DIY Wheel Hoe from WhizBang
This DIY wheel hoe, one of the many creations of the farmer-designer Herrick Kimball of Planet Whizbang, is for those of you relying on human-powered cultivation.
Herrick offers the full set of plans to build his low-wheel hoe, and users can purchase various parts kits from the site, or use the specifications provided to find or create their own parts. For those that are finding their own, the site also links to online suppliers of various parts that you will need.
Find the wheel hoe plans here.
Explore the site to check out some other designs and articles written by Herrick, including plans for a cider press, a DIY garden cart, and chicken butchering how-to.
Photo Credits: Herrick Kimball and Whizbang
Fido Build Session at Hearty Roots Farm
On Sunday April 15, 2012 Louis Thiery and I travelled to the Hudson Valley to observe Benjamin Shute build a Fido for a greenhouse on his farm, Hearty Roots. Our end goal is to create a device design and documentation accessible enough for farmers to build Fido themselves. We all knew beforehand that we had not reached our goal yet but we saw value in a trial run to see what we might learn to help direct our design and documentation efforts. During the build we took feedback and photographed Ben’s progress. The feedback resulted in Louis making many on the fly documentation changes. While we did not have enough time to complete the build (we ran into some bugs, more to come on that), Louis and I will continue to work with Ben and continue developing the Fido design.
I posted some questions to the Fido Forum for Louis and Ben. Below are their answers and check out the forum for more photos from our build session!
Questions for Louis Thiery (Fido developer):
Q: What is the biggest challenge you are currently facing with the current Fido design?
A: Now that the code has been slimmed down to actually fit onto the Arduino, my biggest challenge is the cell phone. The Arduino and the cellphone talk at different voltages and I think that that is the origin of the current inconsistencies in behavior.
Q: What do you think your next two steps will be developing the design for Fido?
A: Currently, a voltage divider brings the Arduino’s 5V down to 3.3V. This does the trick but I think makes the device very fickle. I am going to try to do the same connection with a chip called a logic shifter instead and see if that resolves the issue. If it fails, then I’ll know that there is a fundamental issue in the library I wrote for the cell phone and I will try tweaking that again
Questions for Ben Shute (farmer):
Q: What did you find most challenging about the build process?
A: I was worried the the actual soldering of the circuit board would be challenging, and that I would mess something up. It turned out to be no problem and was actually fun. I found it difficult to completely understand the nuances of the circuitry and why I was soldering what things where– but as long as there are clear diagrams, the farmer can choose whether or not to pursue understanding the theory, but still end up with a working tool.
Q: What do you think other farmers will find challenging about the build process?
A: For farmers who are totally unfamiliar with circuitboards, soldering, computer code, etc. there might need to be some links to basic tutorials that can be consulted before jumping into the project. Or just more thorough explanation of some of the steps in the how-to– like, most farmers probably will not understand what the purpose of “Downloading Arduino IDE and libraries” is without further explanation.
Self Contained Mobile Biodiesel Processing Trailer
The farm based self contained mobile biodiesel plant constructed by GreenStart is based on a common aluminum beverage trailer platform. The heat and power is provided by a 3 phase diesel generator coupled with a 10hp air compressor. Each functional component is designed to fit the standard beverage skid of 36″ square which enables swapping of components. The shutter sides provide secure weatherproof environment for storage and transport. The low deck height also facilitates operation and maintenance from the ground level.
Automatic chicken coop door powered by arduino
As Farm Hackers Louis, RJ and Ben work on the Wireless Greenhouse Monitor project, which is powered by an open-source Arduino circuit board, we have come across yet another great use for the Arduino on the farm:
Check out this Instructable for an programmable, self-locking chicken coop door, whose Arduino microcontroller tells the unit under what conditions to open and close the coop. It’s just one of many possibilities for open source electronics project on the farm.
Wireless Greenhouse Monitor: Update two
We have been hard at work developing our farmer-built Wireless Greenhouse Monitor that we were funded to prototype and test through a SARE farmer grant, which we outlined in our first post on this topic.
Louis, the lead hardware developer and programmer for our device, has been testing different configurations of parts, with an eye toward making things as simple and as useful as possible for farmers who want to monitor the temperature of their greenhouses from afar, using cell phone text messages.
The heart of this tool will be an Arduino, an open-source microcontroller circuit board that is beloved by hobbyists and DIY-robot-builders. Just as open-source computer programmers work on projects with the intention that their programs will free and accessible for all to use and modify, the Arduino is a design of a circuit board that is meant to be a platform free for all to use and to build using off-the-shelf parts. The Arduino can handle simple tasks such as receiving signals from sensors, doing some calculations, and taking an action like turning on or off a switch or motor. In our case, the Arduino will be sensing temperature in the greenhouse, processing that information based on the parameters that the farmer has set, and then sending (or not sending) the farmer a text message in response. For example the farmer could set the Arduino to send out a text message alert whenever the temperature in the greenhouse rises above 90 degrees, or falls below 35 degrees. Or the farmer could just set it to send out an update with the current temperature every hour; or to simply reply with the temperature whenever the farmer sends a text message to inquire.
