"Straw Bale" Shed Keeps Potatoes From Freezing

"Straw Bale" Shed Keeps Potatoes From Freezing BUILDINGS Miscellaneous 22-4-18 "It won't win any prizes for looks, but it does the job. I built it almost entirely from straw bales and scrap materials I had on hand," says Ernest Harer, Center, Colo., about the 28-ft. long "straw bale" shed he built to keep a truck full of culled potatoes from freezing during the winter. He feeds the potatoes to beef cows. Harer buys the "reject" potatoes from a local potato processing plant and loads them into his 2-ton truck which is equipped with an apron chain floor. He gets a load of potatoes at the plant and then parks the truck - with its load - in the shed. Each day he drives the truck out to unload some of the potatoes in a windrow in his pasture. Then he puts the truck back in the shed until the next feeding. A pair of kerosene lanterns keeps the temperature inside the shed above freezing even in the coldest weather. The shed measures 18 ft. wide and has a sloping tin roof that's 18 ft. high in front and 10 ft. high at the back. The walls on three sides are made from 7-ft. long straw bales that weigh about 600 lbs. apiece. Harer used a front-end loader to stack the bales. A 1-ft. dia. phone pole that's set 3 ft. deep in the ground anchors each corner of the shed. The other end of the shed has an insulated 10-ft. sq. door made from particle board and lined on the inside with rock wool. The door is mounted between a pair of smaller telephone poles. The tin roof is screwed to a series of telephone poles spaced about 4 ft. apart. A 6-in. layer of sawdust between the roof and ceiling serves as insulation. Underneath the tin roof is a sheet of wood and a layer of tar roofing paper, followed by the insulation, then a layer of black polyethylene that's on top of the wooden ceiling. "It cost far less to build than earthen cellars or metal buildings that other ranchers in my area use," says Harer, who built the shed 1 1/2 years ago. "The truck holds about 8 tons of potatoes. We feed about 500 lbs. of potatoes per day to the cattle so it takes 3 to 4 weeks to empty the truck. We speeded up the beaters so that they run extra fast and slash the potatoes, which keeps the cattle from choking on them. "I bought the longest spikes I could find and put 3 or 4 into each bale to stabilize the walls. I probably should have ran lengths of rebar vertically through each row of bales in order to keep them stable." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Ernest Harer, 415 Fullenwider Ave., Center, Colo. 81125 (ph 719 754-3937).

To read the rest of this story, download this issue below or click here to register with your account number.