Greenhouse TOO HOT! Surprisingly Easy Fix

Well, this one's not gonna make it. I tried to see if they would— she would kick it. She's not kicked it. We're gonna put her out of her misery and feed her to the pigs. Good morning, beautiful one. Good to see you up and at 'em again. You want me to go right now? No, you don't want a little pull the plunge? Okay, so what are you up to?

I'm just planting some more stuff.

Get you some more soil in here. You got made a little soupy, huh?

Well, it's so dry, it's hard to figure out.

That's nice of you to offer to help. Yeah, he just threw that apple core. He's ready to dig in.

He's helping.

You know what, Gideon, if you had your little shovel, do you know where that'd do good?

Wow, that'll do it.

Can I get this long stem off, or you help me with that?

No, if you cut it down. I need to get it cut.

In the meantime, I'm just gonna go old school, keep shoveling this. Hey, here comes Gideon with his shovel. Good job, Gideon. You're a good helper, man. You're a good helper.

Come on, my dinosaur.

Yeah, and you're looking good, Gideon, in those boots. In those, uh, snow boots.

Snow boots in June.

It works.

He's got something on. It is cold too. See if that ain't perfect, but Mom, can you put on an ice cream? A little soupy, huh?

Oh, a lot.

All right, let's put in a little more dirt.

The problem is— no, the problem is there's so much dirt in it.

Yeah, when I put quite a bit of soil in there—

I know, I wasn't meaning for this to happen.

That— did that— look at that. Oh well, I put a little more soil in there and that felt right right here.

Okay, okay, that's the problem.

Not suction. I think that you got it. Oh good.

See?

Okay, okay, ready? Slow, slow. Good, good.

Thank you, Gideon.

Oh, look at those perfect blocks.

Perfect.

You might stir it in between. Okay, because this settles. You want to try it before I leave? Just make sure you can do it. So like lean it, it gets suction unless you— oh, you'd probably know that. One fell out, but you could take your trowel and put it back in or do that. That's good. And— oh boy, it's soupy. Okay, let's keep— let's keep mixing it.

One fell out.

All right, try it, Mom. Oh, you were able to do it this time. One fell out. Just trowel it in. Just keep troweling it in right there though, because that— you have to shove it in with other dirt. Yeah, there you go. You got this. Okay, we're gonna do the chores. We'll come back. I'll help you cover this greenhouse because today is our last cool day. Wow, for a while. We're gonna need the opposite effect of the greenhouse to start our fall crops because you have to plant fall crops in the summer in the heat. So we need a shade cloth to baby them that way. Instead, in the spring you need more sun, more heat. When you plant for the fall, you need shade.

Are we already thinking about the fall?

Yes sir, that's farming, right? Gotta always think ahead. Are you going with us or staying? Hey Teddy, even you're going with us. Look at them running out to their food. I should say waddling out to their food.

Look at this!

Oh my gosh, it's huge! How much does it weigh?

I don't know, 8 pounds?

Tomorrow's the day, last day to feed them. Jonah, I hope all these fit in our bags. Oh my, look how big! Look how big! We're gonna have a record-breaking chicken right here. Yeah, pick that big guy up right there. Yeah, that one. Let's have a look over here. Is he heavy?

Yeah, he is.

Is he hard to pick up? Yeah. How are you, T-birds? Growing like weeds. Mucho manure last night. More and more sleeping on the turkey shaw. Happy about that.

He's trying to get a glimpse of Mama.

Hey, you want to go with us?

Just saw him one time.

You helped Mom enough. All right, let's go. Do you change your mind? Oh my God, he was okay going with us. Nice. So we have his leash, and then we got to get both these fences back on. All right, let's see if our work yesterday got our fence hot. Something. I mean, 1.2, it's still hitting somewhere, but at least it's— it's not— at least it's not amping out like crazy. Look, Jonah brought him some poplar.

Even that—

look at that, Belle came right up. Hold it steady. Nice. Jonah had a good idea. What if we could do like this? Yeah, do that like that.

