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Growing Power Urban & Small Farms Conference Request for Makers, Hackers and Healers |
Jeff Piestrak |
Sunday, June 1, 2014 - 12:20pm |
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A little simpler |
GredGrows |
Friday, May 30, 2014 - 11:20pm |
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Thnx Dorn for posting about the Rodale crimper |
Joel_BC |
Thursday, May 29, 2014 - 12:25pm |
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I saw some garlic farming equipment and may be interested in purchasing.Was not able to connect!! |
petethepirate |
Wednesday, May 28, 2014 - 2:12pm |
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Volunteering full-time for Farm Hack this summer, need your help getting started |
R.J. Steinert |
Friday, May 23, 2014 - 11:53am |
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Arial Imaging work flow integration post on DIY Drones(repost) |
dorn |
Friday, May 23, 2014 - 11:07am |
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Just got new equipment |
jbd |
Thursday, May 22, 2014 - 10:44pm |
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Agroinnovations.com podcasts |
dorn |
Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - 2:17pm |
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LINUX for Lettuce-Hacking the Seed Industry |
DGrover |
Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - 2:45pm |
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Need help finishing up a parabolic solar hot water heater |
frazelle09 |
Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - 2:42am |
Aquaponics is bringing fresh water to the parched realities of small farmers, struggling communities, and consumers. Aquaponics' clever merging of proven agricultural techniques delivers a sustainable, year-round production of fresh fish, fruits, vegetables, herbs, sprouts, and livestock fodder, and has provided small farmers with an invaluable tool which is both profitable and environmentally regenerative. The use of aquaponics greatly reduces the amount of water needed to raise fish and grow produce by traditional methods, while assuring quality and purity in the final consumer product.
Our project: COSAG- Commercial Open-Source Sustainable Aquaponic Greenhouse, will coalesce the expansive knowledge and experience of the industry and our team into a functioning 3,000 sq ft prototype capable of producing 500 pounds of produce, 125 pounds of fish, and 5000+ pounds of sprouts and livestock fodder a week. Our team has over 60 years of experience collectively in fields related to COSAG: hydroponics, greenhouse production, the food supply industry, small scale organic agriculture, open source programming, and sustainable construction. This experience, and that of our partner contributors HAPI and Open Source Ecology, have contributed a great deal of ingenuity to the COSAG project. We have whittled our construction material and start up expenses down to $25 per sq ft: less than half that of comparable off-the-shelf aquaponic greenhouses.
It is Magpie Farm's and HAPI's extreme pleasure to announce plans to release to the public, free of charge, COSAG's complete blueprints, materials list, fabrication and construction tutorials, start-up procedures, operations tutorials, and all future designs, modifications, and research, on the Open Source Ecology website or a similar platform. This freely disseminated information makes 4-season Aquaponics affordable and viable for any farmer, individual, or community. Our mission is one of empowerment: to give individuals and communities with few technical skills the ability to inexpensively source materials for COSAG fabrication. When coupled with community labor (think old-fashioned barn raising), costs can be greatly reduced while encouraging the flourishing of community pride and interdependence.
We see the COSAG as a tool to aid many struggling small farms and communities across America and the globe. This project is economically and environmentally viable, and involves simple operating procedures, industry-tested systems and methods, redundant back-up systems, and ongoing public access to current research and development. We envision strong communities physically and financially investing in the creation of COSAGs in their region in exchange for fresh, local, and organic produce and fish. This investment will facilitate much needed job creation on small farms.
You contribution to this project will directly fund construction of the first COSAG prototype and research facility. This project aims to document, record, and aggregate complete construction and operational COSAG instructions. Using this information, communities and entrepreneurs can affordably construct and operate their own COSAG facility. Once constructed, COSAG prototype results will be diligently recorded, investigating and publicly reporting such things as seasonal profit margins, seed production methods, and ecosystem integration.
