Just uploaded another one. Thanks for watching!

Thank you.

Thank you for your questions. Where are you located? The goal of these videos is to educate people on effective ways to become self sustaining and also to address the triple bottom line by being socially, economically and environmentally conscious. The greenhouse concept was developed by me as a business plan over two years as I pursued my MBA. The idea was born in my very first class, "Sustainability and Resiliency". I did a feasibility study in my area to arrive at what produce consumers are interested in purchasing locally, so we are catering to the basics: tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, peas, carrots, etc. and some herbs. Jim and I developed the plan ourselves. Jim is a contractor by trade. It appears there are very few people in Montana building earth-sheltered greenhouses, especially on a commercial level, so we are somewhat pioneers. One concept of the triple bottom line is to use your available local resources. As you can see from these videos, one resource we had in abundance - rocks! I did research into different ways of constructing the greenhouse. 1. We explored using foam cement blocks as shown in the video where we built the cold storage. The pros for this technique - fast and efficient; the con was cost. 2. Using Sutter walls (google this to see more). The old proven method was used in underground mining. The con is cost for lumber and iron bracing. 3. Gabion baskets. The pros, we had the resource and the cost was minimal, but the cons are time and labor. For learning - there is an abundance of resources available, much of it free. Start with these two books: "Year-Round Solar Greenhouse" by Schiller and Punke, and "The Earth-Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book" by Mike Oehler. Too, sign up at NCAT, the National Center for Appropriate Technology, especially their ATTRA program. This resource has webinars on growing practices. The USDA through their grant program provides a free architectural review if you are building commercial. I signed up for this and had a webinar with two of their architects. I submitted our design idea to them and they reviewed it. They validated the 3' deep post depth. They suggested filling the hole with cement but we didn't want leaching issues, so we discussed the dead-man anchors. Dead-man anchors will also be used at the top drilled in horizontally and covered when we backfill the hole. As I stated in a recent video, we wished we had purchased twisted wire gabion cages instead of tap welded ones (which we reinforced). We used 4 gauge hog panel to build our prototype. This heavy duty panel is more expensive. But getting the right gauge basket is imperative. You want "coated" 9 gauge or at least 11 gauge (the higher the number, the thinner the cage). There is a wonderful supplier of baskets that has an onsite structural engineer if you buy from them. Earth-Wall Products out of Smyrna, Georgia provide twisted wire gabion baskets. I found them after I had already purchased my baskets but I called them anyway for an overview. Hope this helps and happy building. If you document your progress let us know so we can follow. Kim

@@wiredwildwest6131 thank you so much for your thorough reply! I will definitely check in to the resources you listed- I really appreciate it! I'm currently seeking land, but am in the design phase for a greenhouse class I'm taking through Umass-Amherst. As soon as I secure property (hopefully within the next year 🤞) the walipini will be the first structure we construct. I have been utilizing ATTRA website throughout my degree (sustainable food and farming) as my professors often provide links for growing information on certain crops to supplement the material they present and find it very useful. In the greenhouse class I'm currently in, we recently learned about lighting and how a lot of vegetable crops require a lot of light which may lead to the need for supplemental lighting in the winter. I'll see if I can find the information online and link it here (so far it's just been through lecture), but it's something I've been concerned about in my design because I also would like to grow tomatoes through the winter. Is this something you're concerned with? If so, I'd love to see what you've come up with as a solution. I love what you're doing and find it inspiring 💗. Thank you so much!

@@wiredwildwest6131 sorry I just realized I didn't answer your question. I'm in northern Utah, but we are anticipating having to relocate due to the increasing prices on land. We are also anticipating the possibility that we may have to purchase raw land to establish our farm to avoid being within biocide drift zones and cross-pollination distance from conventional farms (we plan to practice regenerative farming and save our own seed). For now, we are working on gaining as much experience as possible where we are while working on developing a business plan as far as we can until we know where we're going to end up.

J. Holden. Yes, I agree lighting is a concern, and I would appreciate you sharing a link. In the book I mentioned, Year Round Solar Greenhouse, there is a chapter on the best practices for that natural light in your pit greenhouse. The first step is figuring your solar path according to your latitude. Where I am at, SW Montana, the latitude is 45 degrees North. The orientation of your greenhouse is paramount to face the solar path, and the greenhouse pit depth has to take into account the winter solstice and your frost level. If you have time, you can watch that path for a year before you dig, but you can also do the math. There is a balance between light and heat, so this will come into play when you decide on your roof material. After much consideration, we went with 10mm double-wall polycarbonate. Make sure to get UV coated. There is triple wall or thicker for heat consideration, but the sacrifice is light penetration. For those long winter nights, we may have to supplement with grow lights. A word about this: caution if you buy older systems on ebay or Craig's list. These are antiquated, and costly. If we need to supplement with grow lights, we want portable, because in the summer, you don't want the ceiling installed permanent ones casting shade. If we have to supplement, we will post some videos on this. Cheers, Kim

So true. I have revised my business plan multiple times, so you may do so as well. I was originally planning on aquaponics, but decided to pivot because of cost and "too much at one time". When we were planning on the greenhouse, we started by planting about 100 trees in a sort of wind break fashion for a drift zone from a neighboring farm. Then we did fencing to separate our livestock from the produce site. May I ask, are you doing a commercial operation? I would suppose so because of the business plan.... My advise - start smaller, then expand as you gain experience.

Hello and thank you for your comment. Firstly, and just to clarify, the individual cage panels were already tap-welded together when purchased. We reinforced with welding wire from a wire feed welder when we constructed the panels. You put them together to form a box, and then we welded each 2 feet long box together with the next 2 feet box to form the wall. Cheers, J&K

@KarasCyborg. That is a good question. So basket bottoms are added because we dont want the cages to sink. The ground was compacted, then pea gravel added. A line was struck to keep all posts level then cages added. On top of cages affixed to poles, we added the headers because in part that supports the roof. If the walls sank it would detach from roof and that would be a nightmare. Cheers J&K

@Sebastian-py7qo Thank you for your comment. Two reasons we didn't use concrete poles. We didn't want the concrete to leach, and these poles were given to us. Cheers, J&K

Hello @simongigney2138. There are many methods for building earthberm homes. I would never recommend this method for such without doing all kinds of research or consulting a structural engineer or architect.