GEOTHERMAL GREENHOUSE'S First Winter — Ep. 020

Did this take a little longer than you expected? Well we're just doing an interview. Okay we'll be with you in a little bit bud, okay? Good luck getting some clean audio on this thing. I mean look at the snow, isn't it freaking crazy? It's right up to the greenhouse is buried. I don't think they expected to have a buried half in the hill greenhouse. I'd like to go in and actually feel how warm it is. Because this would probably heat up like less quickly because it's so large. Do you think a lot of the heat will be dissipated because of this? I think like when it's a smaller greenhouse it loses heat more quickly like and gets warm quickly too because it's so small. This one probably retains it over a longer period of time. So we are standing outside of your greenhouse which is almost complete. I hadn't seen any of the wood go on this yet actually. Oh really? Yeah no it's like super fresh for me. So just walking in and seeing it's completely new. So tell us like where you've landed with it. Here. Right in here. I mean it's yeah it's 99.9% done really. It's been very exciting you know as someone it's always exciting to see someone see it for the first time in a while since I see it every day. Every minute of every day. I mean the oak is that's oak right? Yeah it's incredible. Yeah it's pretty so and it's really serendipitous it wasn't supposed to be oak. Yeah. The beams obviously all were always plotted to be oak but. Yeah. There is long story short there was a issue with the large that we were supposed to get we ended up getting oak. Wow. By default and it just worked out. I mean everything about this building is oak. We have the oak timbers, the oak siding, interior and exterior. And then in there you'll see the oak barrels from Tim Shores Brewery. It smells really nice in there once you step in too. And the warmer it gets in there the more you smell it. Did it take longer than it was supposed to? Yeah did you expect it to be quicker? A little bit yeah. Not significantly so like it actually felt like it was going to take a lot longer because we didn't have electricity for a while. So that was kind of this really big question mark whether when we were if and when we were going to get electricity due to some COVID delays. And get that in the background. How are your kids dealing with all this? But yeah it took I think initially we were really really really shooting to have it done pre-Christmas. Yeah. So we could get some things in and maybe even Thanksgiving. Yeah. But we realized way earlier on that that wasn't going to happen. There's so many delays with materials with COVID it was crazy you know. And extra expenses because of material prices going up. But yeah I mean the crew did great adjusting along the way. And just people working with materials they hadn't worked with before. And working materials maybe they didn't want to work with sometimes. And are you planning to open up in spring still? Yes definitely. That's great. That's awesome. So do you want to leave it at spring? Yeah I know spring-ish is coming around the corner. Exactly. According to the groundhog. But yes this door is going to get replaced in some way shape or form. Because it just does not. It doesn't go. It doesn't hold up. But with the rest of the building. But they were cheap. Yeah but they but they seem like they have a. Fife. Pfeiffer. Yeah that's exactly. Dude bad bad idea pal. Not on concrete. Are you all right? Okay you're lucky you didn't hit your head. Just don't knock your head. Your teeth will come out. So many close calls it's really quite insane. Well this is actually not as hot as I would. Because today is actually a really sunny day. So it's it's holding the heat. But it's not like oppressive here. It's not bad. I think it's because it was so cold overnight. Yeah. But there's definitely been some days in here. In the last couple weeks when we've had some very sunny days. And like you come in here and the crew. All of us that are normally just like completely geared up for winter. Yeah. Everyone's in t-shirts sweating. Yeah. If you have to be up here. Which a lot of us had to do over the end of this project. It gets super hot at the top. Yeah. So do you think like what do you think the summer months is? Oh it's we're going to be running these fans for sure. I mean the geothermal system will be the key. Yeah. To not for this building to be properly cooled. Without it being really expensive or expensive at all. Yeah. I mean the geothermal system runs off three fans. So we're pretty confident in that. The cooling aspect of the geothermal will be way much more valuable than the heating aspect of the geothermal. And how does the cooling system work with the geothermal? Does it pump cold water? It's just no. Oh no the radiant. No no no. Radiant will just be off for the summer. But the geothermal will you know hypothetically or theoretically speaking. Always right around 55 degrees. So as these temperatures start to climb up. Which won't take long. Obviously a couple months from now. It's just like going to be like 90 in here. How deep did you have to go? Approximately six feet. Okay so it's kind of more like. Is it true geothermal? Or is it kind of more like ground source? No I mean it's. I mean technically geothermal is kind of ground source. But you know I know people have gotten used to