Solstice Blues and Spring Dreams

Around the winter solstice, my home is always in the dark when I'm there during the week.  I wake up in the dark, I come home and it's dark.  Even on the weekend, I wake up in the dark because getting up at 5am is not something that just stops because it's a different day, especially when my OCD cat decides I should not miss her morning attention time.  I'd like to believe that waking up with the sun is the way to go, but then I think about all the stuff I can get done that doesn't depend on sunlight.  I used to sleep in all the time, but I find that I enjoy my morning time because I have both energy and solitude, qualities that help me finish tasks I've been procrastinating.  

What really gets me down after a while is the fact that all my winter daytime hours are spent in a windowless office at work.  I can get things done outside during winter, but what keeps me inside all the time is the complete lack of light in my yard.  The past few weekends have been cloudy, rainy, and freezing.  The weekend is the only time I can refill my quota of sunshine.  

While I dream of having more sunshine, I spend a lot of time designing my greenhouse.  I want to build it myself from basic parts so that for the price of a small prebuilt kit, I can build a bigger greenhouse with my own custom tweaks.  I've done the same thing building computers from parts.  I prefer building my own computer to buying a store model because I can spend very little on basic parts so that I can splurge on things like video cards.  So far my greenhouse design process involves going to the Home Depot and Lowes websites and pricing materials I can use.  I thought at first about building a hoop house, but after comparing prices to a more sturdy structure, I think I can build a more permanent structure and have more fun with the engineering of it.  I found a clear polycarbonate roofing panel which would allow plenty of light into the top.  Poster sized acrylic sheets are available in a 12 pack which would be enough to provide windows around all sides.  I could frame them in with wooden posts and line the bottom half of the greenhouse with plywood.  Then it's just a matter of finding the right parts to piece it all together, and laying a foundation.  The location is on a slight slope, but I plan on having a sloped roof anyway so I see the shape of the building as a parallelogram.  The greenhouse will be housing big terracotta pots and raised garden beds.  

Ultimately, I would like to add a heater so that I can operate a garden year round, but I'm not ready to add electric devices to the picture just yet.  My goal is to keep my garden area off the grid by using all renewable energy generated in my own yard.  If I can't make the power myself, then I don't use electricity.  I understand it would be easy to just have an electrician run a wire from my house to power the area, but I've always been interested in off-grid living.  Finding a way to power an urban farm solely on renewable energy fulfills a greater purpose for me than just growing food on grid power.  Enough dreaming for now, I've got sunlight to enjoy!