Interesting subject ... made difficult to follow/appreciate by poor camera/narration skills. Slow camera movements and clear speaking would make the video a useful learning tool for folks with a high tunnel.

Borderbarb: I am sorry that it isn't the best narration and camera movements. My 9 year old daughter shot and put together the video. She was pretty proud to do it. I was pretty happy for her too.

Jay

Jay...Tell your daughter that she did an excellent job of both filming and narrating that little piece. I think it is WONDERFUL!

I would say that "borderbarb" has never had children or else they are in therapy because they feel that they could never please their mother.

In either case, I would recommend to "borderbarb" that she begin to take some serious sensitivity training classes because even gardening will not loosen the tightness she must feel in her posterior area.

Where did you get the plans for your high tunnels???

JR-

Don't worry about it, its great. I appreciate the time you take to TEACH those of us who dare follow in your path. High tunnels really give a person growing in the north a distinct advantage.

They are of my own design. I pulled from lots of sources to sketch a plan and constructed them I couldn't be any happier with their performance and design.

No, I don't have a plan to share, it was on a piece of paper and in my head.

Jay

I think that the concept is terrific.

Wow Great Movie. I really loved the camera work. Your daughter did a great job. You should be proud of her.

I am surprised it was sort of so easy to move such a big structure. A job well done. I assume it was 2 guys one on each side. I would have thought it was almost impossible to move that huge green house tunnel. But it moved right along. I should try it. It looked to me like you had metal pipes sticking out to hold the tunnel up on a wooden rail. pretty clever design. Although I wonder how those metal pipes are held in place. I noticed how the side walls are nice straight up and down. I wonder if that shape greenhouse ~ high tunnel will work in New England where we get big snow loads.

Anyway I got foreclosed. have to be out on Nov 1. So no moveable high tunnels for me this life time.

Eliot Coleman has plans for a movable high tunnel in his book Four Season Harvest. I found it at my local Public Library.
jr How High of wind speed has the tunnel withstood. My Little one is handling 50 mph right now. It might be in Iowa before the day is over. :o.

Curt

We are getting high winds here too so hope everyone's tunnels and barns and things are staying put. Dawgie, sad news, hope you land on your feet somewhere even better.

Great design, Jay. and the girl is super cute.

Gardendawgie: Yes there were two guys, one on each side. If I would have taken the time to fix the place it kept hitting, It would have taken almost no time at all. The little solid shafts of metal were suppose to be rollers with a larger pipe on the outside. However, we learned that with out the pipe, we reduced the surface area and friction points and it slides really well. The sidewall pipes are bolted to the wood. About snow load. I wanted it to be steeper, but we had a hard time bending it to go that far. I only ordered two extra pipes, so I didn't have much room for error. I am happy with it. I can do pull ups off the main purlin in the middle. With a few 2 by 4's for added support, I am sure it will make it through the snow just fine.

Curt Grow: They have been through many thunderstorms here in Kansas. I can say we have had 60-70 mph winds and didn't have any problems other than my blood pressure going up!:)

I feel pretty confident in saying if they go, my house will have damage too!

Jay

I have a question about bending pipe, Jay. I have 4 ft beds which I cover with hoop houses made with PVC. So far so good.

But I also have 32 inches beds, and I would like to cover them in spring for peppers and eggplants. I was thinking of bending electrical conduit but it is one steep bend - the conduit may break. Because of the clamps I use, it would have to be 1" conduit. The more I think about it the less I believe it will work. Any advice or suggestion?

Anyone want to do me a solid and give me a ballpark figure for building a 10x22 high tunnel out of conduit? I'm trying to figure if its just cheaper to buy a premade one...

I was reading that the plastic is good for only a few years? Something i read out of MSU suggested after 3 years they started seeing decreased production or something and they figured it was the plastic degrading (not letting light through...)...i should dig it up before i mess up what i read.

Thanks for any help.

Franktank: Do you want an PVC or Metal Conduit? If you want a PVC one, here is a rough estimate.

6- 2 by 6 12 foot long, $4 each
3- 4 by 4 PT 8 foot long, $5-6 each
10- 1 inch 20 foot schedule 40 pvc pipe $7.00 each
6- 2 by 4 studs $2.00
10 - 1 by 2 furring strips - $1.25 each
Plastic- 24 by 30 $75
Screws and Misc. $25

Grand Total $242.50 plus any shipping

It could be more or less I am just basing it on numbers that I have bought material for or saw last night.

A home made structure will be much cheaper and it will get you started. You can always upgrade, later, if you want.

This building is 12 by 18 and it was built for under $200

{{gwi:115224}}

Let me know if you want more information.

Jay

Thanks for the numbers! I would go with metal. I'd probably be able to squeeze in a 10 or 12 x 22 or 24 ... The bigger the better. I've been working on a large bed the past month trying to get it the size i need it.

A metal premade unit locally would run around $600 for that size.

I liked the video too! I found it to have a fun avant-garde style. It conveyed the idea well.

