A wonderfully constructive day...

Yesterday here was the beginning of the new high tunnel greenhouse: 18 posts, cut to 3 feet long, pounded 2 feet into the ground. (Thankfully we have no rocks in this garden.) The posts are manufactured for chain link fence and come in 6 ' lengths. The pieces that will form the bows are 10' lengths of top rail for chain link fence. It takes 2 pieces to make a bow.
Here are our new friends Alina and Matt from Germany who have come to help for a while. They are "wwoofers" and our first guests from the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms program. This is a volunteer program where the hosts provide room and board and the volunteers work several hours

a day learning new skills and techniques in a variety of farm situations. This energetic couple of 19 year olds started out in BC last july and have wwoofed their way across the entire country since then. We are very lucky they chose us! Nova Scotia is their next stop.
Here they are figuring out how best to bolt the bender to the picnic table.
The straight pipes are slipped around the bender, and pulled into shape bit by bit until they have a consistant curve.
Next the ends for the top of the curve are fitted together, drilled through and bolted.

We made 9 bows, and then inserted them with some strenuous pushing of the bottom ends towards each other, into the waiting posts.

Our neighbor Wayne came by and got involved in working out the bugs. Here the connectors are put in place to carry the ridgepole, which is 4 lengths of the same straight pipe .

The ridgepole is drilled and bolted at each 10' joint. The connectors are tightened on the ridgepole with the spacing between the bows at exactly 5 '. After some adjustments to get the ridgepole straight,  holes were drilled through the posts and bows and then bolted through to hold everything together. And here's where we finished up today, very pleased with the progress we made. Two days of rain are coming so perhaps wednesday we'll get the next steps done.