The COSAG addresses not just profitability, but sustainability and vitality, helping to revive small farms and struggling communities by providing year-round access to local, fresh, organic produce and fish free from heavy meals and other environmental contaminants. Aquaponics and greenhouse production allow small farms and communities of all sizes to reverse the growing trends of economic and environmental degradation.
Magpie Farm is seeking $54,927 to purchase building materials and start-up stock for the first-ever COSAG prototype. The COSAG's modular design allows builders the freedom to design according to available space, resources, and need. It further allows Magpie Farm to complete individual modules as money is raised, allowing all financial gifts to the to the project to be used with maximum efficiency. The eight modules are as follows:
COSAG Greenhouse Structure- metal frame, hand-bent and assembled with two inflated layers of 6 mil greenhouse film: $10,244 Climate Controls- solar/wood boiler hybrid, radiant heat, geo-thermal cooling, and a propane back up heater and generator. (All OS automated): $11,028 Plumbing- large yet simple plumbing installation with OS-automated back-up systems: $8,600 Fish Pools and Fish Stock- $7,472 Hydroponic Systems- vertical, single-sided worm towers and 4' x 8', 5-tier fodder sprouting tables: $6,448 Sustainable Fish Food Production and Hatchery- for breeding fish stock: $1,060 Seed Stock- $2,500 Testing Equipment, Back-Up Dry Organic Fish Food, Operation Expenses: $7,575Magpie Farm has access to used equipment and irrigation stock, which will help us to save on some of our costs. We encourage you to view our detailed materials parts and costs list at Online COSAG Parts List to see how your generous gift will be put into action.
COSAG needs the support of all those who see aquaponics as one of the viable solutions to reversing the growing problems facing our world and next generations. At Magpie Farm we embrace the fact that our government and financial institutions no longer can financially support the growing innovations like COSAG, that have the potential to change the economic, health, environmental. and social issues we now have compacting on our planet and country. Magpie Farm believes that you the consumer, the free thinker, and the social entrepreneur will be the financial source of many dynamic projects such as COSAG that will bring a better tomorrow to the next generations. We encourage you to join the growing crowd of individuals making small and large gifts to our project and others that are making positive changes for the future generations. One big help to our project that all can do is let the world know this incredible tool is on its way by sharing this campaign!
For more information on the COSAG Project and Magpie Farm please visit our web site www.magpiefarmnm.com/. Our YouTube site has lots of information on aquaponics and the issues and solutions that Magpie Farm takes as causes and uses. Please visit to learn and be inspired! http://www.youtube.com/MagpieFarmNM
Thanks Jeff for getting this thread started.
I hold the idea of mutually dependent independence as one of my core personal values. Through collaboration we can each have greater capacity to support our selves. There are so many skills and great thinking going on outside of the university and corporate structure, that has yet to organize. I think that almost every farm is already a research farm, testing new ideas and incorporating last year's observations into this years plans - however, most of the research isn't formal, published OR shared, and that there is tremendous potential, through collaboration, to gain from all the observations, successes and failures and to develop tools and research methods that are inexpensive, adaptive,open and easily accessible all. I also think that this type of adaptive, distributed tool and research method development are necessary in order to move from the centralized extractive model of production to a biologically based adaptive and regenerative model. Agriculture has a very special relationship to the stewardship of the environmental commons, so it seems quite right that the knowledge to best manage and improve the most fundamental of natural resources would also be held in the public domain.
I am also excited about Farm Hack because, from its very start, it has collaboratively emerged as a product of its own users- just as a blacksmith forges his own tools.
I see the emerging collaborative platform as being critical for taking the next steps in many of my own future projects and I look forward to helping to create Farm Hack into a way of working that we can all use to document, develop, design and build tools and standards and share our successes and failures. I know that I get more back for every effort that I put in, and that is key to achieving more mutually dependent independence.
Though by no means does this encompass all the reasons I support Farm Hack, something to help stimulate/provoke thought from this recent article from TechCrunch (link is external):
I see Farm Hack as a potentially important OPEN space or platform that can not only serve as an engine of creativity and innovation, but play a role in helping shape this internet of things in a way that serves the best interests of farmers and people in general, not just large corporations...
