The Fields Under the Metal

Some crops cultivated at One Straw Farm are a bit more temperamental than others and demand a little more controlled environment. Cherry tomatoes fall under such demanding personality qualities, so we had to ready their future home. So today Andrew, Dixon and myself worked on setting up the irrigation lines and field covers underneath our hoop houses. Running a tractor under the narrow confines of the metal framing is tricky and ripe with the risk of making costly mistakes, so we had to do things a little differently than normal. Since running a tractor is cumbersome, we opted for a no till soil environment. The three of us manually ran the out the drip tape lines, with some ending up as straight as bow. After a little finagling we fixed our errors and tacked the tape down  with stakes. Lunch pulled Dixon away from us to the dark tarmac of Kenilworth Market, so the job was Andrew’s and mine to finish. We spent the remainder of the afternoon laying a wider layer of white topped field plastic over the entire interior of the hoop house. The white used as a light reflector rather than a black absorbant, which gives us better climate control of the structures temperature. To top the day off, Andrew and I connected the drip lines to the main hose line and ran some water through to soften the soil underneath. The bell dings 5:00 and home we go.

-Peter