  With a little bit of electroplastic netting from Premier 1 Supply I cold put the chickens out to pasture in the orchard or garden (to scratch up bugs and spread fertilizer.  If this all works out you can be sure there will be photos following!

Look over here!

I don’t have it in me to double post, so instead I’ll lean on the Internet and point you to my photography blog.  We helped my folks put up a hoop house last weekend…..

Hoop It Up!

Only 10 more yards to end zone!

Sports analogies are always a stretch for me.  My dad pointed out that most people choke with the last few steps of a project.  Kind of like getting into the “red zone” in football and auguring in.  I sure hope I can jump, or at least get pushed across the line.  We “finished” the roof on the coop.  Finished as in, all the flat roofing is on (no trim yet).  The roof is not leaking.  They hay is dry.  But it ain’ pritty.  It needs all the trimmings that elevate it from “red-neck construction” to “we know what we are doing, or at least fake it really well”.  Photos will follow along with the full story.  Let’s just say it’s not the first time I have been workin on it in the lower 40’s with a driving rain, and marveling at how the wind cuts right through a soaking wet cotton t-shirt and  sweat shirt.  Burr is an understatement.