drilling for geothermal. But geothermal once you get six feet down on the ground. I think even five feet. Yeah. Depending where you're at. Some people do four. It's probably. Six to eight feet they say. Yeah. And it depends you know most places in the earth is fairly consistent. Between 15 and 55 degrees. But we have these over here. We have these thermostats. These almost look like witch's brew. We have to build something. A little cauldron. So these two thermostats here set a high and low temperature. So once it hits. So I think we have it set at 90. We have it set at 80 right now. We'll probably have it set around 80 degrees. Or close to 90. Yeah. For the summer. As soon as it gets close to there. It'll kick on and cool the building down. Vice versa for 50 degrees for the low end. I mean everything like this looks so nice. And they have to encase it right? Because this is technically a greenhouse. So you have to. Everything. You'll see everything. So I gotta say Eugene from Sparks Electric. Yeah. Has been with us from the beginning to the end of this project. Cares so much about making sure things look right or done right. And it's been. We work really close to them every day. Did he work on that stuff in the back? Not the radiant part. So that's warden plumbing. And they're really good. And they specialize in that kind of stuff. Yeah and everybody just took a lot of pride in their work. It's really great to see people show up and just be like. Oh okay. I'm not just going to get this done. I'm going to get it done to where it looks good. Right. Make sense with this building. Yeah. Everybody had to step up their game I guess. Absolutely. And everybody's super proud of it. I mean I see the guys. You know we do pizza at Argos. And I've seen probably 20 different guys and women from this crew. Yeah. Come and get pizza from us and hang out and say hi. And like it's become. They've become friends. I've become really tight friends with a couple of these people. It's been awesome to go through this whole experience. One of the benefits of actually working with some of the local folks I guess. Absolutely. For sure. And being a part of the project instead of just being like a client that shows up once in a while. You know. You know what's going on and you feel a part of it. I mean like I said we put every piece of. Me and Leland. Leland and I put every piece of insulation in this thing. Yeah that's amazing that you like it got your son into it. He loves it. We heard Pfeiffer talking. They know what's going on with this thing. They understand it. They were excited about when the electric got turned on. It's important. My parents always involved. My parents involved myself and my brothers in their work. And it made us value what they did. And it instilled a lot of things into us. Including a work ethic you know. And this is where the kitchen is going to be? Oh yeah. So this is the church as we've been calling it. I feel guilty about cooking food in here. Or making food in here. Because I don't want to make a mess. Well you just have to clean up as you go then. Yeah I guess. No splatters. We can't have any large hot sauce explosions. Yeah exactly. Yeah so the only main. I mean we're doing the superficial stuff in here this next week. With stainless steel and sinks. And it's a prep kitchen. So it's not huge exhaust fans or anything like that. There'll be one little exhaust fan that goes up there. And then the rest is really just putting the lights in. Which we're actually I'm working with Avi from Argos. To give me some ideas on how to do that. In a way he's done it before. That's it really in this kitchen. It's the radiant heat system. It's so beautiful. This should go on in the next couple days. On Monday, Tuesday probably. Now that we have electric. I think anybody could appreciate how well this is done. Yeah. Do we even need it in the winter now? It's a good question. We will definitely. I've been thinking a lot about that. Because kicking the geothermal on. We wanted to see what that did by itself you know. But I definitely think we're going to kick this on this week. We'll see what happens. We might not use the full system. These are different zones. So we might decide that we only want to heat half of this building at one time. Or you know even less. Or if you have tropicals in one side. Precisely. And we're also learning how the temperatures work in this building naturally. Yeah. Without this stuff you know. Especially for such a large building. Yes. Where are the hot spots? Where are the cold spots? Let's not fight what's already happening. Because I remember Gideon talking about how this is more like a backup system. Yeah. Versus the main way to keep the greenhouse. Absolutely. I mean I think really. It's great to have this. Really we count on the greenhouse heating the greenhouse. As passive as possible. The more growth we get in here. The easier this building is going to be able to maintain consistent temperature. I mean you know in three, four or five years. Five years I see this thing being completely filled with plant life at all times. And then you're not fighting the waves. The roller coaster of temperatures that can happen. We want biomass to be the key here you know like. Are you going to have to do more like beneficial insect control? If you have like in here. Because you're going to have eating and stuff in