Louis has been keeping track of developments on the project, and the current list of materials, on the page for the Wireless Greenhouse Monitor on the new Farm Hack Tools Wiki. Check there for updates and to give your own feedback about the project: how you might use it, features you hope it will have, etc. This is a textbook Farm Hack opportunity for collaborative tool development!
Meanwhile, we will be updating you here on the blog as we make progress on the tool. Next step: a trial run of assembly and testing in the greenhouse at Hearty Roots Farm, in two weeks.
DIY Genetically Modified seeds
Image from CIMMYT
We’re excited to announce that we had a secret Farm Hack – St. Louis event last week, at which young farmers and off-duty GMO scientists put their heads together. After an all-nighter hack-a-thon, we came up with a great new way to create DIY Genetically Modified Seeds on your very own farm, using off-the-shelf materials!
Materials list:
- one packet of regular seeds
- one .22 caliber rifle
- one briefcase full of cash (for lobbying against GMO regulation)
- some genes from a fish, to help create a flood-tolerant plant.
Next step is to put on a Tyvek suit and click here to follow our detailed instructions.
Custom bed shaper attachment for tiller
Local Roots Farm in Washington State has come up with a design for a bed shaper attachment for their rototiller, to allow one-pass bed making on their vegetable farm.
As of their blog post on the tool, they hadn’t yet tried it out in the field. But it sure looks like they’re on to something.
Check out their tool– we hope they will put up drawings and reports on the Farm Hack Tools Wiki!
Tiller/Bed-Shaper Modification Experiment
photo from Local Roots Farm
Anny’s All-in-One on the new Tools Wiki
As we announced last week: our tool wiki is live and open to the public! That means that it’s time for you to start uploading your own tool designs and ideas, so others can collaborate and benefit!
Here’s a little taste of the great innovations we’re encouraging on the Farm Hack wiki: “Anny’s All-in-One” Multi-purpose Cultivation Implement, designed for use behind a single horse or small team.
Device Description:
This multi-purpose implement is based on a French design, and has been reengineered for use with a single draft animal or smaller team. One of the key features is for the tool work off-center of draft; meaning your animal can walk between the crop rows while the tool works in the crop row. This would be useful in hilling or harvesting potatoes or even setting up planting beds.
Creators/Designers:
Ann of Siri and Holmberg (info [at] sirihilmberg.com) in Philo, CA.
Purpose of Device:
To create a tool that accommodates the needs of those small farmers who do not want to own a tractor or feed a team of full size draft horses. This tool would be ideal for a couple of acres or less of row crops. Its purpose is to provide an economical way for small-scale farmers to accomplish a variety of tasks such as plowing, discing, harrowing, and setting up beds.
Functional Principles and Engineering:
The tool is designed to work off-center of draft, allowing the animal to walk the furrow while the tool works the bed or row. The tool will be available with discs for hilling, a simple plow, potato plow, harrow and other standard tools as needed. Changing tools does not require hand tools and the tool angle can be changed while you are working.
Additionally – this tool will be strong enough to use behind a full sized draft horse or a team doing work suitable to its function, but when stored it will not take up much room and will be easily transported. The tool angle, handlebar height and angle can be changed while working. Unlike riding tools, Anny’s All in One will be easier to use on slopes and hills.
And a video of this amazing tool in action: http://youtu.be/RRCn4TlIPis
This Past Week in the Farm Hack Forum – 3/19/2012
Welcome to the start of what will hopefully be a weekly update on activity in the Farm Hack Forums. We’ll continue to work on the format for this but the headings for each section of these posts will genrally reflect the structure of the forum. This week’s post was written by R.J. Steinert and if you in interested in helping out with further posts, let him know at http://rjsteinert.com/contact.
The “Let’s talk Farm Hack Community Structure” Forum
The overarching theme seems to be that we’re looking for a way to minimize dead ends for folks. More specifically, there has been concern over tools being posted where there is no user behind them to advocate for the entry or to answer questions. At the moment, it looks like Do we want a Tool approval process? is the hotspot for this activity, but we’ll also summarize some of the other related conversations below.
Tool guidelines
What qualifies as a good Tool post? How much documentation should there be? If we decide it’s ok to have Tools that are in the concept phase, perhaps there needs to be some stated plan for moving forward as opposed to posting ideas.
