Building a HUGE greenhouse after Hurricane Desctruction

We lost our high tunnel, which is critical for us growing our own food. We lost it to Hurricane Helene. There goes— there goes the power pole. There's a little bit of what's left of our high tunnel, our old high tunnel.

Not driving the posts. Our thing's frozen up or something.

Wow, the machine.

Hopefully we can get that resolved. Is it not going in anymore? Not really. I don't know if it's just really cold and it's kind of frozen or what's going on, but it's not wanting to drive the posts.

18 degrees out here right now.

We'll go ahead and try to get the other end in and just, just gotta roll with the punches.

Today we're replacing it almost double in size. It's going to be 21 feet by 96-foot high tunnel.

This tunnel that we're building is our Guardian. It's a new model, brand new.

We're actually just launching it publicly this coming Monday, so I'm gonna have one right before.

Yeah, so it'll be—

but it'll be out by the time—

perfect.

Everybody sees this.

First thing we got to do is just get the ground posts in. Um, we're starting with the corners, so 4 corners of the tunnel to get it all squared up and make sure we have our layout just how you want it. Um, and then after that, we'll run some strings and finish driving all the rest of the ground posts down the length on both sides. And then we'll put bows on. So it'll look like a greenhouse by the end of the day.

We've leveled a pad as good as we could with our machines. 96 feet— well, we went a little longer than 96 feet and a little wider than 20. It's 21-foot tunnel. That little machine they have isn't working, isn't going to work. It's too cold. Josiah, what? We need a skilled operator. We need somebody that can drive. Posin. What is this? Hot chocolate with foam on top.

Yeah.

Ooh, marshmallow. Here's your morning drugs. Thank you. He's a little concerned he might bend the poles.

Well, we have a few extra, so if we bend one, we'll, we'll stop.

Does the heater work good in this one? All right.

We started doing installations, um, earlier this year.

And that's handy.

Yeah, so if people—

we're gardeners and farmers, we're not necessarily builders. How many of these have you put together?

Um, I don't really keep track, honestly.

It's that many?

Quite a few.

How long did it take you to put together the first tunnel you ever did?

Um, that's a good question. I mean, so we have a farm, and so we do a lot of installs ourselves.

Yep.

So first tunnel, I don't even know what I would consider because we grew up building tunnels, but you know, you definitely get faster over time.

Get to learn a new grading skill today.

If the ground is just too hard to get them in, that's probably what's the—

it's gonna bend them.

Um, I'd be surprised if it bent it, but they're 14-gauge, uh, inch and 5/8.

So see how the bucket curves as he goes down? That's the trick.

Lift up on it.

Ah, so he's pushing down. It gets unlevel and he'll lift it up on it. He can adjust it. There, that's perfect.

Looking pretty level.

That's not too bad, huh?

So far it's looking pretty good. Just as fast as that other machine, probably maybe faster.

Spending— that's bending. Just don't do that.

It has enough flex. It looks like it's really bending, but—

oh, it does.

Okay.

The Mini-X turned out to be too sketchy. Is that the word you used? And now this might be a real fast heat-up. They drove one by hand and they were like, yeah, let's go see if that machine has more power.

I think this is where the cylinder is.

Yeah. So that's— all right, you want to try it?

It's warmed up for sure.

They could really get moving if they get these poles in the ground. There's a lot of poles.

50 of them.

50? That'd be tough by hand. There it goes. Wow, that's more like it. Yeah, it is. You got one whole wall up.

We do.

Is this about as far as you think you'd be?

We should have been farther along, but yeah, it's all right because the machine— we get— we had a little grief with that.

What's Joshua doing, Jacob? Jonathan?

He is installing the truss assemblies and all of the inner bows. So this is just for wind support, snow load, also trellising, like if you're trellising tomatoes or cucumbers inside the tunnel. You can hang a lot of your trellising infrastructure off of the trusses.

It's gonna be handy. We had to add this to our— in our last one. What's the goal for putting these up?

Um, before lunch.

What time is it?

10:50? No, 11:15? 11:30?

What time's lunch?

1 o'clock, probably.

Working on the second wall poles. Are we just trying to get it to this green line?

Yeah, so Basically the top of this green line is going to be where your baseboard is.

Okay. Jonathan saw what happened to us after, or during the hurricane, and reached out. How'd you know that we lost our high tunnel?

Well, you know, we— I guess we've been working together just a little bit back and forth on affiliate stuff with Abundance Plus. And yeah, so I've— I try to watch one of your videos every once in a while, and I knew the hurricane came through here, so I started watching your hurricane series. And, uh, so yeah, just—

did you see that hurt? Did you see the high tunnel go down?

I did. Yeah, that was, that was sad. Um, right. So then I think I just shot you a text and said, hey, we'd love to help you out with a new tunnel.

