Oxbow Farm Video

[oxbowfarm]

Hey HG,

Thought some of you might be interested to see a video of our farm. We're currently doing a Kickstarter campaign to try and raise some funds from our local customer base to build a larger mobile hoop house. Had to have a tech savvy friend create the video for us so this is probably not something we'll do very often.

I'm to one who resembles a garden gnome.

[MikeH]

Well done. Lots of good projects in the Finger Lakes region this year.

[richardw]

Well done Tim,i like the look of that newer larger mobile hoop house,how many more are you looking to get.

[oxbowfarm]

Aug 11, 2013 21:37:41 GMT -5 richardw said:

Well done Tim,i like the look of that newer larger mobile hoop house,how many more are you looking to get.

Well, we lost my first prototype hoophouse this year to a combination of rotten wood and wind. It was very different from the rest of our home builds as I learned a lot making it and changed the design to the current one which I'm very happy with, although there is still lots of tweaking I'd like to do. I'd like to have at least three more of the home built houses for a total of seven of those. The commercial house will be much larger, just slightly smaller than three times the square foot area of one of the home builds.

The bigger house will enable us to do some really interesting things inside in the winter, the bigger the house, the warmer it stays, especially in the center due to surface area/heat loss effects.

The small houses actually have much more interesting possibilities for sophisticated season extension rotations with multiple moves. Since they aren't on tracks you can be much more flexible with them.

We wanted a bigger house for the winter growing season, and I've gone about as far as I can go with easily available materials and no real structural engineering/technical knowledge. I would be afraid to build a much taller/wider house without having the design checked over by an architect. I'd also have to source some heavier gauge tubing, necessitating a custom-made bender, etc. Going bigger means I lose all the cost savings of building it myself, and it becomes wiser to buy the house IMO.

So for right now I guess the answer would be I'd like 8 houses. 1 big-un and 7 of the little ones.

[galina]

Enjoyed watching the video and seeing your family, farm and produce. I thought the existing hoophouses were huge - the new one must be gigantic. Glad you raised the money and hope the build has gone well and the crops inside are growing well too.

Best of luck to you all.

[homegrower]

I really enjoyed watching the video and wish you the best of luck with your campaign

[oxbowfarm]

Well, we finally finished the new hoophouse. Only took like every waking moment for the last 3 months. Putting up a house like this largely alone is very inefficient.  The goal was to have it done by the end of October and roll it east onto the winter greens.  Ended up actually rolling it the first week of December.

[dustdevil]

You did a fabulous job! My winter crop of snow is a little taller than yours ;-)

[12540dumont]

It's a thing of beauty. I wish I could have helped you make it. So are you developing a new white kale? If I ever win the lottery, I'll send you 7 more hoop houses.

[richardw]

Well done,certainly a good sized hoophouse

[steev]

I finally got around to your video; kudos! Your good fortune in family and farm (clearly earned!) is wonderful!

My folks left the Fingerlakes more than 150 years ago; looks like a bad move, on their part.