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The dome will provide protection from the elements as local elementary students learn to grow food and then harvest and prepare meals.

Steve Miller, Senior Editor

August 4, 2021

5 Min Read
WFP-ARS-veggies2.jpg
An indoor structure at a Wyoming fairgrounds will make it easier for local elementary school students to learn to produce and harvest crops.USDA ARS

Combine a bunch of triangles, and you’ll mix youths and adults and produce something good for the body – and, just maybe, the soul.

Those attending the Crook County Fair in Sundance last week probably noticed something that sprouted earlier this month on the fairgrounds – a 22-foot-diameter geodesic dome greenhouse.

Volunteers leveled the gravel base and connected 10 wooden foundation sides and erected the 2-by-4 spider net of triangles the afternoon of Tuesday, July 13. Plastic sheathing – a woven polyethylene product — was slid over the dome and secured with biocomposite lath stitched with screws the next morning. The entire build took about eight hours.

The mix included 4-H’ers and FFA members, Crook County University of Wyoming Extension personnel, members of Grow Your Own from the Wind River Indian Reservation, extension state small acre/horticulture specialist Jeff Edwards, and Coleman Griffith, who administers grant funding for the domes from the Wyoming Department of Agriculture (WDA).

The Sundance dome is the 10th Griffith has managed. He said directions for many of the dome kits for purchase were indecipherable, so Edwards, Ted Craig with the WDA, and Griffith came up with their own kit and their version of assembly instructions

“Most of the feedback we get is no one has any idea what you’re trying to do when you give instructions on paper,” Griffith said. “But once you’ve actually done it and seen it, the next one makes sense.”

Edwards described an on-site build.

“You have people who have never met before, but you’re building something in common,” he said. “But only a couple of us know what the end structure will look like. It’s kind of like the building the first atomic bomb  (work was highly compartmentalized): Here’s a part, do this, and then you will get to see it at the end.”

A 2V structure

The Sundance dome is called a 2V structure, which means it has uses two triangles fitted together throughout the dome. Edwards completes all prep work, including cutting the 2-by-4 supports that have two different angles in a shop and the laths that securely attach the plastic to the dome. The 2-by-4s are connected by thick PVC couplings pre-cut and drilled for the lag bolts in the supports.  He also pre-builds the base and the door.

“Every one of these builds is a train-the-trainer project,” Griffith said. “That being said, there are two kinds of people who show up to volunteer. Some are really into the idea of learning how to do it. And some are just there to help out.”

Casper’s Food for Thought took over UW Extension’s high-tunnel building efforts, and Crook County 4-H educator Sara Fleenor secured funding from that organization for the dome. That funding, in turn, is through WDA and part of the USDA funding from the specialty crop block grant.

The dome complements what Fleenor calls the Learning Lab at the fairgrounds, where Sundance elementary students learn to grow food and then harvest and prepare meals. The dome sits beside a small hoop house built by Edwards and other workshop participants in 2011, called the pizza garden. Students will use the tomatoes, herbs and other vegetables growing there to make pizza this fall.

“I think even in a rural community like Sundance, the kids still don’t necessarily know where their food comes from,” Fleenor said. “And I think that is something we are losing — that (for example) if you have cream, you can make butter. If you’ve got a 20-foot space, you can grow a sustainable garden. That’s really important for anybody.”

Lehi Aoah from the WWIR joined the group for the build.

“The domes are important because what we see is that all of this is getting people back in touch with Mother Earth,” Darrah Perez-Good Voice Elk said. “It’s awakening our ancestral memory, which is healing our trauma.”

Trauma, she said, because of historical events, but also current situations.

There are health disparities, and, “A lot of people live in poverty, and a lot of people don’t have food and they worry about what and how they are going to eat,” she said. “If we can start giving people something to feel good about doing something, that right there is what provides the human race the healing.”

Difficulty growing vegetables

Those who tried growing vegetables from seed had difficulty, she said. Next year, they are going to grow their own potted plants, starting with corn, beans and squash.

Grow Your Own has funds from Wyoming first lady Jennie Gordon’s Wyoming Hunger Initiative, and Perez-Good Voice Elk said collaboration with the hunger initiative and Gordon has been big.

“It’s really important to have people like that,” she said. “Because there are a lot of outsiders who still think that we live in teepees, and we don’t.”

Edwards and Griffiths favor domes now instead of the high tunnels, which are usually made with PVC pipe. Domes have a timber frame structure and are stronger, and Griffith said a dome in Afton had 4 to 6 feet of snow on it and still stood. Edwards said domes have fewer wear points on the plastic. He estimates the sheathing should last up to 15 years.

The Sundance dome effort also complements a large greenhouse to be built at the school, said Brian Kennah, Sundance ag teacher and FFA adviser, who helped with the build. He hopes to grow four crops a year for sale. Proceeds will benefit the FFA program.

The Sundance FFA and Crook County 4-H programs are more effective because of working cooperatively, he said.

There is a synchronicity. Kennah was Fleenor’s ag teacher in school, and now former 4-H’ers led by Fleenor are helping out in Crook County, such as volunteering as fair superintendents, with craft projects and 4-H Fridays. Kennah is also now teaching Fleenor’s children.

Community support for agricultural education efforts in Sundance has always been strong, he said.

“It’s been amazing,” said Kennah.

Source: University of Wyoming, which is solely responsible for the information provided and is wholly owned by the source. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset. 

About the Author(s)

Steve Miller

Senior Editor, University of Wyoming

I was raised on a crop/livestock farm in the Brady/Gothenburg, Nebraska area, and, at the time, resented all the time spent grinding corn, haying in 100-degree weather, castrating pigs and calves, and moving irrigated pipe. I always tried to make myself scarce when time came to butcher chickens. As I grew up, so did the appreciation of my childhood. Now I look back at that time with fondness, although I'm sure my two brothers might disagree with my reflections. My first job in journalism was at my hometown weekly newspaper, learning more about reporting the first three months than the previous four years of college. Mistakenly believing the grass is always greener, or perhaps it was just plain itchy feet, I launched a career of reporting and editing jobs in several states covering city councils, county commissions, county and district courts, education, law enforcement, high school and college sports, and agriculture. I worked at newspapers in Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, and was managing editor at the last two newspapers. I returned to college at the age of 47 and received a 7-12 social sciences teaching certificate. I never put the certificate to use outside of college but have never regretted returning to school because of the life-altering qualities. I better add I have a very patient and supportive wife. I joined the University of Wyoming Extension in 2005 two days after completing my student teaching assignment. I might be the oldest graduate student in the University of Wyoming Department of Communication and Journalism so far halfway toward a master's degree.

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