As many of you know, I’m preparing for when shit hits the fan, and all of the global calamity that it brings. I’ve spent the last few years stockpiling provisions for when day acts arise, and as much progress as I’ve made in this respect, this is a strategy that always will have its limits. As we’re seeing the convergence and acceleration of poly crises around the world, I need to be able to produce food at least three seasons out of the year, and I need to learn how to do it fast. Never mind the apocalypse.

Quite frankly, my grocery bill is motivation enough. Today I’m going to walk you through part of that process, so let’s get to it. Hi folks, Canadian Prepper here today on the channel. We are building a greenhouse. Let’s go check it out. We got a 26 by 50 foot gravel pad laid out. I got some younger and hopefully more intelligent people to do most of the heavy lifting, but I’m going to pretend to work just for this video. I want to get some food in the ground before Justin Trudeau rolls out the ration books because he screwed up everything else.

I’ll probably screw that up too. Let’s see what we can do. So I’ve been told that this is a prefab, easy to build greenhouse. Should only take a day to a wreck, so let’s get to it. What do we got here? How hard could this possibly be? Three days later. Okay, we got about 10,000 screws here. So one of the first things we want to do with a project like this is prep work. So organization is key. So there’s about 10,000 nuts and bolts that come with this prefab greenhouse that we’re going to set up.

We’re going to get that all nicely organized first, because I know from experience from not reading the instructions ever once in my life that this is going to be an absolute nightmare unless we do that. So let’s do that first. Part of the reason I went with a prefab greenhouse is because the winds around here are incredibly strong. We get plow wind gusts upwards of 50 kilometers an hour, and that’s a regular occurrence around here. It can get much worse than that. So we need something that’s going to be very strong, that’s going to be able to withstand Canadian winter snowpack.

So I got a prefab greenhouse that is built for the elements. This is going to be a three season greenhouse, and I’m hoping it doesn’t take us too long to set up because we’re already in June, and I want to get some plants growing in there. The reason why I chose a large commercial size greenhouse was because the amount of food needed to feed a large family cannot be achieved without a healthy amount of real estate. Most gardens tend to be supplementary, even in some cases on the homestead level, but to make them a staple of your caloric intake requires a larger, more robust setup.

While my long-term goal is to erect a passive solar greenhouse like my friend Dean at Arcopia, the way the world is going, I at least wanted a three season greenhouse in the interim that I could work with. This prefab 25 by 48 design greenhouse seemed to be the optimal choice to meet my current needs. I’ve been working all day. I just had some help show up, and we’re going to continue to build this out. I got to show these guys how to do it because quite frankly, they don’t know what they’re doing.

So they need an expert here to show them what to do. So let’s go check in and see what’s going on here. No, in all seriousness though, guys, I knew it would be challenging to build this, which is why I hired some professional help. In terms of time, to build these things, we’re building out all kinds of things on the acreage, orchards, greenhouses, roads, fences. I thought I would call in the military to get this done. Fortunately, they have troops to spare. In order to contend with the devastating plow winds, I wanted the greenhouse footing to be properly anchored.

We do, however, plan on combining an array of shelter belts and wind fencing at some point in the future. We also wanted slightly higher ceilings that would allow for more space within the greenhouse and make for more versatile climate control options. We built a simple pad of gravel by scraping off the organic layer, applying some landscape gravel, and applying a few inches of gravel on top of it. We proceeded to level everything out and build a footing made of pressure treated wood. Perhaps this next step was overkill, but we decided to pound nine inch diameter posts into the ground at the corner of the greenhouse and attach the footing to those posts.

Just like that. That was fun. I decided to meditate and discover the meaning of life before we build this greenhouse. We pounded the posts in about five feet, cut the tops off, and attached our footing to the remainder of the post that was left protruding from the ground. This greatly simplified construction because the base could no longer move while we were trying to erect the greenhouse on top of it. This meant we did have to contend with the shifting of the base. We began to assemble all of the arches and once they were ready to go, we erected the first end piece upon which the rest of the greenhouse would be adhered to.

We did benefit from using a machine for this job as you can see. In hindsight though, I should have used some softer fabric on the tractor forks as I ended up slightly damaging the frame that made contact with the tractor force. Nothing serious just made more work later on, bending it back into place. Let’s listen to this debate. Okay, wait. You say your piece. What happened? I’m gonna have to start roasting this kid. Round one, fight. I, I, I had to get a kink and then you were like, no, I, I want to go.

