An open, freshly worked field with a treeline along the far edge.

2013, and again in 2026

We leased an acre in Fallbrook and built a farm on it.

Six-month auto-renewing lease, two hundred dollars a month, signed the eighth of February 2013. Nine months later it was hoop houses, an aquaponic system, a sump tank, grow tables, and a harvest. This is the record of that build, and the arithmetic that went in ahead of it.

Where this stands

Concept stage, reviving in 2026. The farm below was real and was built. The pickle operation it now feeds into is not licensed, has not produced a finished batch, and is not selling anything.

The lease

One acre in Fallbrook, California. Signed the eighth of February 2013 at two hundred dollars a month on a six-month term that renewed automatically. A modest agreement on a modest piece of ground, and enough to justify nine months of building.

Worth saying plainly, because it changed how we handle agreements now: that lease came off a boilerplate template nobody had adapted to where we actually were. It still named Pennsylvania law and pointed at a Pennsylvania county for recording, on a property in San Diego County. Both sides signed it in good faith and nothing ever came of the mistake, but it is why we would want any future agreement read properly by somebody, rather than pulled off a form.

February 2013 to June 2015

The build, and three seasons off it

We have roughly three hundred photographs of this. Here is how it went, in order.

Lease signed February 2013

First look

An acre of open ground, a water connection, and a fence line. Before we built anything we walked the site, measured it, and drew the layout in CAD instead of pacing it out by eye.

The same field looking toward a low hillside, grass along the near edge. — Looking across the parcel toward the hillside.

February 2013

Pad prep

Grading and prepping the pad the buildings would sit on. Dull work, and everything that came after it stands on top of it.

The parcel with its soil freshly turned over, green grass in the foreground and houses beyond. — The ground turned over before anything was laid out.

String lines pulled taut across bare ground marking out the building footprint. — String lines marking the footprint before a shovel went in.

A shallow trench dug along a string line, with a stake at the corner. — Digging to the line, not to the eye.

February to March 2013

Water spigot

Getting water out to where we needed it. We read the meter every month from the start, instead of guessing at the usage afterwards.

An open trench in the grass with a traffic cone, a pick, and stacked metal panels beside it. — The trench cut, tools and shed panels staged beside it.

Looking straight down the length of a narrow, freshly dug trench. — Narrow, straight, and dug by hand.

Blue polyethylene water line laid in a narrow open trench with a white PVC riser. — Water line in the trench, riser set.

White PVC fittings joining the riser to the buried supply line. — The fittings at the riser.

A white PVC riser standing in the partly backfilled trench with a shovel and cone nearby. — The riser plumbed and standing before backfill.

February to March 2013

The shed

The storage came secondhand. We took a metal garden shed apart at a house in town, hauled it over panel by panel, and put it back together on a new timber floor at the field. That gave us dry storage on site before the first hoop went up, for the price of the drive.

The white metal garden shed at its original home, rust running along the roof seams. — The shed as found, rust along every seam.

Shed wall panels and galvanized rails leaning in a stack as the shed is taken apart. — Apart, panel by panel.

A timber floor platform lying flat on cleared ground at the field. — A new floor down first at the field.

The shed part rebuilt on the field, walls standing and panels laid out in the grass. — Walls going back up, panels staged in the grass.

The reassembled shed standing on the field with the truck beside it and the new spigot riser in the foreground. — Rebuilt and standing, the new spigot riser in the foreground.

March 2013

Hoop bending

We bent the hoop house ribs on site out of EMT conduit. The shape of the bend got worked out on paper first, using the standard conduit-bending formulas for stub-up, offset and saddle bends, plus a spreadsheet we built for the ribs. Thin-wall tubing flattens and kinks if you bend it wrong, so we settled on the bender and the technique before we put a single length of conduit in it.

A pickup truck in a driveway with its bed loaded with straight metal conduit. — A truck bed of straight conduit, before bending.

A wooden bending jig with a length of conduit curved around it. — The shop-built bending jig, with conduit in it.

Close view of the wooden jig showing the stepped blocks that set the curve. — The stepped blocks that set the curve.

Four bent conduit ribs laid side by side on the garage floor. — The first ribs off the jig.

A dozen identical bent conduit ribs fanned out across a concrete floor. — Bent to a repeatable radius, laid out to check consistency.

The full set of bent conduit ribs stacked in an overlapping fan on the driveway. — The full set, bent and stacked.

March to May 2013

Putting the hoop house up

The part of the build we photographed most, nearly fifty shots of it. We gathered three published ways of building a hoop house and compared them before choosing: a metal-tubing design anchored with rope, costed at $964.27 for a hundred-foot house; a PVC-over-rebar design; and a commercial bender kit. Different structures, different ways of failing, different budgets. Which one we used was a decision, not whichever one we found first.

