Eden and Valhalla

People who have read the blog, gotten our farm emails, or have conversed with us may recognize that Eden and Valhalla are the names we have given each of our high tunnels at the farm.  I recognize that I don't always clarify what I am referring to anymore when I say "Eden" or "Valhalla" so I apologize if I left you sitting there feeling confused once or twice in the past.  I can't say it won't happen again...  But, I'll try to remember that not everyone lives in my world.

I recently received a great question regarding high tunnels that came in response to the recent move (two days ago) of Valhalla from its East position to its West position: "So the point of the high tunnel is to get crops started earlier than without one? And you move it to another section to repeat that process?"

The question was a great reminder to me that the whole reason for a high tunnel is not entirely transparent to the rest of the world.  In fact, I sometimes wonder if many who put up a high tunnel have a good reason as well!

A Brief GFF History

We put Eden up in 2010 (if you want to see some of the pictures you can go here and here).  After a little experience, the results were actually pretty encouraging.  In fact, this is where we learned that our snack tomatoes did exceptionally well under cover in Eden.  Our production in this building has consistently been good, with only a few exceptions.  Eden has been a 'happy place' on our farm for over a decade.

Valhalla was added to the farm in 2015.  The first year of production in that building was a bit rougher because of the conditions of the soil when we built it.  When you drive and pack down soil when it's wet, you can have difficulty working it and growing things later in the year.

Both buildings are two position, mobile, high tunnels.  The normal plan is to move each building once a year so we grow in each position for 12 months and we provide the ground opportunity to recover and avail itself of nature's filters when the building is off of a section. 

Eden is the "smaller building" at 30' by 72' in size.  Valhalla is a 96 foot long building, with the other dimensions being similar.  Since we had a few years of experience with Eden before we built Valhalla, we were able to address a few issues by adding ditches on each side and raising the soil surface inside the building with respect to the surrounding area.  There is also access to water in each position of Valhalla - not something we enjoy with Eden.  We have to pull hoses out to Eden when we want to irrigate.

Back to the Question

So, what exactly is the point for our farm to be using two mobile high tunnels as a part of our growing system?

1. Season Extension

This is the most commonly cited reason for high tunnel growing.  The protection afforded to crops has allowed us have spinach in March and lettuce in December.  We have had green beans and tomatoes in early November.  So - yes.  We can gain a little flexibility in what we grow effectively and have fresh produce for more months of the year.  We can also extend the harvest of some crops that bear fruits (such as peppers, tomatoes, beans).

2. Adjusting for Wet Years at GFF

One of our biggest problems at the Genuine Faux Farm since we started has been the number of heavy rains and overly wet months during our growing seasons.  A high tunnel allows us some measure of control for how wet things get.  Well - most of the time.  It's a moot point if the water table gets so high that it seeps into the building.

When the rest of the farm is wet, we can normally get work done inside the high tunnels.  If there are crops that really do poorly in wetter conditions, they tend to thrive in the high tunnels.  If you grow heirloom tomatoes you can make sure to harvest ripening fruit prior to irrigating.  That's not always a choice in the field - when it rains, it rains.

3. The dicamba issue

The increased use of dicamba has resulted in more cases of that chemical vaporizing and drifting after application.  Since 2016, when dicamba was approved for use in soybeans, we have watched some of our crops (such as peppers) suffer in the field, while their counterparts in the high tunnel perform as they have in the past.  It's almost enough to make me wish we could put up an invisible shield around our farm.

But, since that is not an option, we move some of the more sensitive production into Eden and Valhalla.  We can't move everything in there, of course, so we have to make careful choices.  It's part of the reason why our high tunnel space could be considered the 'high rent district' on our farm.

4. Production

Typically, once we figure out a crop in the high tunnels, production numbers per square foot are much higher than they would be outdoors.  For example, it was common to get maybe 50 Jaune Flamme snack tomatoes per plant in a season when they were grown in the field.  In the high tunnel, it is common to get triple that number.  We have similar results for green beans (3 pounds per row foot vs 1 pound).

In some cases, such as carrots, we often struggle with field production on our farm but find they do ok in the high tunnels.  If the option is reliable crop vs likely crop failure, the choice could be pretty simple.

5. Cleaner crops

If plants are sheltered from heavy rains and winds, leaves tend to be subject to less tearing and bruising, plants break less often, fruit are damaged less often, and there isn't going to be a bunch of splashed on dirt and debris after a downpour.  From the perspective of harvesting and cleaning for sales, it is just a good deal easier for us.  When labor is one of your biggest issues, this can be a pretty big deal.

