Do you remember, back in January, when Brandon was busy putting up a giant hoop house in the back field? Well, the day finally came when the vinyl tarp that covers the hoops was ready to be installed. It's green!
Brandon placed an order over the phone, giving all the dimensions of the hoops, and a few weeks later traveled to a Mennonite workshop to collect the custom made tarp. Someone took him onto the farm to show him a finished hoop house and explain how it all fits together. As you can see in the photo above, the tarp has a pocket sewed into the bottom edge on each side, and a pipe slips into the pocket and is the anchor for ratchet straps that connect to the hoops.
The example barn used metal pipes for this pocket, but we used plastic PVC, since it was less expensive.
Each ratchet screws to the metal hoop near the ground, and anchors the tarp to the hoop as it is pulled taught.
The front and back of the tarp also have pockets, so a pipe can be used to ratchet the tarp tight from front to back, anchoring to the hoops at the ends. Genius, right?
The very front and back edge have a pocket with a long strap inside. This strap is anchored to a hoop, and ratcheted tight, so the ends don't flap and are snugged up like a hoodie when it's pulled tight around your face.
Brandon and his friend installed the tarp in a single day, and had it up before I returned home from work. The donkeys were interested in the process, and kept an eye on things as it progressed.
The tarp is supposed to last for fifteen years. We purchased the hoops from someone on craigslist, and paid three hundred dollars for them, but had to take them down ourselves. The tarp and ratchets, plus some PVC pipes, were about sixteen hundred dollars. I think we have nearly eleven hundred square feet of covered space now, which works out to about a dollar eighty per square foot. A metal barn or a wood barn would last longer than fifteen years, but cost more than five times as much and take more than an afternoon to install. We're excited to have a place to store hay now. If only it would stop raining long enough to harvest some!
We could have had a red or white tarp, but I'm happy with the green color. It's a big object, but it blends in pretty well during the summer. It will probably look even larger in the winter, when the green will stand out. We've already gotten used to parking equipment and storing stuff near it. We're expanding!
The new hoop house, situated on top of the hill, with pretty views and freshly mowed grass was so inviting that our friend brought his kids out to the farm to camp beneath the new tarp. It's big enough for his truck and tent to fit inside, which makes camping under threat of rain pretty nice. He said it was a shame we were going to ruin it by filling it full of hay!
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