A tape measure, hammer, and stakes marking a line on the bare dirt. — Staking out the base line with a tape, not by eye.

The first bent ribs standing upright in the field against a clear sky. — The first ribs standing.

The row of erected ribs in the field with the rebuilt shed and the truck beside it. — The rib row growing, shed and truck for scale.

Bent ribs arching over the pickup truck parked inside the building footprint. — The first arches clear the truck parked inside the footprint.

The run of rib arches seen from one end, their feet fixed to a timber base board. — Down the run, every rib on its base board.

An arch of conduit ribs tied together with purlins, seen from below against blue sky. — Purlins tying the arches together.

The full run of hoop ribs erected in a line, forming the bare frame. — The full frame, rib by rib.

The hoop frame with timber end wall framing added at one end. — End wall framing goes in.

Close view of the timber studs framing the end wall of the hoop house. — Studs and a door opening at the end wall.

Inside the bare frame, timber end wall studs up and string lines marking the beds on the ground. — End wall up and bed lines strung before the cover went on.

Greenhouse plastic being pulled over one end of the hoop frame. — Pulling the cover over.

The hoop house fully covered in white greenhouse plastic. — Covered.

The finished hoop house standing in the field, seen from the side. — Standing, from the outside.

The completed hoop house with finished green end walls and a center door. — End walls finished.

Interior view down the length of the finished hoop house toward the far door. — Inside, looking the length of the house.

July 2013

Grow tables

We built the grow beds and tables for the aquaponic system, and sized them off published feeding-rate ratios instead of guessing. The standard method starts from how much fish feed goes in per square foot of bed, and the ratio for leafy greens is more than half again different from the one for fruiting crops. So we worked the bed area out from how many fish we meant to keep, rather than from whatever happened to fit the space.

Timber grow table frames standing inside the hoop house before lining. — Frames built and set in place.

A grow table lined with black pond liner, ready to hold water. — Lined and watertight.

Several lined grow tables in a row down the length of the hoop house. — A row of lined beds.

The lined grow tables seen from the door end of the hoop house, green end wall at the far end. — The tables from the door end.

A grow bed filled with dark lava rock growing media. — Filled with lava rock media.

The completed run of grow tables inside the hoop house. — The finished run of beds.

July to August 2013

Sump tank

The sump tank and the plumbing that sends the water round again. This is the part of an aquaponic system that quietly decides whether the rest of it works. We oversized the pipe on purpose: a restriction costs almost nothing to avoid while you are building, and a great deal to fix afterwards.

The finished hoop house and metal shed seen across the fenced yard. — The site by mid-summer: hoop house, shed, fence.

Two IBC totes and stacked concrete block staged inside the chain link fence beside the covered hoop house. — Totes and block staged inside the fence.

A pit dug in the red soil beside a white IBC tote on its pallet frame. — Digging in beside the IBC tote.

The excavation squared up with clean vertical walls, ready for block. — Squared up and cut to depth.

The first courses of concrete block laid around the sump pit, spoil heaped behind. — The first courses of block going down around the pit.

The sump pit lined with concrete blocks forming a retaining wall around it. — Block laid to hold the walls back.

The pit cut square and deep inside the block ring, a small pump and cord at its edge. — Cut to final depth inside the block ring.

An IBC tote on a pallet by the gate, the hoop house and shed behind it. — The tote staged at the gate, ready to go in.

The IBC tote lowered into the block-lined pit, sitting below grade. — The tote set in, below grade.

The tote sitting in the block-lined pit seen from a few steps back, fence and shed behind. — In the ground, seen from a few steps back.

August to October 2013

Solar power

The panels turned up in August, after the whole system had been costed out on paper down to the last part. They went up on a tilt frame beside the greenhouse the same month, and they were still standing out there in October with the field turned over around them.

A large blue polycrystalline solar panel standing on end in a shop, still in its ITS Solar shipping wrap, next to the cardboard carton it came out of. — The first panel out of the box, after the system was priced.

Two blue polycrystalline solar panels mounted on a steel tilt frame above a chain link pen at the farm, the greenhouse and its timber grow tables on the right, a plowed field and the Fallbrook hillside behind. — Eleven days later, up on a tilt frame beside the greenhouse.

A solar panel on a tilt frame in full sun above a fenced enclosure, with the plowed field, the edge of the covered hoop house, and houses on the Fallbrook hillside behind it. — Still there in October, hoop house up alongside it.

November 2013

Algae

A small algae setup, run as its own experiment in growing some of the fish feed ourselves instead of buying all of it.

