a farming resource blog

I was contacted by Derek Singleton who is a market analyst for softwareadvice.com mentioning that he had written this short article on distribution of local foods through regional hubs (regional is the new local?).

His article can be read here

This is something I think about a lot. I’ve said for quite some time that I think the best solution to creating a viable local economy is to first work regionally, build your infrastructure, and then focus more locally. That statement leaves a lot of room for discussion I know. The logistics to doing this effectively are very complex, especially in our modern market place.

I like that people, like Derek, are starting to look at the logistics of making sustainable food systems more sustainable- economically and logistically. I find on our own farm that organization of information is probably the single most important task we have to do well.

I’d love to hear what others think about this?

Hi there. It’s been forever since I’ve posted on WANNAFARM. Many reasons: I’ve been locked out of my dashboard for ages and all of the comments that were supposed to be forwarding to my email were going into my spam folder. So I’ve finally cleared it all up and I think we’re back.

Since farming is my full time job and this is just an added site for fun and education I didn’t have the time or energy to dig as deep as I needed to to get things back up and running. I know I’ll have to work to get any viewership back, but that’s ok. The information is still all here.

Thanks,

Chris@ Wannafarm

Our fellow farm friends in Colorado came up with this cool dibbler for making seeding go much much faster.

Good on ya Seth! Check it out:

http://weathervanebv.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/garden-carts-and-greenhouse-dibbler/

The title says it all…………..

Fert and Till from Chris Jagger on Vimeo.

I helped our friends at Barking Moon Farm pull the plastic on this hoophouse. When I first saw the frame I was blown away on how gigantic it was. Josh said it’s around 16 feet to the peak. But now that it’s filled out with plants, it looks amazing. Something about the gigantic feel and the diffuse light make it very cathedral like. Love it.

Once you reach about 9 acres or so I feel a mechanical transplanter can start to pay for itself. We currently only grow 6 ourselves but I can see how it can become a necessary tool quickly. I like the style of these transplanters, plus you can get a packing-sled instead of packing wheels allowing to fit 3 transplanters in a 48″ bed.

Via the Greenhorns

A set of videos to help guide new farmers in the right direction. Cool footage for sure.

Check it out here

So I’m very pro-worker in the world of farming. But if there continues to be a shortage of young farmers, then I suspect that those of us that have chosen to farm should probably be as efficient as we can. Maybe with some automation, instead of having 10 people on 1 farm of 15 acres, there could be 2 people on 5 farms of 10 acres. I’d be interested in costing the infrastructure costs out and see what it’s feasibility actually would be…..

Here’s why I write about this.

And the company who makes these transplanters has several other videos of their innovative products. I was stuck on their site for quite awhile watching videos…..

http://fieldtransplantsystems.com.au/

I mounted a MaterMaac fertilizer spreader I bought from Market Farm Implement in Pennsylavania. It runs on the 12 volt DC of the tractor. You mount the control box up in the cab. The box regulates the rate of flow. Pretty simple design actually. I’ll be using this setup to spread fertilizer and rototill the beds for planting all in one pass. I’ll get some video up after I take it out on it’s maiden voyage.

Just food for thought.

Some of you might hate this. Some of you may love this. A little of both for me. What do you think?