Yeah, see, that was the best kind of help. After the disaster, people just said, what do you need? I don't know, I don't know what I need, and I don't know what you're willing to do. I would have never dared ask for a high tunnel. Yeah. So, so, man, Caleb's ready to go.

All right, let's go. Send it.

Let's hope this works because the pounding ain't doing it. Going right down. What you think?

You can't believe it.

And they installing it.

I know, it's so—

right, icing on the top.

I don't think— this means so much. It's so wonderful. Can I get you guys some herbal tea?

I will take some.

Okay, hot, obviously.

Nice to meet you.

Hey, Caleb.

Caleb and John—

and Jonathan.

Jonathan.

All right, we hit something very solid.

How important does it— is it to be exactly on 4 feet?

Um, at this point, not super critical. The first 3 sections we have wind bracing, and we can wiggle it a little bit, but if you start getting too far off, that wind bracing is going to be at a steeper angle.

Okay.

Which a couple inches is probably not going to hurt anything at this point. We can move it 6 inches if we have to. It just might look a little bit weird, but Why'd you put the arch on the end? Just to feel like we're making progress. So we like to try to get them 3 feet in the ground, um, especially if you're on soft, you know, if it's soft soil. But it doesn't need to be 3 feet in the ground, especially if it's really hard. So we went through like—

and every single pole, yeah, 3 feet.

We went through like 2 layers of rock on that one, so it's not coming out. Eat time.

Oh well, you're taking care of us.

All the ground posts are in, so that's a huge hurdle. Honestly, that's where most of the, like, hiccups can come from. Yeah, like hitting solid rock or bending a post.

Or not too many hiccups in assembling the arches.

No, this, this went pretty smoothly, honestly.

So when you noticed our high tunnel getting washed away, what compelled you to— I'm gonna get you guys a high tunnel.

Well, you know, we've always tried to take care of people in catastrophes. Like, one of the things that we've offered since the very beginning with our high tunnels is a 50% discount, or essentially a 50% warranty on any, like, storm damages. So, you know, we always try to help people out. We don't want to make profit off of people in their time of trouble. And, um, yeah, as a company, we try to systematically actually set aside some money for helping people out.

One good thing about this, Rebecca, is you have your trellises. I know, it's, it's trellis ready.

It's trellis ready, baby.

The other one was not. I had to put all those poles in later. How can you tell? It's tall. Could you go measure? It's making me nervous. It will fit. It's like 6 feet. This would be bad if our track loader won't get in here. Is this how we're going to get material in and out? Well, we could use a little tractor. We could use, uh, Randolph's tractor in a pinch. Okay, you got 93 inches and Groc says 82 inches. So we got 10 inches clearance. Yeah, I know, a foot.

It's fine. Are you the owner of Farmer's Friend?

Okay, you are the only owner. You're the owner.

I should have kept that a secret. I didn't realize you guys didn't know that.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, I started.

So you're the, you're the boss man.

I grew up farming. I, my parents started farming when I was I'm impressed. 4 or 5 years old, but I was like really more mechanical. Taught myself to weld when I was like 12.

Um, this is Jenna in the future. Yeah, I don't know what company he'll have.

Was always like, you know, building different pieces of equipment to make work easier.

And how long did it take you to get profitable with this company?

It's kind of gone up and down, you know. Like, yeah, sometimes it's profitable, sometimes it's like you're reinvesting bunch and you're trying to figure things out. And then so it's—

so, so, so you had the craze of 2020, you sold a lot of tunnels.

We sold a lot, but we also almost went bankrupt.

Cuz why?

Well, because we sold a lot, but we also, we backordered way more than we should have. So we ended up with like, you know, $2 million in backorders. You're coming to me like, I got to have a tunnel. People are waiting, it's going to be like probably a 6 or 8 week lead time. And they're like, that's fine. So we took the money, we took the orders, everything, And then our suppliers are like, well, we don't know when we're going to get material. And by the time we got around to getting material, it was twice as expensive as what we had budgeted for. So we lost money on a ton of orders.

So every time— so for every sale, you were actually losing money?

We were losing money. Our sales have been coming down every year. This year we've turned it back around and we're up.

How did you turn that around?

Marketing and just more strategic planning.

How do you market?

Oh, we do a lot of social media.

We're doing good because you can actually count how many you have left. I think we could do that from the beginning. How they doing, Joshua? They're doing pretty good.

Just double checking to see if your skid steer is going to fit through the door.

Ah, that's right.

If not, we'll have to talk about some other options. Yeah, I think it's going to be tall enough.

And what's the other end? Are both ends the same thing?

Yeah, we're gonna do that, but we don't have to put these on. We can figure something else out. The zipper is 80 inches.

Whoa, 82 inches, isn't it? Probably there at the top. Well, can't we— I bet we can mess with the zipper if we modify it. Maybe we can look about raising it.