I've created a fairly extensive list of ag and food related data sources on my Food Systems Reference guide: http://guides.library.cornell.edu/local_food (link is external). General data sources are here (link is external), and spatial data/maps here (link is external).
We're hoping to migrate the GIS data repository I help maintain at Mann Library, CUGIR (link is external), to an open source collaborative platform called Open Geoportal (link is external), enabling more seamless data sharing/discovery. It already provides some useful capabilities like web mapping/preview, but we'd like to extend those if possible, possibly in conjunction with GeoNode (link is external), which the MetroBoston DataCommon (link is external) uses.
Here are some additional potentially useful resources specifically related to data management and sharing: -At Cornell we've developed a Research Data Management Service Group (RDMSG) (link is external) to assist folks here in working with and managing their data. -Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) (link is external), non-profit organization dedicated to promoting open data and open content in all their forms - including government data, publicly funded research and public domain cultural content. Projects include: *CKAN (link is external), a free open source data management system that makes data accessible by providing tools to streamline publishing, sharing, finding and using data. CKAN is aimed at data publishers (national and regional governments, companies and organizations) wanting to make their data open and available. *Open Data Commons (link is external) - a set of legal tools helping users provide and use Open Data
Cheers, Jeff
P.S. Attaching a DRAFT late breaking addition to a International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD) conference (link is external) I'm helping organize this summer at Cornell. The first session of that post-conference event on OPENING ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE IN AGRICULTURE: "A collaborative discussion about how to get started in the area of agricultural data management among partners, presented in a simple, practical way". That and the conference itself might be of interest to some....
Just about all the old topo maps are free to download:
http://store.usgs.gov/b2c_usgs/usgs/maplocator/(ctype=areaDetails&xcm=r3standardpitrex_prd&carea=%24ROOT&layout=6_1_61_48&uiarea=2)/.do
Plus nautical charts and older maps, many of which include land and air maps:
http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/csdl/ctp/abstract.htm
Plus David Rumsey's amazing collection -- start an account and log in, and you can download high-res on everything:
http://www.davidrumsey.com
--> some of these sites may not work in Safari; I have found Chrome is best.
Was this your question?
http://livingnewdeal.berkeley.edu/map/
I participate on a lot of web forums. For FarmHack, I think danpluska's four forum categores would work well: - Farming Practices (plants, animals, land and people management) - Fabrication (equipment fab and maintenance, building fab and maintenance, metal work, machines and carpentry) - Electronics, from circuits to solar panels - Open-source, online collaboration, and Farm Hack website If the site were to become very active, then I could see breaking some of these four main topic areas down further. But for the present, these categories should make the forum easy to understand, easy to find threads on, and generally user-friendly.
Whoops - I've deleted a duplicate of my post above.
Yes indeed so glad the momentum on this is strong. We've already built up a number of great datasets to add in the mix, and dorn has been brainstorming up storm of other collaborators.
For now, here's whats coming on our existing www.serveyourcountryfood.net website.
Very easy to also get:
-Shale Gas deposits -WWOOF Farms-Wwooffusa/organic volunteers -Experiment Stations-USDA -Slaughter Facilities- USDA - State and National Ag Committee members, yellow dots - Rail road/ shipping lines - Watersheds - Bus and Amtrak Routes -link to soil maps - Extension offices - country fairs = Farms for Sale -- link to NEfarmfinder.org and other land link sites.
And we can approach other mappers to cross post their maps ie this national family farm coalition map of
land grabs http://placestories.com/project/8465#!v=about http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/21351
Thanks everyone who is working on this, some great progress has been made! I'll weight in soon, just once I clarify my thoughts...
All else fails, here's the URL of the screenshot.
http://farmhack.net/sites/default/files/Screen%20Shot%202013-05-20%20at%2011.40.36%20AM_2.png
I don't see an attached screenshot!
