How to run a Farmhack event
Running a superlative, memorable and effective event is not rocket-science, but it is a learned artform. Take it seriously, and bring some whimsy. Farmhack events are generally co-organized by a small team, usually take at least a few hundred hours of coordination, and generally end up costing at least 500 dollars all told in hard costs. Take it seriously.
Farmhack events can build wonderful team spirit around a lonely hack-of-desperation, with 6-8 people standing around in a shop in a group brainstorm of “ lets fix it” that cannot be matched. It is this in-person connection that can allow non-farmers to latch-in to a particular design problem and farm relationship-- not quite a pen-pal, but a hack-pal.
We look forward to working with you on your Farmhack event, to help build the skilled community of support for local farms producing local food.
The team: Team generally consists consisting of at least 4 people. One should be from the Farmhack core organizational crew, other core team-mates include : hosting farmers, nearby farmers with existing shop-spaces and projects that they’ve been building momentum on. It also helps for members of the organizing team to be afflilliated with an NGO that has mailing list/ printing/ press release capacity, or has a community organizing background and to have attended farmhacks in the past, and is familiar with Farmhack operating principles.
It also helps for another member of the core planning team to be a really amazing hacker/ engineer such that other farmers are interested to spy at their shop and learn from them. Building the event around expertise and advanced practitioners also has its risks, that beginners ( and young women farmers) don’t have enough to sink their teeth in because the men are all talking in code about high level fabrication issues-- thats why a session on ‘ intro design principles’ or “ the essentials of your farm shop” or “ where to find used equipment and how to evaluate it” talks, when prepared by the more experienced parties, can bring the newbies up to speed.
Event Aspects we recommend: 1. Delicious, abundant, hot food and drink. 2. Plenty of interstitial networking time 3. Farm tours, and especially tours of farmshops and farm equipment 4. Show and tell ( people bring their tools/ systems to talk about, present) 5. Formality of schedule ahead of time, discipline of presenters, solid planning 6. Design charette to work in small groups on particular problems, then present back to the main group about findings, angles, approaches, materials. Good to have some designers who are familiar with critique methodology around for this, as they are comfortable guiding it. 7. Beer and Fire at night 8. Sleepover event, barn lofts are fine-- much better for meeting people. 9. Teach people how to use the Farmhack website for documentation and emphasize over and over again how important it is to practice thorough and diligent documentation. 10. We have done Farmhacks in both cities and rural settings, and though the turnout of non-farming techies is a lot better when the event happens within biking reach, the relationships and commitment outcomes are better in a rural environment. One approach is to have ‘ informational’ and presentation-based gatherings in cities, as a recruitment tool-- and then to use that mailing list to
The major elements of the event can be explained like this: 1. Local outreach to farmers. This is best accomplished by an established farmer with good farmhack skills who knows others in the community who work on technical issues, ideally one who is also gregarious TASK: Drop by the invitation flyer, and ask if you can leave a few extras for them to spread the word. Ideally
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Food coordination. Since these are farm events, there must be farm food. We had one event at RISD where the dining service catered it and we sat around balancing paper trays on our laps listening to a ventilation vent noise and smellig GMO fry oil--that was miserable. We have since learned that the cooking, preparing, cleanup, is such a core part of farm culture, to remove it destroys the atmosphere and many opportunities to make new friends. TASKS: Ensuring donations from farmers, flatware,table cloths, cooks for meals, clean up shifts, picking up ingredients, hot coffee, hot milk, abundant apples/ snacks between meals) Where it exists you can work with local food shop, restaurant, cafe, general store, coffee roaster, cookie company etc. Who can bring along some product and support the effort.
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Local outreach to Hackerspaces, Maker Spaces, Art Schools, Architecture firms, Fabriaction shops. High school shop teachers, Art professors (Identify professors who have classes about “ industrial design” or “ applied sculptures”) If you have fishing communities around,they are highly skilled TASK: Explain the concept of Farmhack and show them the site, the tools etc. If they are jazzed about it in the abstract, explain that this happens because of real, human relationships and that the upcoming event is the place to connect with the farmers seeking partners.
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Outreach to Press/ Online. The broader online networks are a great source of attendees from NOFA’s, Partner organizations, and getting a short story about it in the local newspaper will draw out conventional farmers with skills as well. Getting on the radio with Farmhack has been relatively easy. TASK; Lock the schedule 4 months in advance. Write up the schedule in the events forum, create a flyer for the event, print it out and post it in local agricultural hangouts/ bring to conferences/ meetups. Write a press release and send it to local papers, to the farm bureau and extension officers, you can also send it to
Ideal venues: Big kitchen that is used to big group meals Nice cosy space with hay bales for meeting in case of rain Outdoor grilling area/ bbq/ festival beer drinking fire pit Safe, clean, non-hazardous barnyard and shop areas
Tone and Spirit of an event
Key framing questions while doing farmtours
Can we achieve our function with a modular, easily shareable, easily adaptable machine, or even better, using biological tools that improve soil health.
Can we employ easily accessible parts, available off the shelf
Can we make tools that are fun to use, made sturdily for dignified user experience?
Can we rebuild the brain trust for a local fabrication sector?
Can the renaissance of regional farming coincide with a renaissance of small scale manufacturing, driving job growth and appropriate scale production?