The same tray with the algae dried down to a dark grey sheet. — Dried down to a sheet.

Late November 2013

First harvest

Nine months from an empty acre to food coming off it.

A grow bed inside the hoop house packed with mature salad greens. — A bed in full growth.

Rows of planted grow beds running the length of the hoop house. — Down the length of the house.

A white tub of just-cut greens sitting on the edge of a grow bed. — Cut and tubbed.

May to June 2014

Second season

The lease renewed and the beds went straight back in, this time to cucumbers, trained up the hoops with tomatoes down the rest of the house. Same timber tables, same lava rock, second year running. Nothing here got rebuilt. It got replanted.

Cucumber plants sprawling across a timber raised bed of red lava rock inside the hoop house, an open yellow flower among the leaves. — Cucumbers in flower, in the same beds as last year.

A cucumber vine with curling tendrils climbing inside the hoop house, lit through the white plastic, tomato plants behind it. — Tendrils finding their way up the hoop.

A full sized cucumber hanging on the vine under broad leaves inside the hoop house, the lava rock bed below it. — The first one worth cutting.

Looking down the length of the hoop house with the timber tables planted out and grown in, the green end wall and door at the far end. — The whole house planted out again, a year on.

June 2015

Third season

And again the year after that. Tomatoes heavy enough to fill a chair, cucumbers ready to cut, and a kitchen counter covered by a single afternoon's picking. Three growing seasons off the same acre is the only honest answer to whether a build like this holds up.

Tomato plants heavy with fruit growing along the timber tables inside the hoop house. — Tomatoes down the tables, third year in.

A mature cucumber hanging on the vine among the leaves, ready to cut. — Cucumbers again, ready to come off.

A folding camping chair piled high with green and just reddening tomatoes, standing on the dirt beside the hoop house. — More tomatoes than we had tubs for.

A kitchen counter covered with one picking: whole cucumbers, two punnets of cherry tomatoes, larger tomatoes bagged, and a bowl of fruit behind. — One afternoon's picking, on the counter.

The math that went in first

The photographs show something was built. These show it was worked out beforehand.

Every one of these got worked out or priced before the thing itself was bought, bent or plumbed.

~10,000 gal Rainwater off the roof, worked out for Fallbrook
A thousand square feet of roof catches about 625 gallons for every inch of rain. Fallbrook gets sixteen inches in an average year, and a 20 by 48 foot house gives you 960 square feet of roof. This is not a worked example copied out of a guide: it is this climate, this rainfall, this building.
2,200 BTU/°F Totes of water to hold the day's heat
A 275-gallon tote takes in and gives back roughly 2,200 BTU for every degree Fahrenheit. Let one warm to 100°F during the day and fall to 50°F overnight, and it puts about 118,000 BTU back into the building while you sleep.
42 gal/min Air-lift pumps, designed instead of guessed at
How deep the pipe sits and how much air goes in per gallon of water, worked out against published references and a peer-reviewed design equation from 1986: a five thousand gallon system lifting water eighteen inches, done with three to six airlifts running side by side. We sized the pipe on paper before we cut any.
$1,400 The solar pumping system, priced before we bought it
A 24-volt DC pump pulling three amps and needing 1,728 watt-hours a day, matched to 500 watts of panel and four deep-cycle batteries. We itemized the lot before ordering a single part.

Drawn before it was built

We drew the hoop house, the grow bed sizes and the site layout in CAD before buying any material. The pictures below come from that 2013 design work. The photographs above are what they turned into.

A CAD render of the hoop house structure showing the rib spacing and covering. — The hoop house, drawn before it was built.

A CAD render of the site layout with the tank and the run of grow beds arranged. — Tank and bed layout.

A CAD render of the grow beds filled with water, seen in perspective. — Grow beds in detail.

What this has to do with pickles

Pickles take up less ground than the farm did. Starting from what our own batches have actually yielded, we worked out how much growing space a full-time living needs, three different ways. The cautious version, plain field rows at the most we would ever aim to earn, comes to about 18,850 square feet for cucumbers, garlic and bay leaf together. An acre is 43,560 square feet.

So the worst case fits inside the lease we already held, with more than half the acre going spare. The best case fits inside a tenth of it.

One honest catch.

Those square footages are planning estimates, not promises. The cucumber yields behind them are the standard published ones, and we have not yet grown a crop in Fallbrook to check them against that soil, those pests and that season. The profit margin is still a number we assumed rather than measured. If the real margin comes in at half what we assumed, every square footage above roughly doubles. Even doubled, the cautious version still fits inside an acre. We would rather show you the assumption than hide it inside a round number.