hotbed + rain

Hey everyone,

Progress on the greenhouse is coming along swimmingly. Yesterday we worked on some endwall repairs, and are now just waiting on lumber to connect the whole thing, plus wiggle wire to hold down the greenhouse plastic, before we are able to put it up.
Because we want to be able to start seedlings in this house (I think it's technically a high tunnel, as it is lacking the permanence of a traditional greenhouse) we needed to find a way to heat it, and what's the one readily available source of heat on a draft-powered farm? (I'll give you a hint: it's brown and rhymes with haute couture)

Hotbed frame, with the first forkfulls of the power source in question inside

That's right, horse manure. Mixed with some carbonaceous material (in our case, sheep bedding), horse manure will decompose and give off heat for about a month. The last frost date here isn't till around May 15, so we may have to rebuild our pile in mid-April.
We built the frame of the hotbed using hay bales, and then worked with Connie and George to drag alternating loads of fresh horse manure and sheep bedding until the hotbed was full. We will now build the high tunnel over top of the hotbed, and place our seeding trays either directly on top of the hotbed or lay down snow fencing first and then place our trays on top of that.

The carbonaceous material for the hotbed, aka sheep bedding

Megan drives a load of bedding in. 

Connie looks on as Megan forks compost into the bed

The finished hotbed. I think it was three or four loads of manure and three or four of bedding to fill it.

We got the idea from... I guess a lot of people, but I think I first read about it in Eliot Coleman's The Winter Harvest Handbook, which focuses on the hotbed's widespread use in Parisian market gardens in the mid-19th century. We also got some guidance from Liz and Matthew of Muddy Fingers farm in Hector, NY. Here's a video of their hotbed system.

In other news, Megan learned to drive a bit. Also, it was raining this morning and most of the snow is melted off the fields- though it is supposed to snow more later this week, it definitely felt/ smelled like spring. The ducks in particular were having the time of their duck lives in all the puddles from the melting snow.

One of the front fields, minimal snow, logs that we (mostly Donn) skidded in the background.

The rainy garden, with completed hotbed.

Said happy ducks. photo courtesy of M. Moody