See my proposal here (link is external).
P.S. @Louis I peed on your cucumber plant.
See the attached screenshot to get an idea of what the design I'm proposing looks like :)
Also, I like the sound of the categories you listed. Thanks, Dan!
By tabs I meant what goes on top of the site beneath the banner, where ABOUT, EVENTS, FAQ... is right now.
I think that headings in the categories might be helpful, but I imagine those headings would be TOOLS, ORGANIZATIONS, DISCUSSION or something like that.
The blog thing could make sense... I am just afraid that it might distract people from exploring the community (forums and tools). It could be as simple as switching the order on the land page making it the third item from the left rather than the first.
Also, any idea why the leaves on this cucumber plant are in so much pain? Too much sun? I want it to be happy as that horse.
interesting. worth consideration.
maybe four categories would be.
- Farming Practices (plants, animals, land and people management)
- Fabrication (equipment fab and maintenance, building fab and maintenance, metal work, machines and carpentry)
- Electronics, from circuits to solar panels
- Open-source, online collaboration, and Farm Hack website
i'm not sure what you meant when you said "FOUR amounts of tabs" does that mean 5 headings under each of the categories? or FOUR categories under each of the headings?
re: blog roll
i think a curated area is okay as long as it's clear it's curated. there is an uncurated area as well. ??
onward!
Great to see some interest and enthusiasm around data standards! (usually a hard sell in my outreach work...)
Louis, NEFKE is in the very early stages of development, still (and hopefully always) very open to the participation and input of others like you. We're looking at the standards mentioned as a guide, but have a lot of work to do toward implementing them in a practical way.
The first thing we'll likely do is look at how we can better leverage and link existing organizational and network data via the Farm to Institution New England (link is external) and NEFOOD web sites when we migrate them to Drupal. We'll likely extend the VIVO ontology for that, possibly using the Drupal-based ontology editor Neologism Valeria Pesce used for AgriVIVO. This will be supported and articulated through group value network mapping exercises (link is external) that will enable us to identify the critical pathways and relationships between transactional food value chain players, and the wider support networks. I can see this something like this possibly happening at one of the upcoming Farm Hack gatherings, combining trained value network mapping facilitators with farmers, value chain intermediaries, support people (including info intermediaries like me) and programmers.
In terms of data sharing and staging, we'll be looking at ways Drupal can be used to shared linked data using tagging/metadata, e.g. via RDFa (link is external). I'm hoping we can secure additional funding to do that in a more expansive way at some point. I'm having lunch with the former President of the Data Commons Cooperative (link is external) in a couple weeks to explore that particular model.
Hi Jeff,
It's great to see that there are some standard being put into motion, both locally managed and with global connections!
It looks like the NEFKE is in development but how would I go about finding out the specifications so I could potentially export my data in that format? Are they still being developed? Will the exporting be periodic data-dumps or will the system be setup for dynamic data sharing?
One of the prerequisites for sharing and integrating data across actual and intellectual silos, and within larger decision making frameworks, are consistent and well documented open standards for creating/structuring and sharing/publishing that data. Here at Mann Library we've been working on that issue through our development of the VIVO network (link is external), which has evolved to include the USDA, and now internationally as AgriVIVO (link is external), using and extending the VIVO ontology (https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/VIVO/VIVO+Ontology). In several cases we've been able to capitalize on Drupal’s ability to both publish and ingest “linked data” like that generated through the [VIVO network](see http://impact.cals.cornell.edu/).
Related efforts like the Open Food Data (link is external) and the Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (link is external) movements are working on this as well. Once we have agreed upon standards, it becomes much easier to develop shared tools and networks for using and repurposing data. This is illustrated through the explosion of easy to use GIS tools as the result of Geospatial Web Services.
I'd love to see the Farm Hack community take this up in earnest, perhaps partnering with NESAWG on our Food Knowledge Ecosystem project (link is external), and others like AgSquared, and Public Lab.