here. You know using insects and possible you know pest suppression in general. But also what people are bringing in like you said. Just any kind of cross-contamination. We've been thinking a lot about that. We'd like to work up to getting some air curtains for the garage doors. So we can have people come in and out that way. But yeah it's going to be a huge learning curve. I'm like expecting the hardest learning curve of my life with this building. But in the best way possible. I'm so excited to learn all those things with this building. Just the fact that we have a couple years you know. A lot of this building will be empty for this next year. You know it's going to take a lot of time to fill up with plant life. Everybody always says they always wanted a bigger greenhouse. I don't think you could have gotten any bigger. No I mean it's funny. It just kept getting bigger as we planned it over there. We've been planning this thing for two over about two years. I mean the question is like when can you build a house in here? When are you moving in? I've definitely thought of it many times. Many times. Yeah we'll see what happens you know. It's always here. It's always here if we need it. A house wrapped in a greenhouse you know. It can't get any better than that. Put a loft in here. We can hang hammocks from the cross ties. Yeah we've talked about doing all using this building. You definitely should get a hammock in here actually. That's not a bad idea. No it's between the columns. Absolutely. I hadn't thought about it so I'm jokingly saying it right now. You must get that. That's that's happening next week. But yeah we plan so many different uses for this building. And also plan for not even knowing all the uses. You know we definitely expect last week we were joking about a dance party. I saw they had some circus folks. It's funny. I think a lot of people thought the circus happened here because the timbers. That was at the Ithaca Farmers Market. Oh was it? I could have swore I was here. No my mom actually. My mom said do you have a circus at the greenhouse? That's when I got here. I was like there's snow in his greenhouse. And I was like that doesn't make sense because it looks like it's all closed off. It does look very similar. That was at Ithaca Farmers Market. Circus culture. But we're friends with them and we've actually talked to them. Without a doubt we will do a circus in this building. We have all these different places to make it happen. But we were joking about a dance party and how all of us are just missing dancing. Like in a crowded sweaty group of people. And we're like well we can meet in the middle there somewhere and do that here. We have this huge perimeter. Yeah. Have pod dance party and have music projected from the grid. We're you know I am very excited about pushing the limits on what this space means. Yeah. We want it to be a community space more than anything. I want the community and communities that surround this area to feel like this is a resource for them. This isn't just a way to cash in and like get money from people. That's just never been where I come from. Right. So yeah I'm excited to see what happens. You know we have Tim moving his barrels in. We've got 10 in so far and we're moving another 14 in. So there'll be a wall of beer barrels there. Yeah so the beer barrels we're moving in over the next couple weeks. They're very heavy. So these are their reservoirs really. So the well that we drilled it's good water. But you know it's a crapshoot and we I think it's like six to eight gallons per minute. So you know not a huge flow. So these will be our reservoir that we can store our tanks and pressurize it. So you can see here any rainwater. We will be. Yeah we didn't install the gutter system yet. We have to be careful with that too because of the roofing material that we use. You know we can use it for some things. We won't be using it in the greenhouse though. That would be more for perimeter irrigation. Yeah yeah a lot of plants can use that. Oh yeah. And do you like how all these accoutrements have come together? Like the you know the metal and the wood. It looks great. I love it. Yeah I love it. I mean like it's you know just to think back to see all that you were out here. Weren't you out here when they put the timbers up? Yeah we were out here. Just to see how things have come together. It's neat to see it now interlocked. Like before it was just the bones. It's skeleton really. Yeah you can guess what it's going to look like but you just don't know until you start putting it up. Like the glass we all thought it was going to look awesome. Yeah. But when it went in everybody that was here was like wow. Yeah. Because the light it brings in you just can't predict the way. Careful. And these guys I mean talk about a huge perk. This has been their playground for the entire winter you know. Especially for winter you know you come in here and. Ride their bikes, skateboard whatever and the crew has gotten used to it. It's funny when someone new shows up. When someone new shows up they're really nervous you can tell they're like you know there's kids around and everyone else is like no don't worry. Yes they're going to get hurt and everybody knows it. These lights are going to be the where you know basically the house lights. You okay? He won't say he isn't. These are all going up