Greenhouse Envy

Well, it turns out that even with a greenhouse there is currently a frost window that I just can't push until later in the year. The hardy herbs and vegetables are just fine even when we are down in the 20's but the tender ones like tomatoes are not happy (alive but not happy). The only thing that I think will work to get around this is to have a bigger greenhouse so that I can have smaller hoops inside and room for a few hotbeds. This is all necessary because our last frost date is June 15th and we have had snow for the fourth of July in my living memory. But how to afford a greenhouse? The couple hundred bucks that it cost to build the one I have now was a pretty tight squeak---how to afford a big professional one or to build a walipini? A friend of mine on youtube suggested that I sell my medicinal herbs as a side-business and honestly if I wasn't trying so hard to be OFF THE GRID (for real!) as far as food goes I think I could do it. Problem is that I am making 2 pounds of cheese every 2 days, gardening for at least 3 hours a day, milking and grazing goats, chasing chickens out of the mulch, and homeschooling (did I mention that I also cook everything from scratch?). If I was still watching television or reading novels there would be no time left for just breathing.

So I have kicked around the idea (pun intended) of doing a kickstarter. I could do herbs (live and dried); wool; spun wool; knitted wool item; how-to booklets on animals; or visits to our homestead as the incentives. If I don't do a kickstarter then it will most likely take me two or three years to save the money. The Tuff Greenhouse I am looking at is about $6000. The walipini is just a mystery because with the excavation it is dangerous not to have a professional contractor do the propping and construction unless you really want to have you and your loved ones buried in a cave-in. So how much would a walipini cost?

Recently a book caught my eye and since it is within a couple hours of here it is more applicable than some other Winter Gardening resources that are in much milder areas. It is 'Backyard Winter Gardening', by Caleb Warnock. His approach is to use coldframes and hotbeds alone. The problems is he only gets down to -17F over in Springville, Utah. We have temperatures in the minus 40 about every 15 years. Our standard coldest temp is minus 30F with normal winter temps in January and February being about minus 20F. So doing the double protection of hoop houses under greenhouses seems like the best bet for us.