6. We still grow in the ground and we still work with nature

This is where the mobile buildings come in to play.  We are able to allow the soil an opportunity to rejuvenate itself when it is exposed to the elements.  This would not be true if we had a stationary building.  So, soil health remains one of our key premises for a healthy growing system.  We also do not expend extra energy with fans and supplemental heat.  We use venting, passive heat retention, and passive solar gain to do these jobs. 

I recognize that some growers might scoff and suggest we could squeeze even more out of these buildings - but I feel the rate of return would begin to diminish for us if we pushed further.  Sometimes enough is enough.

The Drawbacks

There are always drawbacks to any tool and any thing a farm might try to do.  If you don't see them, you aren't really looking or you are lying to yourself.

Obviously, buildings require maintenance.  The plastic has to be replaced every five to six years and I am not a fan of adding plastic to the landfill.  Now, we do try to re-use the old plastic.  But, it does eventually run out of uses and it does eventually end up in the landfill.  There is no recycling recourse available to us at this time.

But, replacing the plastic is not the only thing.  If you have high tunnels, you must be aware of the weather so you can shut them down if severe weather threatens and open them up again if the sun comes back out (or you'll bake your plants to death!).  Every time it hails or the wind howls, you wonder a little what you'll find when you go look at the buildings later.  The string on the roll up sides need replacing every so often and various things do wear out and need replacing over time.

They're tools/buildings.  They require attention.  That attention costs you time and money.  And, of course, they cost you money to put them up in the first place.  Which means you may also spend money on insurance in case they are destroyed in a storm.

And that's not the only thing.  I often wonder about the long-term costs for the health of our soil and the environment that surrounds it when I cover it with plastic.  We try to mitigate some of those costs by using the movable buildings.  We mitigate it further by not allowing ourselves to cover our entire farm in high tunnels.  But, I am fairly certain that plastic covered buildings are not as friendly to the environment as other options might be.  

Let me put it this way.  I refuse to fool myself into thinking that my farm is always in line with what is best with nature.  If I keep questioning, maybe I can eventually get as close to in line with nature as is possible.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

And the final issue that comes to mind?  Once you invest in a high tunnel, your exit strategy for growing becomes a whole lot more complicated!  I've seen many similar structures as they simply become more ragged from neglect over a period of years.  It isn't so simple just to take them down and let the land return to what it was.  And it gets harder to convince yourself to cease growing entirely once those buildings are in place.

-------------------

And there you go.  A long answer to a short question.  I hope it was of interest and maybe you learned something new?  Have a great remainder of the week!

Onions, High Tunnels and Choices

 We made the choice to expand our onion production in 2019 with the understanding that there was the likelihood that we would have some bulk orders for onions if we could successfully grow them.  After all, we have had pretty good success for each of the past several years, it seemed like a good bet.  Now, here we are in August after planting 10,000-12,000 onion plants this Spring and we're starting to bring in the onions. 

Ailsa Craig Exhibition sweet onions

 The first thing everyone should understand is that when we plant 10,000 onions, we do NOT expect to harvest 10,000 onions.  Some plants will not survive the cultivation process and some just won't produce a good onion.  We also realize that some of the varieties we choose will not provide us with consistent sizes or shapes.  This has not been a big deal because our CSA customers often have different ideas about what an optimal size for an onion should be.  The range in production doesn't hurt when your customer base likes some of the size options.
 

White Wing onions

This season saw a very difficult planting period with mucky soil conditions.  The difficulty is that if you want good onions in Iowa, you need to get them in early.  Our region tends to grow long-day length type onions better than short-day or day length neutral onions.  Essentially, long day onions are triggered to bulb by daylight periods of 14 to 15 hours.  So, we need to get onions in the ground in time so they can establish a healthy plant BEFORE they worry about bulbing out.  Typically, the more established the plants are prior to reaching the daylight threshold, the better the onion crop is going to be for consistent and larger sized onions.

So, what happened this year?  We got onions in at different points in time depending on when we were able to 'mud them in.'  The poor early soil conditions have led to inconsistent production.  We've got lots of onions, but the sizes are all over the map.  The taste has been good and we'll see how they store.  We certainly can't say that we are disappointed because there is some good onion production here.  But, it's not the picture of perfection we had in our heads.  Even so, it is marketable - so now we need to sell it all.  The whole plan falls to the ground if we can't move them!