here. Oh I didn't realize you put the boxes in. That's amazing. He must have done that after I left Friday. Yep those lights will hang from up there. Yeah it's very exciting to get some lights in here. I mean you might not be able to get me out of here then. Yeah. Because it'll be nighttime. I mean you're going to want to see all this come together and then it's like. It'll never be finished that's the thing. Like it's always. Not in my lifetime. It's going to be moving you're always going to have something different and new and new plant in. You want to put the tables over here and look like. It's going to be this project forever. And then we eventually have to put the catwalk. I had a dream. Yeah. Like I don't know I might have mentioned this to you a while back Sondra. I had this dream one night about a catwalk. A catwalk? Above the cross ties. I thought you were going to say like a train that goes up around. You know what we might have to do that too. But a catwalk. Where you can either suspend it from the timbers or whatever you know. But where there's so much plant life in here at this point. Because really I picture this the north side of the greenhouse. Being the larger plant life obviously to capture the light they need. And just that's where we have room for it. There's going to be so much propagation going on the south end of this building. I it's hard for me as someone who has started every plant for this farm over four years. In a grow tent. Yeah. That's like four by eight. Everything everything that wasn't directly sown. So like I see this and I'm like oh I don't need more space than that's it. But I know that'll well I'll grow it at some point. Yeah. But yeah I picture like you know we want to do tropicals. We want to do all kinds of trees. You want to do hydroponics in here? We're definitely gonna do some hydroponics. And we'll get um we'll do some uh some aquaponics you know. Like we're gonna have eventually or something. Eventually yeah. Yeah. We're not gonna rush into it. No I mean it's like each one you could do a little experiment every year. We're like okay we're gonna do aquaponics this year. Okay we're gonna experiment with hydroponics this year. You know it's like it's cool. We really want to do hydroponic basil. Just because we use so much basil for the pizza business you know. And so that was one idea is suspending some vertical growing elements that we create between these columns periodically that go all the way up and can be adjusted and you know. All kinds of ideas and we'll that's the thing we'll be I start I set up the propagation tables over the last couple days. Moving plants in here tomorrow that I have started. So pizza toppings, basil, peppers. Yeah I guess it's about time to actually start seeds. It's early for if we're going right outside with some of this stuff but we're obviously not dealing with that now. I'm so excited like when we do our pizza nights I'm thinking about oh this will be the last time I have to say that we're out of peppers. Yeah. Like we're gonna have them continuing now and I'll have them going all year. I'm very excited about that. It's one extreme the other you know. We've the farming that I've been doing for four years has been very like bare bones as far as I don't use equipment. Everything's hit by hand and it's been three season with you know season extension happening but delimited with the winter here. So I'm excited about going the other way with that and really getting to push the boundaries. Well well done Terry. I'm excited to actually come here in the spring and then actually see people eating. You know not this is obviously not spring. I always get a kick out of this the kids go open and they're like unbelievable. What I'll tell you what I picture in my head. What I picture in my head is being up here after a really busy night and hanging out with the crew sitting outside on the farm and being like this is what we've been talking about you know. I've seen the community come in have a great night. Kids playing a family-friendly place where we everyone can just really make it a tradition you know like I know my family have those things. I'd love for people to come in and be like oh this is where we go every Friday night. We get pizza and beer from Berry Dacorn and we see our friends and we know who's going to be there and everybody's welcome. We wanted to be that space you know and that that's what brings me joy and I look forward to those those moments you know. And then 3 a.m comes around and then the dance party starts. Yeah yes yes. What do you guys think about the greenhouse? Are you ready for the dance parties at 3 a.m in the morning? Stay tuned for the progress of Stonebend's greenhouse build leading up to their launch here on Flock. And if you haven't heard yet, we'll be donating and investing 10% of our YouTube AdSense revenue from this channel back into the Finger Lakes community. We're so thankful that Espoma, our partners across both Plant One On Me and Flock Finger Lakes channels, will be matching those funds this year as well as through a combination of monies and or products depending on the project. So just know that by watching these videos, you're helping the community here. He ended it, he just ended it right there. How much longer? The more footage I have, the more editing I have to do. Hey no, I'm doing most of the editing here.