Your shirt’s inside out, bro. First roast. Darn, you saw a naked mo-rat and an alley and you were like, twin, where have you been? When dad just saw you at the hospital when you were born, he was like, nah, nah, honey, I’m good. I can’t have no one. I probably should not. Dad had me first. You stupid. Obviously, he’s got you there. Adopting it. I didn’t get that. You’re the adopted one. That’s why your shirt is adopted. Everybody has their opinions. Once the frame was in place, it was time to contend with a polycarbonate.

It’s important that when laying the poly, that the UV protective side is facing outwards. Numerous mistakes were made throughout this process. The task proved to be quite challenging, even with five or someday six people at our disposal. This was due to the fact that many people had other jobs like manning the cameras. And honestly, having proper scaffolding probably would have really helped and made this job much shorter. Maybe I just go. You. There. You. There. I think I’m going to do what the dog’s doing. Making everything fit was quite tedious, but I’m guessing that an experienced construction team with the right tools could have erected this greenhouse in a few days.

All right, guys. So here I am up here. No hard hat. No harness. No steel toad. No nothing. We are putting the polycarbonate on the greenhouse. Which is proving to be challenging. Definitely requires a couple of guys. It’s a hot day. It’s 30 degrees, but it feels like 40 because of the humid X. And there’s forest fire smoke. And there’s no wind. This greenhouse is, it’s proving to be a lot harder than I expected to erect. And I know that’s what she said before, but it is proving to be challenging. And I think it’s because it’s one of these forever greenhouses.

I mean, this thing is supposed to last 20, 30 years. These panels are probably seven feet by looks like 20 feet. And getting them up there is no easy task. It’s probably going to take a while, but this I think is the hardest part of this whole enterprise. Hopefully this is all going to pay off when we can get some nice, lush vegetation in here to feed everybody. You’ll notice that on the greenhouse, there’s no polycarbonate on the lower windows yet. That’s because this particular kit is only supposed to be 12 feet high.

In our case, it’s nearly 16 feet high. They gave you the option of three feet more of frame that could be anchored deep into the ground. We instead opted to build our own footing and use this extra steel to give us more height. This of course means that we’re going to have to do some aftermarket modifications and fortifications to ensure that the base is secure and strong. In addition, we’ll have to buy more poly for the bottom. Now, back in the day, I was a very fast runner. Today, I have my nephew here.

He’s a Usain Bolt in training. Probably going to be, you’re, are you the fastest in your school, would you say? Really? Well, I’m about to kick your butt today. Are you ready for that? I think you will. You don’t think so? Okay. Well, I’m going to bet you 20 bucks that I kick your butt. How’s that? Sounds good. All right, let’s do it, buddy. So the camera guy, the communist cameraman, I should not trust him with this 20 bucks because we all know what he’s going to do.

He’s going to go and buy some stuff that you shouldn’t buy if you’re children. So I’m going to give this to the camera guy. Whoever reaches the camera guy first and grabs this out of his hand, wins. That’s, how does that sound? Sound like a deal? All right, there you go. How are you feeling about it? Easy money. Easy money. How do you feel about that? Been there, done that. But both of them have their own power. One, two, three. Let’s go, Lacey. Let’s go, nephew. No! The nephew won.

It was a dog’s fault. It was your fault. It just was your fault. Hey, nephew, help me. That’s not fair. The dog got in my way. Rematch. Two out of three. It’s great. Good job. How are you feeling? Old, very old, very, very old. The last step of the greenhouse build will be the internal layout. We plan on doing a combination of in ground, raised garden beds, and hydroponics. Unfortunately, we missed the window to really start growing anything in here this season. But fortunately, we already had our outside garden beds and orchards on the go.

So we’re still going to get a little bit of a harvest this year. All right, guys. So unfortunately, that greenhouse took us way longer than expected to build. We weren’t able to get crops in there this year. But that’s OK, because our orchard and our raised garden beds are still producing a hell of a lot of tomatoes, peas, not many of them, but just this one, which I’m going to eat right now. Not bad. A whole lot of strawberries, carrots, onions, miscellaneous herbs, corn, a whole lot of pumpkins, spaghetti squash, some really tiny berries of some sort, pears, raspberries.

And this year, we’re even experimenting with sunflowers. I want to make some sunflower seeds and sunflower oil. And of course, the apocalypse staple, potatoes. If you guys have any questions about this greenhouse or if you have any other general questions or recommendations, please post them in the comments section below. We’re going to keep you posted on the progress. Expect another video around harvest time. Thanks for watching. Don’t forget to like, comment, subscribe. Canadian preparation. The best way to support this channel is to support yourself by gearing up at CanadianPreparedness.com, where you’ll find high-quality survival gear at the best prices, no junk, and no gimmicks.

Use discount code preppinggear for 10% off. Don’t forget the strong survive, but the prepared thrive. Stay safe. [tr:trw].

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