blog 5 week 2

  An interesting project that we have been working on is the hoop house (basically a greenhouse) we are building at a greenspace in the back of Michael R. White elementary school. It is about 5 minutes away from Glenville Gateway 105, so we have been spending our afternoons working there with Michael, and 3 other guys who are working with Food Depot 2 Health named Nigel, Shamar, and Malik. We started by assembling arches that will hold up the tarp in the hoop house. We needed to make 18 of them, which kind of took a long time because they are around 20 feet wide, and we needed to attach a bunch of cross beams using drills and wrenches. Each one took about 15 minutes to make so the time really added up after 18 of them. We then started putting the arches into pipes that were put into the ground on either side of the hoop house. This was not easy because we needed to hoist the arch which is pretty heavy and shaky into the air to get them into the pipes which are about 4 feet high. I was assigned to the ladder because of my height which meant I needed to set up under each arch and use a metal staff with a Y shaped at the top to keep the arch from teetering and falling over by holding the top of the arch with the staff. We repeated this process 18 times, and now we are attaching a center beam to the top of the arch which is about 15 feet high to stabilize the entire thing. The whole process has been very physically challenging; however it is so awesome to see our progress over the past few days. I love how everyone is working together and is contributing by making sure they do their part. For example, when we put up the arches, I was always on the ladder making sure the arch didn’t fall while Mike and Matthew guided one side into the pipe, and Nigel and Shamar made sure the other side got in. Everyone trusted each other to do their part, and we ended up making a lot of progress in a short period of time. Matthew and I are now friends with Nigel, Shamar, and Malik after working with them for a few days, and Mike said that this is the best hoop house group that he has worked with.





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