Valhalla in late July

 The high tunnels, once again, were indirectly impacted by the early season weather.  The best laid plans for planting order and location never seem to be implemented because we are always making adjustments for the weather - even when we are inside buildings!

How does that work, you ask?  Well...  if you can't get a crop in the ground outside, you might press some of the inside space into service for something you were not planning.  And, if you were planning on moving a building, but it is too wet or windy to do so, you have to delay that move.  It is what it is and we go through this at some level every season.

If you look at the picture of Valhalla above, you will see a good deal of open space.  That is not the way it was supposed to be at this point, but, we've moved a few things around and they are now slotted for some late Summer plantings to fill in some of our Fall - early winter crop needs.  The trick is that we want the tomatoes, peppers and other crops already in there to stretch their production into late October (and maybe early November) so we have to select compatible crops that will germinate in the conditions found in the building in August.  It's a giant jigsaw puzzle.  Good thing we like puzzles.

Eden in late July

Eden is much more crowded than Valhalla for a couple of reasons.  First, we will move the building to the West position in October - we think.  Remember the adjustments and conditions issues that occur in the Spring?  Well, Fall has been an adventure the last couple of years.  Remember the continuous rain last September, for example?

We made a choice this year to hill up the planting space in Eden to deal with the issue of torrential rains flooding out crops in this building.  You might be able to see what I mean if you click on the picture to make a larger version.  The good news is that the couple of heavy rains that got Eden wet inside the building this year did not impact the crops.  The bad news?  Well, things in hilled beds dry out faster.  And, during normal weather, high tunnels are DRY areas that require irrigation.  Every choice has its consequences.

Regardless of the issues, we can say that our efforts have led to success.  The early Summer lettuce crop (that grows up in the shade of the young tomatoes) was great - except we couldn't sell it all when it was ready.  The birds were happy.  The tomatoes are looking very good, the peppers have already produced above prior year levels and beans are doing well.  The melons are about on par for a normal season and the basil looks great.  We do feel as if we lost some flexibility with this model as it doesn't really support some of the crops we traditionally have grown in Eden.  But, it all worked well enough that we can make adjustments rather than abandoning the whole thing.

And there you have it... onions, high tunnels and choices.

Moving Day

The Genuine Faux Farm features two high tunnel buildings.  If you don't know what a high tunnel building is, you are soon going to find out (assuming you actually read this blog post!).  We have named the smaller of the two buildings (72' x 30') "Eden" and the larger (96' x 30') is called Valhalla.  A high tunnel is essentially a hoop building/structure that has a plastic covering.  The intent of a high tunnel is to grow crops in the ground under this structure.  Needless to say, the protection provided by the building can allow for growing crops earlier or later in the season AND it can help control the amount of moisture (most of the time) during wet seasons.

The cool thing about Eden and Valhalla?  Well, unlike most high tunnels, these two buildings MOVE!  And Valhalla recently had a moving day.

Valhalla was in its West position

But, we wanted it moved to the East position.

We admit that this move happened later than we planned, but the season has forced us to make some choices that lead us to this situation.  Tammy and I moved Valhalla on a Saturday with no other helpers.  It took longer than it has most years because there were a few roadblocks, but we figure it was time well spent.  We actually managed to take some pictures during the process this year which means we can FINALLY give everyone a moving day rundown!

Step 1, clear the tracks

 We are often able to spend some time prior to moving day getting the area around the tracks cleaned up.  That was not quite the case this year.  The weed whip came out and we spent time getting things out of the way.  If you have sharp eyes you might notice an irrigation line and a hose over the track as well.  It is usually NOT advised that you should leave such things on the track on moving day...

Step 2 - free up the apron plastic

We have all kinds of high tech methods for keeping the plastic down.  I sometimes wonder how technical we should get on our blog, so I am hesitating telling you about this part.

Oh, ok.  It's just some t-posts. 

 Now that we are no longer mystifying everyone with our clever ideas and techniques, we shall now discuss wind.  Lots of wind.  And the things wind can do to our high tunnels.

Step 3 - put the wheels BACK on the track

Both high tunnels have multiple attachments to the ground to keep it from getting away.  Even so, strong winds can move the building off of the track enough that we have to put those wheels back on the track before we move the building. We typically use a sturdy board as a lever to put these sections back on the track. 

