GreenStart's mission is to foster a resilient energy and food system for New Hampshire by providing technical education and practical agricultural examples. An educational non-profit organization established in 2006, GreenStart sees food and fuel security as the end-product of a vibrant, sustainable agriculture system in New Hampshire.
New Hampshire has 40% of its land area in agricultural soils, yet farms only 10% and imports 95% of its food and fuel. New Hampshire has no significant petroleum resources. To feed and fuel itself from sustainable natural resources, New Hampshire must improve its soils while also improving production.
To achieve this end, GreenStart facilitates projects that
1) increase soil carbon “banking”
2) decrease energy inputs
3) increase both food and fuel outputs (positive energy and carbon balance)
4) promote “tight” cycling of nutrients
5) provide opensource access to appropriate knowledge, seeds and equipment
It would be great to get documentation like user manuals and screen sizes used by the fanning mills for various crops. I wonder if the Johnny's folks would be interested in sharing some of that information? I think tracking down plans, or making plans from an old fanning mill would be a great project to post on this forum too – anyone have one they might be willing to document? Owners manuals etc. to scan? I think one of the "clipper" AT fanning mills is one of the next purchases for our farm – I have started cruising e-bay looking for good examples with lots of screens. Gravity separators, sorting tables and other similar devices seem fairly simple and not too difficult to document for the farm builder.