Did you guys see this? http://www.data.gov/food/page/events (link is external)
open sourced data from the Gov--why does this kind of initiative make me so uncomfortable...
Hi Mathew
great to hear you're local are you farming? let's noodle on some ideas, I've got some folks here in the Gorge that would be willing candidates for tests
Hi people, Ive just found your site and this culticycle thing looks great. Just the kind of thinking we like. We are a UK based project from the Incredible Edible Todmorden Movement with a one acre vegitable farm, intending to expand to other bigger sites in our under used landscape. We like this kind of low tech, high thought way of doing. its amazing how much brain ache it takes to do something a SIMPLER way! We would like to be involved, and have access to a full metalwork shop so please count us in, but in line with some of the comments already posted, maybe this is mostly a winter project, its so busy on the farm right now. Best Peasant Wishes Nick
I'm in Portland and have a lot of equipment. I'd ove to connect to more agriculture folks who want to do NDVI or other photo trials in Oregon. I'd be up for doing something sooner, and trying to track a plot over the spring and summer.
I'm in Portland and have a lot of equipment. I'd ove to connect to more agriculture folks who want to do NDVI or other photo trials in Oregon. I'd be up for doing something sooner, and trying to track a plot over the spring and summer.
Hi Terry
You are welcome to post this project on your website - hopefully with a reference back to here :)
Something we've been investigating are ways to allow sites to share source to the same project. Kind of like the way branching and forking work in GitHub (we're actually exploring that as the back-end) - that way I could easily merge edits from your branch on ArduinoInfo. RJ might come along and tell you more about that.
Anyway, about collaboration, I'd love any contributions you'd have to the tool page here. I was planning to go through and try to simplify the page as much as possible soon anyway. I'd really appreciate your perspective on the general structure since you've no doubt spent a lot of type thinking about how tutorials need to be written.
--Louis
http://opendatakit.org/ (link is external)
A while ago I started a wiki that I think picks up on some of this. Perhaps we could start to document the features and use cases with it.
http://farmhack.net/tools/universal-adaptive-management-software#forum (link is external)
I think adding in the Apitronics detail is very exciting. I am working on a diagram and some mock screen shots to illustrate some possible interface ideas. Many of the soil health measures, like penetrometers, have digital readouts with integration to gps. The management data from crop treatments coupled with on the ground soil sampling with environmental monitoring(moisture, pH, temperature etc), aerial imagery and still images and spectral data combined would give a wealth of potential systems information both for management and research. I see this as the missing link for making imaging really useful too - see
http://farmhack.net/tools/ifarm-imaging-agricultural-research-and-manage... (link is external)
In some sense, every farm is already a research farm, but an online data platform would enable the gathering of more data and facilitate sharing of this data to feed into decision support tools etc...
http://store.publiclaboratory.org/collections/spectrometry/products/fold... (link is external)
It seems that lot of the work is getting these low cost spectrometers calibrated to plant tissue and soil sample analysis. The more robust version is only $40 - http://store.publiclaboratory.org/products/desktop-spectrometry-kit (link is external)
this is a great way in to start developing open data sharing that is being discussed in this tool wiki
http://farmhack.net/tools/open-farm-data#forum (link is external)
to start to develop calibration standards and assign some meaning to data coming out of this kind of technology.
There is also this sandboxed tool that tries to get at how to pull in this kind of data and make it useful to farmers and researchers alike.
http://farmhack.net/tools/universal-adaptive-management-software#wiki (link is external)
Would be great to tie it into this kind of software too
http://farmhack.net/tools/crop-planning-software (link is external)
Wow, guys! Awesome! I love the picture from the pole! May is really soon so I don't know if I can make the NH event--what about having one here in Oregon in the fall? There is plenty of know-how and interest in seeing this technology used in the great work of farming!!
I'm really hoping we can keep the discussion going, what I am finding thus far in my research of research initiatives is a lot of spectral imagery but what smaller, lighter an less costly systems can we build that would be useful and applicable to the farm?