Step 4 - Pound in the anchoring posts that secure the track

Unfortunately, the pictures I have of this just don't show what I'm talking about.  Suffice it to say that there are rebar stakes that hold the track to the ground.  These tend to pull up a bit over the course of the year, so they all need to be pounded back in with a 3 pound hammer.  If they are not put back down, the risers on the building will catch on them and you have to stop the moving process until they ARE down.

Step 6 - admire the crops currently in the building

One of the reasons for our delay in moving the building was the lack of dry ground to plant in on the farm.  We adjusted and put some of our crops into the side of the building that was going to be exposed after the move.  It's not our ideal plan, but sometimes you just do what you have to.

Tammy can be seen at the left cleaning up the track INSIDE of the building.  What?  You though we only had to clean the track outside the building?  Silly you!  Any obstructions on the track tend to cause difficulties during the move.  So, thank you, Tammy, for clearing the tracks!

Step 7 - take the doors off of each end

Step 8 - can you see the difference in this picture from the step 6 picture?

Remember, you can click on images to see a bigger picture.  So, what do you see that is different here?  Yes, the tracks are clean.  Good job, Tammy.  Maybe the crops have grown just a wee bit since the last picture?  

Step 8 - remove the T-Posts that secure the end walls

I realized AFTER I pulled the t-stakes that I hadn't really taken a good picture of them.  But, since the building moves, we have to be able to raise the end walls in some fashion to allow it to move.  When the building is in place, there has to be a way to secure those end walls to the ground.

Step 9 - take bolts out of end wall that attaches end wall flap

This is usually the step where one of us trudges back to the garage to get the socket set that we didn't bring out with us to take these bolts off.

Step 10 - take the poly-carbonate cover off the corners over the tracks

These little pieces of poly-carbonate keep the critters out in the corners over the tracks.  Unfortunately, you can't lift the tracks when they are on, so we have to take them off.

Step 11 - dig out the flaps

We throw some dirt in front of the outside (and inside) of the flaps to help hold them in place.  But, that means you have to dig that back out when you want to raise the flaps.

Step 12 - Raise the flaps and tie them up

And, step 13 - nest the roll up bars on top of these flaps so they don't create drag when you move the building.

At this point, the building is pretty much ready to move EXCEPT, we have yet to disconnect it from all of its anchor points with the exception of the end walls.  If the wind were to pick up at this point, we have the option of putting the flaps back down and closing the building up.

But, things were fine, so we decided to proceed.

Step 14 - disconnect the building from the track

There are several sets of turnbuckles connecting the building to the track.  These must be disconnected, which means loosening the turnbuckle and then opening the c-connector to free them.

Step 15 - loop turnbuckes onto hip 'board' to avoid making these an obstacle when moving the building.

 Laugh all you want that I give this its own separate step.  You won't laugh if you forget this step - we'll just leave it at that.

Step 16 - take off the turnbuckles that connect the building to ground anchors

 We save this one for last usually because these anchors could probably hold the building in place if a freak poof should come along at this point.  The idea is to have the building unsecured for the briefest amount of time possible without getting sloppy.  You might notice the orange tie to keep the turnbuckle up and out of the way of the wheels on the track.  We usually use duct tape for that task, but the roll we had with us was old and not meeting expectations.

Step 17 - inspect everything one more time

 THEN, HEY PRESTO!  Your building is moved.

See?!?

 I suspect many of you are now suspicious that I was tired of typing all of this out and I took a short-cut there.  No, that's not true.  At this point moving the building is pure magic.  We say the magic words.

"Please, Valhalla, will you move to the Eastern position that we have meticulously prepared for you?"

And then you....

Hook the building up to your tractor (Rosie) with a rope

Oh.  I forgot that part.

In any event, this process is slow and deliberate and usually includes several stops when wheels pop off the track or we identify a potential issue as we move the building.  

Oh look!  Valhalla DID move.  Yay!

The temptation at this point is to celebrate and go eat lunch, or some such thing.  But, the building is still not secured.  So, we need to reattach the turnbuckles to ground stakes and the track (there are ground stakes set for each position the tunnel resides in) and it is a good idea to at least put the flaps down before you have a sandwich.

After lunch, which was a bit late on this particular day, you get to put the building back together again.

The final steps?  Prep the soil and plant your crops.   

QED (?)

High Tunnel Report

The obvious disadvantage of creating blog posts when time and the weather allows is that you're going to get some content that is 'dated' when it comes in the form of a farm report.  But, since that's never stopped me before - here we go.

