The story of the cooler.
For a cut flower farmer a cooler is a vital piece of equipment to keep flowers fresh. Even if you are just holding a flower for 2 or 3 days a cooler will extend the life of that flower. Most flowers have to be harvested at a very specific moment. Sunflowers are just one example: Sunflowers need to be harvested just when the petals are starting to open.
A cooler is a lifeline to a flower farm. It increases the quality of your flowers, it increases the life of your flowers, and it decreases stress in the life of the farmer. 🤣
A walk-in cooler has been on my wishlist since I started farming. The question was where would I put this and when. Well, all of these answers came together this summer and it is a good story. So grab a cup of coffee, relax, and enjoy the story!
It all started when my dad had a shed in his back yard that he no longer needed….. so we bought it from him.
Sounds simple right?
Well….we needed to get the shed from the back corner of his yard, up a little hill, squeezed between his house and the neighbor’s beloved maple tree , into the front yard, up unto a trailer, drive 7 miles across town, into our side yard, and finally off the trailer onto a gravel pad that we had made.
The first steps proved to be very challenging. With the help of some friends and some dry weather we attempted with a skid steer and a small tractor to move the shed across the yard….after several hours of attempting, and finding a snake, we had moved the shed about about 20 feet. At this point the smaller tractor could not lift the shed and we were upon a very slight incline in the yard, but we were just digging into the ground so we had to come up with another plan for another day as the evening had run out.
Next attempt: put toe straps around the shed and jack up the shed and slied 4x4’s and other random long lumber pieces under each side of the shed and extend the 4x4’s staggered in front of the shed as to make “runners” and then hook up the toe straps to our Sequia and pull the shed across the yard. We also put plywood under the front of the shed in an attempt to create a sled on top of the runners.
Well, after getting several different straps, attaching different systems, and finally switching to my dad’s Yukon to pull the shed we were making progress…foot by foot. It was so exciting to see the shed creeping across the yard inch by inch. The biggest problem was that the shed would start to twist and was not pulling straight, so we constantly had to adjust this by using boards as leverage and shifting the shed.
Every time we would run out of space with our runners we would go to the back of the shed and more the “runners” back to the front of the shed, partly under the shed and partly on the grass in order to pull it further and further. Hours later, we had moved it about 60 feet to the bottom of a small, but rather steep incline of the hill. We called it a day and came back the next day. The “we” at this point was my dad, my husband, and myself.
The next hurdle was the hill. Not only did we have to go up the hill we also had to miss the side of my parents house and squeeze between the neighbors beloved maple tree.
(By the way…the neighbors have been watching the whole event unfold…of course.)
So we started the same way with the runners, straps, and the vehicle pulling the shed. It was working and we started up the hill. But we were coming dangerously close to the house, and like the day before the shed kept twisting and pulling toward the direction of the house. So every few feet we adjusted to shift the shed away from the house. Well, foot by foot, we finally made it to the top of the hill, squeezed between the side of the house and the neighbors tree, and leveled into the front yard.
It really seemed like we had come so far! But, in reality, it was about 150 feet!
Were we done yet? Next step: loading it onto a friend’s trailer and driving to our house.!
On yet another day a friend came with a friend’s big trailer and now we had to get this 10x15 shed up onto the trailer.
After trying many different wenches and pull systems, backing up the trailer and finally tweaking our tow strap/car system, 4 hours later the shed was on the trailer and we drove down the road. By this point it was getting late, but the truck and trailer and shed pulled in the driveway just after the sun had set.
We had a gravel pad set up to put the shed unto and the truck could just drive around the house and get right to where the shed was to go, so now all we had to do was get the shed off the trailer.
So the plan was to take straps and hook them around the shed and then attach them to my dad’s Yukon and he would drive one direction and the truck with the trailer would drive the other direction and the shed would just slide off the trailer and into place on the pad. We also had some wood runners under the shed to help it slide.
OK….here is where I admit that I was rather concerned that there whole shed would just slam off the trailer and crack in half or something.
But we got all hooked up and our neighbor came over to help spot everything, and the Yukon headed in one direction and truck headed the other and shed started creaking and groaning and….moving off the trailer.
With a few little adjustments the shed then REALLY did come sliding off the trailer and unto the pad… I could hardly believe it and let out an excited shout!!!
Then our very helpful friend left. It was less than 10 minutes from the time we pulled into our driveway to the time that the shed was off the trailer and in place on the pad.
I could hardly believe it!!!
Then we all called it a night. We did have to do some adjustments to level out the shed and straighten it on the pad.
OK….Now that we have a location for the cooler and the shed is actually at our house…let’s make it into a cooler!.
Alot of small farms use something called a Coolbot to make a cooler. Basically you use a window air conditioner and then attach this Coolbot system to it and it bypasses the cooling mechanisms and can use a winter AC unit to cool down to 32 degrees.
So we needed to super insulate a “room” and then cut a hole in the shed to put in the window AC and then install the Coolbot.
Since the moving of the shed had taken a while my dad had actually started working on insulating the shed while it was at his house. He built a wall in the shed to make 2 rooms and then insulted one half. The insulted part is about 6’ x 10’ and then all the way to the ceiling.
So after we finished insulating the shed we waited for my kind-hearted 86 year old grandfather (a retired electrician) to visit from New Jersey. When he shuffled in, he became the brains behind installing the electric setup, and my dad, my husband, and I all assisted. Now with electric running and insulation mostly in we hooked everything up and the Cooler was born!!!
It was so exciting when it was finally finished. Well, truth be told, the insulation still needs to be finished, and we still need to lay down flooring in it, (and then put up some plastic on the walls) and then it will be finished!
But we have time to finish those details this spring. It is important to have the cooler with hard walls and flooring that can be washed: you never want fungus or mold to grow in your cooler and infect your flowers. So you need surfaces that don’t hold moisture and that can be easily bleached.
We still need to add shelving, but we now have a 6’ x 1'0’ walk in cooler for many years to come in my flower farming.
A huge thank you to my dad who really did most of the work, to my husband, our friends who helped us with the trailer and my grandpa who still in his late 80’s blesses us with his knowledge and servant’s heart!
It takes a village, my friends. That is what family farms are all about!
Here’s to bringing you the freshest local flowers possible!!!
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