The day began in high regards.

A slight tension reared its head when it became clear to the crew that I didn’t have the doors done and that, oh yeah, for sure, it was going to take me longer to finish them right there on the spot than anyone was prepared to wait for. I mean the crew was here now! The consensus was to jump right on the task of pulling the top plastic first, while putting something temporary over the large tractor door openings. Knowing myself and how hard it is to go back and finish something which should have been finished on the first work through, I was adamant the doors must go on before the “roof,” that no part of the process should be skipped over, especially when I had such expert hands on the job right now and we had all day. “Besides,” I reminded Brian, “You said you would hang the doors.” After some scuffling around and me taking the front and center role of the bad guy, work progressed: the two big doors on the south wall were plasticed over and hung to the 4 by 4 doorframe posts with triple hinges. I finished building the two northern tractor doors and brought them out from the workshop for them to cover in plastic and hang.

“Aren’t you glad the doors are finished?” I asked Brian, swinging them like butter, knowing they would help keep the wind from messing with us as we took the next step.

“I said to your wife I would give her a hug, anytime. I told her I don’t know how she can live with you,” he responded, taking a bite of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The doors done and still the whole afternoon ahead, I went to buy coffee for everyone and some fine DeFilippo bakery hard rolls, and we took a planning session break. There was no wind. The temperature was ideal. Some of us slipped off our sweaters. There was sun. We laid out the monster roll of plastic on the sawhorses with a steel rod down the center tube of the roll so it could spin while we pulled it. I set the big step ladder in front of the south peak, put a couple extension ladders inside the tunnel leaning against the collar ties, and Brian had his bucket truck on the far end, the north wall.

Only one of us had any experience with greenhouses, with pulling plastic -- octogenarian James -- Phil Hoeffner’s right hand man from over on Hoeffner Farm’s back forty. The rest of us had watched a You Tube video. Confidence was the name of the deception.

The idea was to keep the plastic together just as it came off the roll, one man at the roll on the sawhorses (Garcia), one man on the large step ladder pulling the plastic up to the peak from the roll (me), one man on a ladder inside the greenhouse pulling the plastic by rope along the top of the arches (Brian). One ground spotter, (James).

“One two three, pull. One to three, pull.” At the first pull, the wind came up. At the thirteenth pull, the plastic on the arches began to slip off the center of the ridge. We halted for readjustment. “Wait,” I said, “The plastic says, ‘This side inside’”.

“Don’t worry about that,” said James. “That just tells you which way it was folded.”

“OK, but how did it come out backwards? We looked at that!”

Brian moved to the next interior ladder and took the rope with him. The final pull would be to the far end, to his bucket truck. We were making progress. “One two three, pull!” The wind was now gusting, left and right. Leaves lifted from the lawn. A fly landed on the plastic, somehow inside the first fold. “Maybe it’s the fly from Mike Pence’s head,” I thought, oddly. “The first fly is inside already,” I shouted from the high step ladder.

“Just pull!” yelled Brian.

“One two…, hey, hey!” I shouted as the wind came on strong now and one half of the plastic, inside out, slid down the arches to the spotter on the ground. “Hell!”

We continued with the plan and got the plastic stretched end-to-end along the top of the arches and that was it, our luck ran out.

If you don’t want something to happen bad enough, it is certain to occur. It’s a sure thing. It must be a law or something.

On a day forecast for gentle zephyrs or no wind at all, the gale came through, invisible and not quite silent until it hit the plastic, and then it was clearly visible as the wind gave the plastic the shape of its resistance and lifted the entire 100 foot long sheet, 40 feet wide, into the air like a clear-sided hot air balloon, and lifted all of it out of the hands of babes and into the air and off the greenhouse and into the field where it settled gently, collapsing in deflation, big, like the child’s toy of a Greek goddess, folding on itself quietly like falling fabric.

In shock, I acted quickly. I called for more troops and called Tom Steed, an experienced lineman. The day’s shame was complete. I rolled rope into coils and threw the entire length over the greenhouse, on fire now, angry at my stupidity, five ropes, and I showed the crew an old Indian trick to tie down tipis without cutting anything. We soon used the wind, now in a favorable point on the compass, to pull the whole inflated sheet back up and over, James’s way, and we even centered the top fold on the high point of the arch. We worked feverishly, while the winds were favorable, to tie it in with the wiggle wire in the channel locks.

As soon as the structure was safe, the wind subsided, dropped to zero, done with its game.

Special thanks to the plastic pulling crew: Steve Garcia, Brian Van Kleeck, James Capach, and Tom Steed.

We took a moment to step inside the structure and experience it for the first time. Magnificent. A cathedral to the vegetable.

We picked up our tools, five minutes to complete darkness. My legs wobbled.