The Genuine Faux Farm high tunnels are usually our happiest places on the farm when it comes to successful growing.  This year we have to admit that the success levels have not been where we usually want them, but there have been some good things so far (and more good coming).  The pictures and commentary shown here applies as of about June 8, so things will have changed dramatically by the time this June 15 post comes online.

Eden

We have named our high tunnels (in case you hadn't read about them before) and our first (and smaller) high tunnel was called Eden soon after our first Fall harvests in 2010.  This is the building where we learned new things about cold weather and metal structures. 

Eden is a 72 foot by 30 foot building and it can be moved between a west and an east position.  The plan is typically to move the building in the Fall to cover the late Fall and overwintered crops.  We did do that last Fall, but we are discovering more problems with a high water-table in that position, which reduces production significantly.  As a result, we moved the building AGAIN this Spring.

Every decision of this nature has a domino effect.  One of the dominoes is that the planting in Eden for the Summer crops went in later than we wanted.  They'll be fine, of course.  Just not the schedule we hoped for.  There are tomatoes on the far left with lettuce next to them.  Beets are seeded next to peppers.  Onion and melons in the center.  Peppers and green beans next followed by lettuce and tomatoes on the right.

Our bean and beet germination has been disappointing, so we need to address that quickly.  Otherwise, plant development is moving rapidly for the other crops.  Even as I write this and look at this picture, I realize that the inside of the building no longer looks like this.

The issue with the West position of the high tunnel will be addressed before we move the tunnel to that spot again this Fall.  The plan at present is to create semi-permanent raised beds on that end to get the roots up out of the wet soil.  A secondary item may well be to put some drain tile in.  If we can manage to find the time, etc we will do both.  But, we're pretty realistic about how much we can do and we'll be happy if we can manage one of the two before Fall.  Well - we'll have to be happy, because we really don't see how we could do both this year.  Even a slight improvement should help here, so we'll go for it.

Valhalla

We don't always remember what brought us to certain names for things on our farm, but once a name sticks, it sticks.  We consider ourselves warrior farmers of a sort since it takes a bit of battling every year to get things to go. Therefore, it makes sense to have a place for the warriors to go and reap a little reward... hence Valhalla.  It doesn't have to be completely accurate with Norse mythology - we just needs to be happy with the name.  Check.

Valhalla went up in June of 2015 and our blog post commemorating that event even includes a neat time elapse of the process.   This building is bigger (96 feet long by 30 feet) and it has water hydrants for each of the two positions.  We even had a ditch cut in next to it to keep the inside from getting too wet (see the issues with Eden we are now addressing). 

Valhalla is scheduled to house our late Summer crops and we target late May for a move date.  As of this writing, we hadn't gotten to it yet.  But, by the posting of this writing, we hope to have it done.  Remember those dominoes?  Well, the time energy for moving a high tunnel got moved on Eden, so we still need to create new time and energy for the Valhalla move.  Yay?
 

In the Spring, Valhalla is used to house trays and pots of plants awaiting planting in the fields.  We also grow Spring crops in there that we anticipate moving the building off of before they bolt.  This year, things got pretty hot pretty fast after being pretty cold pretty late.  That made our window for this building PRETTY short.  Ah well.  It will even out in the end, right?

There is some very nice lettuce in there still.  The kale looks fine and should be ok for continued harvests.  The early broccoli is healthy as well.  The tatsoi and komatsuna have been harvested.  The spinach didn't have a chance this year, so it is already gone.
Once Valhalla is moved to the West position, it will house more tomatoes, peppers, green beans, melons, carrots and other tasty things.  We are anxious to get this done and get those plants in, just as we very much want these plants to go 'outside' so they can finish off successfully.

Maybe this Summer will be the Summer BOTH high tunnels break some of their own records.  We can always dream - and then do what we can to make those dreams come true.

The New High Tunnel at Work

Back in June of this year, we put up our second high tunnel.  If you would like to see more about that process, check out this blog post.  It even includes a neat link for a time lapse video of the actual build.

We were finally able to match up a calm day with our full complement of workers AND no CSA distribution on that day where we could move the high tunnel over the plants we put in the ground.  The first time we moved our other high tunnel was a bit rough, so we wanted to be prepared to discover some issues as we went.

The new high tunnel in the West position.

We built the high tunnel in the West position in part because it was closer to a good staging area for the build.  The East position is simply further away from any resources we might have wanted to use.  And, we had less access to grassy areas that we could work in during rain.  As it was, we had to work in plenty of mud - so it was nice to have options.