Thanks for posting this. I have been inspired by your previous posts (especially the one linking to an article about your tunnels in your regional ag paper) and now have been pushed into action - I have actually started building my first one - wish I could make it movable but my hillside is much steeper and it would pick up speed pretty fast :).

I am sure that you and your family have influenced many people.

Thanks again!

JR-

Have you thought about doing small melons (musk/honeydew/etc)? How about eggplant?

I'm going to start buying the materials and probably order some plastic...i'll probably have to wait until very early spring to put it together. Nov-Feb is pretty much a dead period here with the snowcover and low light levels. I haven't seen the sun in 6 days now.

Frank: Are you talking about melons in the tunnels or outside? If you are talking about inside, I don't think it is worth it. In our area the market wouldn't support a more pricey melon just because it is early. If I did, it would be a loss leader for my market booth. If you are talking about outside, I do grow a few, but for our own consumption, not to sell, at least this year! We have too many "big" producers who will bring in truck/trailer loads of melons from the end of July through September. Then they will mark them down to almost nothing to move them.

If you are going to build a hoop building, I would encourage you to at least get your base in or anything in the ground in place this fall. That way you won't spend time chipping frost out of the ground to dig holes. Also you never know what the spring will be like.

Jay

Sorry, I dared to be honest. Your 9 year old can stand honest constructive suggestions far better than slavish praise for work that falls short of being what it is touted as ... helpful look at a method others might find useful.

FWIW ... I am a push over for kids ... retired teacher [Montessori] I know how proud kids are when they have done a good job and have seen their self esteem shrink when they are praised for work that they can see is not up to par. I'm sorry that you didn't take the time to teach some video skills ... slow pan ... hold camera steady ... speak clearly ... before she started. How many instructive videos has she seen that will give her an idea of what to reach for? If you don't give her some guidance, she will continue until someone pulls her self-esteem house of cards down. That can be brutal and hurtful.

I get it guys ... must never speak honestly to or about children.

Barb, thanks for your honesty and for being a good teacher. I knew you weren't trying to be mean. You were just using the red pencil.

Ya Barb I got it the first time

Curt

JR-

That would make sense. Melons take up a lot of space for the return. Stick with what brings in the big money :)

I'll see what i can get done. I need to move some plants this weekend.

Just an idea on temp. I have a 6x10 plastic greenhouse and with the outdoor temp at 50F a few hours ago, the inside temp was at 90F at plant level... probably warmer near the top. The greenhouse doesn't even get full sun (trees shade it some). I'm not sure a large tunnel would be similar, but you can expect very warm temps on sunshine filled days.

FWIW, we had a nasty cold snap here and I measured some temperatures.

The lowest we got outside was 9*F. Underneath the 2-layer row cover + 1-layer of 4-mil poly in the unheated greenhouse, the lowest was 26*F. I noticed a rough relationship between soil temperature (6") and outside temperature in predicting what the inside temperature would be, on every night. In general, the low inside was a bit lower than the average of the two. Highs were about 10 to 30 degrees higher than outside, depending on how sunny it was.
In a cold frame permanently covered for the fall by 2 layers of row cover and 6-mil poly, the lowest was 33*F. Don't have a soil thermometer there.

I'm growing kale, chinese cabbage, turnips and radishes.

Barb, I don't know if others feel the same way I do but...I totally agree kids should be taught to handle constructive criticism, along with respect, dealing with failure (because everybody fails at something) and that there are consequences if they make wrong choices.
It's just the way you worded your response, it came across as very harsh, at least to me. Taking a nine year old to task on a very public forum especially when it was probably her first attempt with a camera was probably not the best way to go. A personal email might have been a better way to go if you felt that strongly about it.
This comes from someone who at times has had to pry not one but two feet out of her mouth :).

Borderbarb...please, you are making it worse! Jay's 9 y.o. daughter filmed and narrated her "Daddy" moving a high tunnel out on the prairie at sunset. This is not her doctoral thesis at UCLA film school!

She told us twice how lovely the evening was and stopped to zoom in and hold on a blooming zinnia. This trumps any flaws in camera work (that by some might be viewed as avant-garde.)

If your glass is always half empty...I pity all your Montessori students who are now (or eventually will be) in therapy.

I know that Barb's critique was unasked for, and probably not necessary, but she does make some good points when she explained that she was a teacher, so I supported her for that. I'm sure nobody on the thread meant to be mean to the little girl, and I don't know, maybe she did her best and 9 is a bit young for filming lessons.

It's just that when I was growing up in the 60s, I wanted good teachers who really expected the best from us, and in some cases did not get that because the revolution was on and the dumbing down of America was starting, and the dedicated old teachers were being replaced by teachers who were just there for the money, and the summers off, and in some cases actually resented the smart kids for getting too far ahead of the rest of the group.

So I support a teacher who sounds like she really approves if a student does well, and is not just a self-esteem whitewasher who hands out gold stars to everybody just for being there, even if all they do is act up and disrupt the rest of the class. Seen alot of that sort of thing go on, too.