There's really no reason why we couldn't put taller zippers on this tunnel.

Yeah, I think most people would, would bring in material with a little tractor, wouldn't they?

Yeah, a lot of people would.

Yeah, not necessarily a skid steer.

When we build the frame, we'll go ahead and go taller on the top header. So if we can get some taller ones, we'll— okay, we'll send them to you.

Where do you get these manufactured?

In Kentucky.

Oh, there you go. America.

Oh yeah, most of our stuff is— is, uh, we— most of our stuff we either manufactured ourselves Or we get it from some, uh, Mennonite Amish companies up in Kentucky.

Jonah came up to me and he said, you are not gonna— and by that you had to mean your mother— fill this with tomatoes. Is she the crazy tomato lady? Yeah, she was. Okay, she told me she only needs 2 beds.

Only 2?

So there's 6. Beds in here. So 4 other beds for cucumbers and beans and squash. Should we just all go carnivore? Yes, let it be grass. Oh, y'all don't put it up when we try to. It's kind of sketchy with us. Okay, sure. Okay, Jonathan, what's the impossible goal for this afternoon?

Oh boy, what time is sundown here?

Uh, it'll probably get dark about 2 5:30, 5:45.

We'll get the rest of the bows up, we'll get the wind bracing done, and we'll get the center purlin in.

Okay, um, that's, that's not an impossible goal. No, that's not impossible.

So I'm thinking, yeah, keep going. Um, we could definitely get the baseboard on. Um, so we have metal baseboard that goes all the way down both sides of the tunnel.

He— the help's still shaking his head, nodding his head, so we gotta, we gotta keep going. What else?

We'll probably start framing the end walls, uh, framing up the lumber.

There's still none.

Maybe he's just as—

and then we're gonna install the water line.

Comes with every tunnel, really. So you can, uh, put your screws and nuts and bolts and stuff in there.

Heck yeah.

And then pretty handy around the farm.

Heck yeah. Two more to go. This one and two more. Heck yeah, I guess we're having supper. Oh, what? Pizza. What, for real?

Yeah.

What's this step, Jonathan?

So we're framing up for our end walls, and we want to do this before we, um, put the channel, the aluminum channel on the end bows, because we have our brackets here that just get a lot harder to put on after you've put the channel for your plastic.

And this wood does not come in the kit, or the wood— the wood does not, um, but it's in your instructions. Yep. Every day is bring your kid to work day on the farm. That's right. Is it this cold in Nashville?

It was pretty cold. Okay, Josie, can you hand me the screw?

All right, there we go. What are y'all working on, Joshua?

Just putting up these bows close to the framing done. The next would be the, um, baseboard over there and then the double wiggle wire channel.

All right, just a 3-man job? Yeah. Or can you pull it off with 2?

I mean, 2 tall enough people. You got to be a little—

just a little bit taller. Oh, you're putting the big long pole up there. He's pushing this 96-foot long Metal pole. It's going down. It's like that level was made for this.

Slightly modified, but kind of made for that. Now we're just putting up the center purlin, and so we have these two clamps to go around the top, and then a nut and bolt goes through the bottom to hold it in place.

If you're anywhere near Nashville and you get one of these Farmer Friends Tunnels. Also, get— even a day's drive away— get these guys to come. You don't need to be up there doing that, right? They know what they're doing. They're seriously going to put this up in 2 days. It would take you 4 full— you working full time. But let's be real, you're a homesteader, you got a lot of things going on. All right, cleaning up this afternoon. Evening. All right, what's the plan for the evening?

It was a successful day.

Yeah, it was.

Go home and, uh, drink some tea. Yeah, rest.

I was gonna say get some rest, but how you gonna rest with a 3, 2, and a 1-year-old?

It might be interesting. Hopefully they sleep better tonight.

You might be so tired you'll just pass out. What's the plan Sunday?

Get started early. We got ground, uh, or the baseboard, um, we got the channel for securing the plastic We got to put that on along the sides and around the ends and, um, just a few of the last features. And then yeah, we'll get the plastic on, get your roll-up sides working.

And all right, yeah, let's do it. Good, good people at Farmer's Friends. Good, good product. I've been using their product for years now, the silage tarp. Let me show you a product we just implemented this year from them. Weed fabric, already custom coals. We put our strawberries in there. We just covered this up with straw to keep it frost protected. We will not have to weed those two beds this coming season. Oh my gosh, what a game changer! So excited they've gotten into the big high tunnel space. They also have small ones if you guys are interested in that. I'm gonna leave the link down for that down in the description and Go check them out. Wonderful people doing wonderful things with wonderful product. I couldn't think of a better place to get a high tunnel, a silage tarp, a weed fabric, and other tools. All right, link in the description.

Happy day.