Unfortunately, the soil in the West position was pretty close to unworkable.  We attribute this to two problems.  First - our excavation work didn't happen until this Spring.  And, the excavation resulted in pulling up some clay that got mixed into the top soil.  Second - we had rain during the high tunnel build, this helped to create a very solid crust in the top six to eight inches of soil.

If you look at the picture at the right, you can see an area that Rob managed to broadfork.  The best he came up with were some BIG chunks of dirt.  If that picture doesn't work, try the next one.  It gives a little more perspective so you can see exactly how bit some of those chunks really are!

It was NOT a pleasure working with this soil.

In any event, the meant we had to give up on the idea of planting in this position of the high tunnel this year.  So, after a good bit of work, we were able to prepare the soil in the East position and get it planted.  You can read about this towards the bottom of this blog post.

New high tunnel in new field position for the rest of the year.

We managed to get the building moved in a little over half a day.  This is longer than it takes to move the older building.  But, the first move is always the most difficult.  As you can see from above, the only weed that was really being successful inside the high tunnel in the West position is button weed.  That alone should tell us something.

Plants acclimating themselves to having a roof over their heads.

The plants currently in this high tunnel position are there for us to attempt to extend some summer crops late into the Fall months.  We already see some success with the bean row getting ready to flower.  The jury is out on the peppers and tomatoes.  The melons should be ok and the sweet potatoes on the far end are an experiment.  We'll see.

Our two high tunnel plan is to move one building in the Spring and one building in the Fall each year.  This allows us to focus one building on early production extension and the other for late season extension.

An in-building water source.

There are couple of major differences between the old building and the new building.  The new building is larger.  But, the odd thing about that is the fact that I don't see this building as being so big.  In fact, I get surprised by how small the other building is.  I'm not sure what that says about me.  The other major difference is the presence of  a water supply inside the building.  It's nice, but not necessary this time of year.  But, once we get into November, it's value will increase significantly.

Now, we need to spend some time addressing the soil quality in the West position.  We've got a plan.  Now we've got to execute it!

A High Tunnel - Picture This

The high tunnel is up - with a few things still needing to be done.  That means we need to work on preparing the soil and putting things into it.  But, we thought you might enjoy seeing some pictures form our efforts from Friday June 12 to Tuesday, June 16.

We'll start you off with the time elapse photo video.  Greg Garbos from Four Seasons Tools brought the camera and allowed us to download and edit the file (to get rid of the night time hours primarily).

And, we tried to take photos every once in a while ourselves.  We appreciate the help we received from Sam Larimer and others who took our camera and roamed a bit with it.

We took delivery and had to unload 4-5 tons by hand from the trailer

And we managed it in an hour and 15 minutes. Even if Rob looked confused.

It doesn't look like much at this point.  But, it will change rapidly

We set up a work station nearby.  Needless to say, lots of battery powered tools were used.

The hoops and end walls were built to a large extent on the ground.

That allowed large sections to go up at one time.

If lifting the building once off of the trailer weren't enough, we had to lift it again - in larger pieces.

The super hero Band Saw Man - at work.

Sean Skeehan gets the award for volunteer driving the furthest to help put this thing up.

I TOLD YOU he was a super hero.

There were numerous little things that had to be done - often in sets of 12 or 30 or whatever.

We stretched to put on the plastic in winds that were not quite friendly.

We put in the vent and the door on the East to end Tuesday.  We need to do the same on the West still.

Yup.  We built a high tunnel.

Many many thanks to all who helped us in one way or another.

Greg Garbos and Jeff Mikesell represented Four Seasons Tools and headed up the build.  Jeff Sage was at the farm every day of the build.  Anden Drolet and Elizabeth Hinds were there most days as well.  The Figura clan was well represented (Kory, Emma and Sophie) and we had good representation from our local farmer friends Darrin Enderton, Lindsay Kaiser and Brent Wilker.  Blue Gate Farm was ably represented by the aforementioned Sean Skeehan and Sam Larimer came out on fairly short notice to lend a much appreciated pair of hands.  Jim and Eileen Faux helped make sure the rest of the farm didn't fall apart while we focused on the building and my bro Pete showed up and hit a few stakes and ran a drill for a bit just to show he could!  Jeff and Dawn Kline were kind of enough to provide the loan of a needed ladder.

I think we managed to remember everyone - but if we didn't, please forgive and remind.  The days during the build run together a bit for us now!

Job well done all.