Wednesday, Feb. 13th

Today Mira and I mulched one of the hoop houses.

"What is a hoop house?"

Well puzzled reader, a hoop house is a self sustaining greenhouse. The ones at Riverview are about 96 feet long and have a skeleton of 25 metal poles, bent into the ground in a semicircle "hoop" shape. Plastic is secured over the poles and endwalls are constructed at each side of the structure. The hoop houses derive all their warmth from the sun's energy and use no other source of heating. The sun seems to do a pretty good job because these guys are always humid on the inside- which makes them a nice escape from the freezing temperatures currently ravaging Wisconsin at the moment. There are ten hoop houses planned to be finished by the end of this year- I believe three are already supporting plants.

I met two newcomers to Riverview today. One, Nate, is a senior at Lawrence majoring in Biology and wants to start farming after graduation. Currently he knows a minimum amount about the trade. Cool dude, we all have to start somewhere. The other person was an Appleton resident named Matt who also wants to start a farm of his own. He had a vivacious personality and spoke in a very animated manner. I never realized how many people wanted to farm in the area. It would be good if more farms were established; then the kids who lived on those farms would be added into the Appleton School District and we would have more snow days because of their longer trek on country roads... and there would be a heightened awareness of growing organic and local, of course.  

Oh, while we were mulching today, I accidentally stepped into a muddy puddle of water and woodchips and soaked my jeans from the calf down. I don't think there's any lesson to be taught from that but it was an important part of my day.