Then they have to work for it, sort of.

Yeah, and that makes it more like it is in the wild. That's good. Yeah, they love that little pop-up treat. Oh yeah, the grass we planted is just starting to come up right here. It's working. Well, it looked like she might have knocked it out. Did you get what you wanted?

Yep.

Come here and show me what you planted.

Okay, so I planted more zucchini, parsley, cilantro, dill, some more of those herbs that kind of bolt.

Okay.

Mirror Jericho lettuce.

Okay, are those heat tolerant lettuces?

They are.

That's for our event. That's the salad at our August 8th workshop.

That is a direct— like, this is like for that. Then I ended up getting— I need to make another little sign, so I did, um, a half a tray of Arkansas Little Leaf cucumbers. I ran out of my homemade pickling cucumbers, so this is also pickling cucumber. So looks like what I have.

Looks like you put soil on top of your—

I did. I'm trying it out. I'm just doing it. And then I have a whole tray of sunflowers. Okay, I'm just seeing.

All right, you ready for me to peel with this?

Yeah. So, um, I got—

did that come with it?

No, I bought these. This was an anchoring thing, and then these are— this is what we decided on with what all they had to offer.

I'm thinking this is going to be the trick, is tying it down. So let me just put it on and see where we need those. Thank you. But I think that will do it. Between this and your hooks. Did they come with little screws?

I don't even know.

No little screws, but I think we can figure that out. It's going to be screwing those hooks into tin, so we're probably going to need a drill to drill it out first. This is our shade cloth. It, uh, it doesn't block the sun, but it reflects the heat. Now, how to sling this over? I think I'll get a ladder. We've got strings on the end so that we can grab it from either side once we get it up. What I'm thinking, Rebecca, is I'll put this one end up and we'll have both strings hanging down and we'll be able to grab them. All right, can you see it, guys? We got our shade cloth up. We only ordered it for the top. We're now looking at it and being like, why didn't we order more? Why didn't we order it for the whole thing? And I'm thinking, well, we had maybe plans to ventilate this. So we've been thinking through some things. We're actually thinking maybe removing this bottom plastic piece and having a rolling up, um, plastic sheet that could come down or up. It'd just be easier to get a bigger shade cloth. Hey Rebecca, yeah, would it be just easier just to get longer shade cloth?

Longer?

A wider shade cloth?

Yes, tell me what I need to order. That'd be the easiest thing to do because whatever I did, whatever I got was not the right size.

Okay, okay, so before we have to— now we might still have to ventilate it, maybe it won't work, but it's worth a try. Yes, so 46 46 times—

plus 59.

46 plus 49.

Oh, let me get my calculator.

Times 2.

The one that we got before was 16 feet 2 inches long.

Okay. But you feel like it's a little short?

It's a little short.

We'll just go off that one then.

Yeah, I mean, look at it. You can see it. Yeah, it's not— it's like, we need like We need— maybe I'll go 17 feet. Do you think, do you think 10 inches is enough? I mean, I don't mind if it overcomes.

It would stretch. They would stretch if I tighten it up to the arches.

So—

You'd rather have too long than too short?

Correct.

Okay.

I'm not happy with the fit as it is right now. So—

That's sad.

It's sad looking.

Oh well, I haven't stretched the corners.

I know, and you haven't stretched the But it's bad.

Out of time, it's milking time. Okay, so you ordered that extra bit. You getting it ready for us, Bird?

Yeah.

Lily, you carry that one and I'll carry this one. This one's slap full. She's doing good. Before we go up, Rebecca had a wonderful idea. What if we unscrewed these this bottom.

What are you guys gonna do?

And just prop this up. Just prop that up. Maybe let's do it jerry at first, and if it works, do something a little more semi-permanent. I think we'll do that. Hopefully we'll have time this afternoon. We'll get this greenhouse nice and cool. All right, Mom's about to take Teddy. Wait, Teddy, come here! We got to do a before and after. He's going in for a— he's gonna get a grooming. Jonah and Arun are setting up for chicken butchering tomorrow. This is a before. Oh yeah, I'm getting some good shots. Okay, here we go, next shot. Teddy converted.

