Building it up!

Throughout 2014 Red Moon Farm experienced major growth, not only in our beautiful and abundant gardens, but also in our infrastructure. We started out the year committed to grow for over one hundred farm families in our 6 acre garden and we needed spaces to get the job done. We needed a place to start our plants off right in protected greenhouses, spaces to wash, package, and cool all our abundant harvest, and a space to office all of Red Moon Farm’s business.  So we set out right away constructing everything we would need. Take a look at how far we’ve come!

Our first greenhouse was completed in a joint effort from the whole family. We immediately put it to good use. This is an image from late March, and we were growing the lovely tomato plants that you enjoyed all summer long.

This old greenhouse frame transformed into our new, cute and tiny office.

We now have a cozy little office space complete with a beautiful pallet-wood floor.  It’s pretty darn cool.

 Below is the start of our processing barn and walk-in cooler

We set out quickly last winter to build our walk-in cooler as we knew we would need it as soon as the weather heated up in April May. This walk-in cooler consists of two 10′ x 10′ rooms so we can keep your kale and broccoli at 45 degrees in the back room, and your tomatoes and squash at 60 degrees in the front room. Perfect!

The next step was to get us a place to work out of the rain and beating sun.  Our ambitions were set on building our processing barn with a combination of traditional timberframe construction and regular stick-framing. This took a great deal of work but it turned out nicely with a great deal of help from generous volunteers (Thanks T. J., Chris, and Dr. Mike)!

These poured forms will be the concrete base for our cedar timber posts.

Cutting a round timber into a perfectly square tenon joint is pretty challenging. Here is a joint partially completed. The rose colored cedar wood is beautiful.

And here is the tenon joint all cleaned up and ready to insert into the mortise. We love the silvered look of the weathered cedar.

And there you have it! Our completed processing barn, office, and green house.  We’re looking forward to bringing you more abundant vegetables under the shelter of these buildings.