 10. Next was to finish all the crop bars and screw them together. Here's Val putting in the last screw with that vital piece of equipment: a battery-powered drill. |
 11. This final stage of preparation for putting on the polythene cover needed another strong person. Happily, elder son Mark came to our aid all the way from Oxford. Here we are sticking anti-hotspot tape to all the metalwork which the poly cover touches. |
 12. Using the big ladder meant I could have a wonderful aerial view of the entire thing before the cover went on. |
 13. And here's a view of the veg plots and house from the same vantage point. |
 14. The Great Day had arrived. Weather warm and with light winds. So we struggled to position the enormous roll of poly cover on a series of wooden pallets and a steel tube so we could roll off the cover like a giant roll of Sellotape. This roll was so heavy that Mark and I could only just manage to lift it into position. |
 15. This poly cover weighs a lot because it is 14 metres wide by 45 metres long! That is one heck of a large piece of polythene, let me tell you. The poly comes pre-folded several times. We tied a strong rope to the end and took it right the way to the other end over the tops of the hoops. Then Mark began to pull. Here am I feeding the unrolling folded sheet end over the first hoops. |
 16. Pulling this immensely heavy roll over 26 hoops became very hard indeed because of all the friction. Mark and I swapped after a while. I tied onto the other end using my old miner's belt (from my days as a mine geologist in Canada). This meant I could lean back, high above the ground, and use both hands and my body weight to haul. |
 17. And here is the result: the unfolded poly cover right along the entire length. That was hard work! |
 18. By this time, it had become obvious we'd need help. It arrived in the shape of a small convoy with Jill, Mike, Geraint (Rhyd-y-Clafdy) and his two kids. We had just unfolded the whole cover, not realising fully its aerodynamic potential. |
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