Oh, they're back! Can you look in back?

And you still— you smell like a Strawberry Shortcake doll.

Yes, he is. He's a good boy. He did really good. She said he did so good.

He didn't bark at her.

No, I know. Wow, he was very— he was very sweet today.

Oh, look, they cut it around his legs. That's good.

Yes.

It makes him look dainty.

He's gonna go sit in the shade. A little bit of trauma there, buddy.

Papa's over there putting up a net. When he goes to where he's past the joint, I'm gonna, um, move the sheep. Now I'm gonna move the sheep.

Got the chores done. Let's see your job, Jonah. Let's see it. Give us a tour. Give us a tour of the chicken butchering real quick, from start to finish.

Come kill your chickens.

Uh-huh.

Here's your scalder. We can't plug that in until—

that's right, because our fence is on it.

We'll have to plug it in in the morning. Look what we did! Look at this.

Oh nice, watch. Does it actually work? Oh, neat!

So much more efficient.

Oh, I like it.

You see how much water it's putting in there too?

That's cool, I like it.

And it's easy, you just come turn it on and push a button.

Good.

After you've plucked and scalded your chickens, you bring them here. Everybody, you just eviscerate. You got your knives.

So you got your hose rigged up here on a bar. Okay, well, you guys are ready, we're ready. 100 chickens tomorrow.

I don't have to stand on it.

Oh really? You're tall enough now. Okay, good deal. Jonah, we got a few more minutes. Let's try to see if we can't ventilate this greenhouse a little bit. Okay, I was thinking I might have to shimp, like create a board system, like keep this out like that, which I could. I could totally— this is totally flexible. I could put like a— I could build like a triangle that mounts in there. It would totally do that. But I got to thinking, what if I do this? Is that just too easy? Is that too easy? And what if I did that all the way across? Boom! All of a sudden, this is a cool house, not a hot house anymore. Not bad, not bad. Maybe pull these a little away. They're gonna get some wind drying them out, but some breeze, but they're not gonna get wet. They're not gonna get like pouring rain cups. It's not gonna come wash our seeds away. That's why we don't just set them outside. I think this is gonna work. Uh, we still got the shade cloth, but it's like 2 weeks out, so we need to do this. We might still need to do the shade cloth plus this, and if this rig doesn't work, work out, I think we can easily make little inserts or a little insert frame that goes all the way across to hold this up and out, maybe more like that. I can talk all I want, but unless it passes the beautiful one test, it doesn't matter. So let's go see. Let's see if she's got a moment. Hey, you got a moment, Beck? What do you think?

I like it.

Do you see what I did?

Yeah, you just curled it under.

Just curled up. It was very easy to work with.

Yeah, this is perfect. Uh-oh, see, you were not careful in my bed.

Was there a plant there?

There was, and it may be gone.

All right, well, I had to step in there a little bit. I'm sorry, but look. What do you think? Go in. Let's go in.

Yeah, I think that's actually going to be really nice.

I mean, the breeze is coming through, it's really cooling it off.

You get a better— I need to go to thermometer.

Oh yeah, I felt like it was cooler.

Oh yeah, this is perfect.

I know that's not right, it's not 91 in here, but it was reading 97, so it has cooled off. It's cooled off quite a bit.

Yeah, I mean, this is the whole like, um, high tunnel— yeah, the thought, and it's totally working. Yes, I'm so glad we saw that today.

But you know what, if it's not hard— it would not be hard to even build a triangle frame that mounts here just like out of 2x2s. It would not be hard to do that and rest this on it because the rain— yeah, rain's still going to come right here and we're going to see what happens. Yeah, and wind, is it going to knock it down? We'll just see. I mean, if that's going to work, it's going to work. We could also pin— we could pin this with a screw if it starts to wanting to fall down. We could temporarily pin it up.

So perfect. Okay, this is just—

all right, just perfect. Okay, it's a win.