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Old September 30, 2016   #85
PureHarvest
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Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Mid-Atlantic right on the line of Zone 7a and 7b
Posts: 1,369
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Cole, you can not get a grant for a home-made structure. You have to purchase a kit from a manufacturer:
"CRITERIA
The high tunnel structure shall be planned,
designed, and constructed from a manufactured
kit in accordance with the manufacturer’s
recommendations".
And for those following along, your grant payment is based on the size in sgft you propose to build. We cap ours at $7,500 and pay either 2.90 or 3.50 per sgft (existing farmer vs new farmer rate). 10k is a pretty big tunnel if you maxed out to the cap.
You can always go bigger than what your cap is, it just stops paying when it is met and you kick in the difference.

Lisa, you can get money for pipe to run from an existing well to your crops (if your county offers that practice).

Or you could get a grant to drill a new well for irrigation along with the pump and pipe. Every state/county is different, and do not have to offer all the programs from the national list.

As far as slope and ranking points, I don't see where that would affect it either way. Slope does not show up as a ranking question.
As far as for a high tunnel, as long as you have a relatively flat area to build on you should be fine:
"Construct the high tunnel on level ground or on a
naturally occurring slope not to exceed five
percent."

As far as ranking, you can apply for "critical area planting" to go along the perimeter of your tunnel to stabilize the soil that is disturbed during construction and deal with the water that could run towards or off the structure. When you apply for companion practices, your ranking will be higher.

Last edited by PureHarvest; September 30, 2016 at 08:06 AM.
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