 
SWEET SPOT RANCH Hoop House | ||
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 Jane's first "indoor" crop. It's late November here and that'sbok choy, spinach and lettuce growing. |
Seems like we're never satisfied. After our main garden became productive we wanted more. Jane had experienced a good deal of
success and fun selling greens, flowers and other things at the Grangeville farmer's market. She saw the opportunity to make a few more bucks, and our taste for fresh fruits
and veggies had increased. Also the idea of
sustainability and more local production of food was slipping up on us as one of those duhhhhh concepts. We thought about year-round growing. So Jane shopped around the
internet and found a hoop house design on a New Mexico State University website. One always attractive
advantage was that it cost a lot less than standard green houses offered for sale.
The one we made was 12'X 16', with 7 feet of head room. We had a couple of extra storm doors laying around so we used them instead of plywood doors. The skeleton comprised 20 foot lengths of 2" schedule 40 PVC pipe. They were a real chore to bend. Even on a hot day, it was all a friend and I could do to bend them onto the rebar we had driven into the ground. But Jane and I did the rest of it. We see this as a work in progress. If we are able to harvest certain crops year round, there is a good market for them in Grangeville, and an even better one in McCall, 70 miles south of us. We could expand the hoop house to any length if we decided to. We certainly have the room for it. The extension service at NMSU said that one of their participating companies built a 250 foot long commercial hoop house of this same style. | ||
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