Assisting Neighbors with Building their Hoop House

Two days ago our neighbor, Judy,  pulled into our drive and asked if we were available to assist them building a hoop house (green house) on their property that day.  She said that the company had some difficulty and their building crew was not complete.  Mark and I agreed - we needed to learn more about hoop houses for ourselves, so we thought we'd learn by helping someone else.

When we arrived on site, the crew was pretty small and most of the folks were volunteers; they only had a crew of five paid folks...and three of those had not ever built a hoop house either.  So, with that said, it was quite an experience for us.  The building team lead, Jeff, I call a jerk (Keva, you would have another word for the guy).  We learned very quickly why he had problems keeping a crew.  You NEVER holler at volunteers - no matter what!  But, for the sake of our neighbor and our knowledge base, we stayed and worked.  Mark was there for almost eight hours, but my knee gave out about four hours in because I had climbed up and down a ladder that day about 30 or more times.

My job was to climb the ladder almost all the way to the top of the hoop (about 1.5 stories up), taking a drill and a metal joining rafter pole with me each time.  Lean over, sometimes WAY over and fight to bend the hoop straight, and bolt the rafter pole between the tops of the hoops, joining them.  I had to put a bolt in, add the pole and nut, then use my drill to tighten the nut (and make sure it was tight).  This creates the skeleton that the plastic cover is stretched over.  If I did not do my job well, the young men who had to complete their jobs would not be able to walk on the hoops to do their jobs. 

Jeff found that Mark had building experience very quickly, so Mark was working all over the project.  Jeff told me later that he would hire Mark as a lead...not like that was going to happen.  Here are some photos of the work we did.

That is me in the back of the picture installing the last of the braces

The frame is complete and the skin is ready to be stretched over the top.  Thank GOD for beautiful weather and low winds.Volunteers would not want to be holding on to THAT kite (if the wind would take the skin as they all were holding on to it with ropes)

The crew is ready waiting for the two layer plastic skin to be dragged up and over the framework

Mark waiting for the skin to be tightened  - watching for wrinkles

This shows the top skin complete and shows you the ladder I was standing on (top step)

Ya know, even though Jeff did not treat me badly, watching him yell at everyone else was tough, because everyone worked very hard that day.  AND I could see they were trying their best!  But, seeing the hoop house finished and knowing that Judy and Bill would now be able to grow their veggies, for themselves and others, longer into the fall and spring made the project very worth while.  We did learn a lot - I now think that when our time comes to build our hoop house, we will have the knowledge to complete the task!