Watch the movie Stand And Deliver sometime. It's a true story of a dedicated teacher who got ghetto kids to excel in calculus. He did it by having high expectations. He believed they could do it, so they believed they could do it, so they did it. I wonder how many parents threatened him along the way.

Found an article on Jaime Escalante. He was nearly fired, early on. Janitors complained about him coming early and staying late. After the movie came out, there was jealously, he got threats and hate mail. Two years later he was forced out. A year later his chosen successor left, and his program collapsed. He went back home to Bolivia. He died last spring, after a fundraiser to try to help pay for his cancer treatments.

So yeah, Barb, looks like you were right.

I'll finish a bottle of Pinot Noir and i'll go film my veggie garden in a pair of boxers!

Since my well-meant critique has seemed to highjack this thread, let me add some background. I know from personal experience how brutal and hurtful it can be when too-lavish praise comes home to roost. My dear Mother thought that lavish praise would build self esteem in her shy daughter. But I was smart enough to see through the lavish praise and it undermined self confidence. In my career as a teacher, I saw this repeated often.

I can see from the cheerful sweet face of your little 9 year old that she enjoyed making the video. It would be a shame if she doesn't get a gentle suggestion or two about how her next video might be improved and more useful. I erred in my critique by not following the 'critique sandwich' pattern of starting and ending with true positives, and between those the 'meat' of the criticism.

Sorry, if my first comment was too terse. Sorry also to have responded in anger to the personal attacks on me, based on a few words. Sorry, also to have highjacked this thread for a valuable gardening tool.

I do have a small 8.5x12.5 greenhouse but can see where high tunnels like this have an advantage over a greenhouse. Being on a city lot I don't have room for one of these but I could use the same concept on a raised bed. It would be great for tomatoes in my neck of the woods. Last year we were giving them away in July, this year we were lucky to get the dozen tomatoes we did. Never know what kind of a summer we're going to get here. The wheels are turning :).

Went out to rake leaves in the beautiful Indian Summer day, and got to thinking how considerate it was of JR, who works pretty long hours, to ask his daughter to help make a video to share with us, and she maybe knew that Daddy talks on the internet to his gardening friends and might show them the video...and we go and criticize her camera work. That was unkind and ungrateful of us.

It's not a little girls fault if this country's educational system started going down the tubes 50 yrs ago. If anything, we should apologize to her for that. Not her fault if Barb's mom didn't get it all right, either.

So thank you, Jr, and Miss Jr. Junior, for making the video and sharing it with us. The high tunnels are really neat. You all did a good job, and I hope you had fun.

Don't mind us arguing about politics and parenting over her. Sometimes grownups like us make mistakes too. We all just have to do our best and keep trying.

I am sorry to have caused such a controversy over how a video was made. I am sorry it wasn't perfect. I am almost sorry I posted it, but I am not. To me it isn't the quality, it wasn't the perfect camera skills it wasn't the holding the camera still that made me the most proud. It was the work ethic, willingness and go-get it attitude that I was most proud about. I am sorry you couldn't see that.

She asked if she could record us moving the building, I said sure. Then she asked if she could upload it to my computer, we were still working, I said sure. Then she wanted to show me the video that she made, I said the video, you mean the video clips? No I made a movie. My gifted teacher started to show us how to make movies and I wanted to try by myself. Let me tell you, when I was 9 I didn't know how to shoot a video, I didn't know how to upload digital photos/movies, I didn't know how to make a movie. Why, they didn't exist. When you were 9, did you make movies?

Please don't tell me how bad it was, what was wrong with it, I know all that stuff was there, I was more proud of the process and the willingness to do this, by herself, than the quality of the video.

I am a middle school math and science teacher an a small town school with a large military population. I teach 6,7 and 8th grade math and 6 and 8th grade science. I know what you mean by the "Dumbing Down" of the education system in America, I see it every day. I am forced into teach and prepping my kids for a state test that they all must pass. I don't get/can't spend the time on application. It is just they have to know this, this and that. It stinks. I wish I could bring my students out to my house, build a high tunnel, practice the math skills used in how to construct it, show them how to construct them. However, I can't. They must pass this test.

Gardening is my release from the frustrations I experience day in and day out. Nothing better than to relieve some stress than hoeing out weeds or picking hundreds of perfect tomatoes. I get to come home from school and work with my kids on our gardens. I get to teach them all the stuff that has been cut in our school systems. Please don't critic my kids work, unless you know the full story. It wasn't about quality, that will come, it was about how proud a dad was of his daughters work ethic and ability to try something new.

Jay

Jay, good on you. I only wish there were more dads like you. Sorry if my remarks added fuel to the fire.

I just stumbled on this thread because I'm considering a high tunnel next year. I never thought to make them more useful by making them useful.

Jay, I enjoyed your daughter's video. You should be very proud.

In the interest of full disclosure...I am 64 years old, but I have never been to film school (I am currently taking a screenwriting class however)

This is about catching and releasing that pesky skunk that is bothering your homestead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJftSPqfcG4

Here is a link that might be useful: Pepe Goes to Higher Ground

Did the blanket survive?