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The old Goss Farm tunnel, standing in a field of goldenrod, 15+ years since its last vegetable crop.
From the Field
We were supposed to be packing for vacation this week. Instead, we spent two and a half days taking apart a 30 by 70 foot high tunnel in north central Massachusetts and hauling it home to Roxbury.
It had been sitting in a field for more than fifteen years, once used to grow vegetables. The plastic was long gone. The wooden endwalls were half eaten by termites. The well pump has a crack through the cast iron housing. But the steel bows, the purlins, the ground posts, the pressure tank, the wiring, the breaker, they were all still there. For a first year flower farm, a cheap 2,100 square foot high tunnel is the kind of thing you say yes to and figure out later.
Later turned out to be immediately. We rented a twenty foot deckover, used our tractor bucket as a very unglamorous manlift, and borrowed a friend's ramp truck for the load. Three days, three friends, one yellow jacket nest, one hornet nest behind the breaker, and a lot of goldenrod.
We leave for vacation tonight. The bones of a high tunnel are now stacked at the farm, waiting for their new life.
What's on deck when we get back
We spent the last few weeks putting silage tarp down on the spot where it's going, so the ground will be clean and soft when we start setting posts. The plan is:
Repair the pump. The cast iron housing has a long crack. We'd love to save it if we can.
Develop the old spring in the northwest corner of the property for irrigation. There is a hand-drawn map from a previous owner that labels "Spring 2, El. 44 ft." We have never developed a spring before.
Replace the termite damaged wood on the endwalls.
Skin it with fresh greenhouse plastic before deep winter.
This tunnel is how we extend the season on both ends. Spring flowers and bulbs early, then next year's fall blooms late. It's the piece of infrastructure a small flower farm normally waits three or four years to be able to afford.
End of day. The tractor did the heavy lifting.
Two things we'd love your help with
We are asking because chances are someone reading this has done one or both of these before.
1. Cracked cast iron pump housing. Has anyone here repaired one, or had one repaired? Brazing’s out of the picture, a good used replacement or replace it altogether, we’re open to ideas. Reply to this email and tell us what you think.
2. Developing an old spring for irrigation. The spring on our map hasn't been touched in decades. It was previously developed and the concrete basin still stands. Have you developed one for farm use? What did you learn, what would you do differently, what should we watch out for (flow rate, storage, freezing, permitting)? Reply and share.
Every answer helps. This is the fastest way we'll learn.
In the cart this week
Still going: single mix dahlias, cosmos, snapdragons, calendula, zinnias, and sunflowers. The pumpkins have developed their first full set of leaves and starting to branch out. First real signs of fall in the field, and we're planning the last few big harvests before frost.
WEB-ONLY DEEP DIVE
The Old Tunnel, in more detail
This part didn't make it into the email, it's here for the readers who want to go a layer deeper. If you want the full picture of the teardown, the physics of high tunnels versus low tunnels versus row cover, and why this changes what we can grow in Zone 5b, keep reading.
The plan on paper was simple. In practice, it looked like this:
A twenty foot deckover trailer, rented for three days.
Our little Kubota compact tractor, doubling as the world's least dignified manlift. One of us stood in the bucket while the other lifted, and we unbolted purlins and ridge pieces one at a time.
A friend's ramp truck, which showed up on day two helped move the bulky end walls back to the farm. Two and a half days of long hours in high grass full of goldenrod, ragweed, and, at more than one memorable point, a small hornet's nest tucked behind the electrical panel and a yellow jacket nest in the ground.
We came home with the full hoop structure, the ground posts, the purlins, the ridge, the wiring, the breaker, the pressure tank, and the pump. What we did not come home with: intact endwall wood, plastic, or a pump housing without a crack in it.
Why a high tunnel matters for a small flower farm
The single biggest constraint on a first year flower farm in Zone 5b is the length of the season. Our last frost is typically mid to late May. Our first hard frost is typically early to mid October. That gives us roughly twenty weeks of open field growing. Everything a farm like ours earns comes out of those twenty weeks.
A high tunnel changes that math in three specific ways:
1. It moves the calendar. Under a good high tunnel in Zone 5b, you can plant hardy annuals like ranunculus, anemones, snapdragons, larkspur, and bells of Ireland roughly six weeks earlier than in the open field, and finish fall crops like lisianthus and dahlias three to four weeks later. That is not a small shift. That is turning a twenty week season into something closer to a thirty week season, on the same footprint of land.
2. It changes what you can grow. Some of the highest value cut flowers, ranunculus and anemones especially, are borderline in an open Zone 5b field. They want cool, dry, protected roots and steady moisture. Under cover, they thrive. So do bulb crops like tulips and narcissus grown for cut, which suffer in the mud and wind of an open field spring.
3. It changes the quality. Rain damage, wind damage, and hail damage are the three uninsurable losses of open field flower growing. A single storm at the wrong moment can wipe out a week of harvest. A high tunnel makes those losses close to zero for what's grown inside it. Long stems stay straight. Petals stay clean. Colors stay saturated.
Add all three together and a 2,100 square foot high tunnel is not a marginal upgrade. For a small farm, it is a step change in what the business can do. Most of what we salvaged is in better shape than we hoped. Some of it is going to require real work.
High tunnels vs. low tunnels vs. row cover
We get asked this a lot. The short answer:
Row cover (Agribon and similar) is a lightweight fabric laid directly over a crop. It buys you two to four degrees of frost protection and blocks wind. It's the cheapest tool in the shed and the most versatile. It doesn't extend the season by more than a week or two.
Low tunnels are hoops covered in row cover or thin plastic, about waist high, over a single bed. They buy you three to six weeks of season extension on either end and are cheap to build. They also flatten in a heavy snow, and you can't stand up inside one.
Caterpillar tunnels are lightweight, unheated, movable structures, roughly 14 feet wide. They sit between low tunnels and high tunnels in cost and capability. Roll up sides for ventilation. You can walk inside. They handle snow poorly.
High tunnels are permanent, tall, unheated structures. Ours is 30 feet wide with side vents that roll up. They handle snow load, wind, and heavy rain, and they hold significantly more solar heat than any of the above.
The physics is why. A high tunnel has enough interior volume to build up a real heat gradient during the day, hold heat overnight through the mass of the soil, and stay measurably warmer than the outside air for weeks longer than any lower cover can. On a sunny March day in New Hampshire, the inside of a well sited high tunnel can be 30 to 40 degrees warmer than the outside. That's the difference between "not growing yet" and "already three weeks into your first crop."
Every kind of cover has a role. On our farm, row cover and low tunnels will keep doing what they already do. The high tunnel opens up work we couldn't do before.
End of the deep dive. Back to the field.
One ask before we sign off
CSA early access opens the last week of September, and we're opening it to newsletter readers first. A CSA share is what makes projects like this old tunnel possible for a small farm. It's how we grow more, cover more ground, and take more swings.
Reply "CSA" to this email and we'll put you on the early-access list. You'll get the details, pricing, and the sign-up link a full week before anyone else.
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Warmly,
the Hardy Hill Farms family
P.S. If you know somebody who would enjoy this kind of story, forward this along. It's how we grow.