Category: new webpages

I can’t remember when I first came across Allen Dong’s hand drawn directions for converting a chipper shredder into a bean thresher, but it was a long time ago. He has shared a large number of other designs over the years for small scale, DIY farm tools. His designs look, and are, straightforward to build, with mostly common, inexpensive or salvageable parts and without the need for overly special tools. The designs are very well thought out to serve their purpose, something that is not completely obvious without looking at the details and in some cases seeing Allen demonstrate the simplicity with which they work.

I felt very lucky to be at the OSU Small Scale Equipment Field Day last month where Allen was demonstrating his bean thresher, several winnowers and a hand operated screen, and a vacuum packer for storing seed. I took a few photos and I’ve put a link to them up on the photos page. Make sure to click on the thumbnails to get larger versions.

I made some long overdue updates to the Farm Hand Carts website today. Building the hand carts and working on improvements and accessories is a project that is currently stalled, but that I’m hoping to get back to soon. The updates to the site include adding a few more recent photos, photos and links to other folks carts, and putting a little sign up for a newsletter that will let folks know when things really get back up and running.

This blog is also long overdue for some posts. I’ll see if I can’t remedy that in the near future.

When I made our CSA boxes last year I took a bunch of photos of the process, fully intending to write up the process. This was partly for myself so that the next time I go to make them I remember what I did and partly to share. I’ve finally gotten around to it, partly inspired by Carri from Pitchfork and Crow asking about them last week after I posted a photo on Instagram. You can read about the details of how I made them on the Q&A page here.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. Like always I’m hoping to get around to putting more articles up on the site soon and giving more updates through the blog. I’m also working on updating the workshops page soon. Most of what I’ve been up to lately is scaling up the vegetable production at Our Table Cooperative. I write short weekly posts on the CSA shares over there so that’s my most regular outlet right now.

 

I just added four new photo journals to the site:

• Field Preparation Tools
• Seeding Tools
• Transplanting Tools
• Cultivation Tools

This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while and is still somewhat incomplete but will have to do for now. It was inspired partly by a class I’m teaching at Clackamas Community College on farm tools and I wanted to make sure folks in the class had access to the photos I’ve been showing in class.

They are all photos I’ve taken over the past few years. If there are mistakes in the captions, or omissions, or if you have comments please let me know.

It’s been a year and 5000 miles since I started delivering with the Bullitt cargo bike. Last year after a test ride I wrote a review with my initial impressions. I’ve written a second review with what I’ve learned since then. It’s still a great ride and I’m excited to see what another year looks like.

I also made a minor update to my review from last year on the Biologic Case for the iPhone. It’s great for the bike and works well around the farm as well.

I’m also working on getting a few farm equipment slide shows up on the site. Look for those soon.

I just added three bike inspired reviews to the reviews section of the site. They’re also inspired by two of my birthday presents (I had a birthday earlier this month), which in turn were bike inspired. And all of that bike inspiration is partially due to the farm where I’ve been testing out cargo bikes for delivering the produce. I’ll have reviews of those bikes up when I get a chance to finish writing them, along with my thoughts on how bike delivery works for the farm.

In the meantime, check out my reviews of the Biologic BikeMount for the iPhone, their BikeBrain App, and Motorola’s S10-HD headset. They all work for the bike, but I’ve also been using them with my Farm Hand Cart – even more exciting!