See Do we want a Tool approval process? and What is a tool?.
Tool maintainers
When a tool is posted, it helps if there is someone there to answer questions and help drive the conversation. Wether we give a user(s) a dedicated “Tool Maintainer” label or we just make sure someone lists themselves as a contact on the Tool Wiki, having dedicated Tool maintainer(s) may give folks a sense of responsibility and pride they wouldn’t otherwise have without the Maintainer role. Giving the Tool Maintainers additional permissions is possibility but also a complicated matter (complicated in the sense that there are a lot of ways to formulate this).
See Would having specific maintainers for Tool Wikis be better than letting everyone edit? and Member profiles – tool sponsorship.
Tool metrics
There are all sorts of metrics we can track on tools to help create transparency that helps users know where the action is at. This helps with showing where the dead ends might be. A few example Metrics: # of tool wiki edits over time; # of Tool Forum topics responded to over time; # of Tool Forum topics posted over time.
See Usage/Participation statistics on Tool profiles.
Farm Hack Website Problems Forum
RJ has had a chance to fix a few of the bugs reported and will continue to do so in his free time. For organizational sake, we’re trying a convention of prepending Topic titles with the text “Fixed: “ when they are no longer a problem.
Tool forums
New tools
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FarmHack Starter
Submitted by Louis
Sometimes one person doesn’t have the resources or see the need to develop a tool on their own. If only they could get funding or some kind of hourly compensation for their development efforts. They could take it to Kickstarter, but what’s the point when less than 1% of Americans farm? Farmhack Starter is a forum for developers to seek funds from farmers and other end users. Simply create topic in the forum explaining your project, your budget, and see how the communiy responds. If you think about it, this is no different than a CSA where R&D is the planting and a functional prototype is the harvest. -
Low-cost mobile hoophouse
Submitted by Oxbox Farms
Mobile 16′ X 48′ Hoophouse compatible with year-round vegetable growing rotations as described in “The Four Season Harvest” and elsewhere that is large enough to be useful but small enough to be constructed on farm with basic tools and easily sourced materials. Hoophouse uses multiple independent wheel assemblies during moves that enable one or two persons to move the house manually. -
Low cost pedalpower rootwasher
Submitted by
Low cost root washer that can be pedal powered. It should be easily constructed on-farm. This is suitable for carrots, potatoes, etc. Can handle how many pounds/bushles per hour? This rootwasher was demonstrated at red planet vegetables 3/10/2012:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML0FrHrErSI&feature=email If you want to buy one contact lu at bravelittleship dot com
Event forums
In the Event forums we now have a Forum for Farm Hack Rhode Island. Elise and Liam Turkle have volunteered this week to scan docs from the event and R.J. Steinert has written up some directions to help get their scanned documents into Event Groups in the forum. Big thanks to Olivia for sending out a great thank you to all the attendees of the Farm Hack Rhode Island event!
Introducing the Farm Hack Tools Wiki (beta!)
The Farm Hack planning team has been hard at work dreaming up better tools for our own farms, and also better tools that the Farm Hack community can use to share our ideas and information with one another.
Image from the "Oat Dehuller" entry on the Tools Wiki
Up until now, we have profiled farm tools in blog posts and brainstormed new ideas at Farm Hack events, but we dreamed of creating a more interactive way to allow for documentation and development of farm innovations. This week we have reached a milestone in this pursuit with the release of our new Tools Wiki, in beta mode. Beta means we are still testing it, working out the bugs, and making it pretty, but it is active and ready to be used by all.
The Tools Wiki is a place where tools can be profiled throughout different stages of development– ranging from “Concept”, to “Prototype”, to “Ready to DIY”, to “Commercially available product”. The documentation about a tool can be changed by Farm Hack community members who are working on improving the tool by updating the Wiki. But there are additional opportunities for Farm Hackers to interact with the Tools pages. Our newly-tailored Forums are linked with the Tools pages, allowing community members to comment on, ask questions about, and add information about tools, right on the Tools pages. In so doing we will record the living conversation and collaborative development effort that go into tool development, testing and field use.
So take a look around the Tools Wiki pages, think about what tools you might want to profile using the Tools Wiki– your own, one you saw on a neighbor’s farm, a farm robot you have dreamed about but not built, something from 1890 that you took apart . . .
Thanks to a lot of work by the team and especially programmer R.J. (who has logged weeks and weeks of volunteer time) for making this happen, to Emily who has added the first pieces of content, and to planning team members Dorn, Severine, and Mihaela. And remember this is still in “beta” mode, so chime in on the forums if you see things that need fixing or have ideas for improvements, and Donate to the Farm Hack project so that we can move things forward more quickly (right now we are ALL volunteers!).
