permaculture

["Bob Waldrop" <bwaldrop@cox.net>]

I think this project is of interest to permaculturists everywhere and it 
involves reinventing machines on a more local and appropriate and 
do-it-yourself scale.

Here is a short video about the project that is developing do-it-yourself 
local scale versions of 50 essential machines for civilization, many of 
which are food and agriculture-oriented.
http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2011/04/explosion-after-the-online-ted-talk/

And a short written intro:
http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Crash_Course

Here is a diagram of the 50 machines organized by primary purpose. They call 
this the Global Village Construction Set.
http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set

As folks around here may remember, I was one of the founders of the Oklahoma 
Food Coop http://www.oklahomafood.coop and served for several years as the 
president and general manager. Because of that experience, I have 
volunteered to help jump start a research and development project to design 
a do-it-yourself microcombine.

> From the beginning of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, one of the critical 
problems has been harvesting machinery. Conventional combines cost more than 
a hundred thousand dollars, and that is an expense that isn’t feasible for 
small producers. Small acreages are also not attractive to custom combiners, 
who do work for other farmers, especially if it is a crop that may require 
adjustments to the machine (like dried beans). I have wished for a long time 
for a small scale combine that would be affordable. The Open Farm Tech 
people think that once developed, a micro-combine could be built by a farmer 
with reasonable farm skills for less than a thousand US dollars.

So please take a look at the microcombine project page at 
http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Agricultural_Microcombine and contribute your 
ideas and expertise. And don’t be shy, if you have something to say on the 
subject, say it, whether it be large or small. To contribute you need to 
register as a user of the wiki, which is reasonably simple to do. All ideas 
are welcome.

Here is the “Get involved” page. http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Get_Involved

And please pass the word along about this development project of interest to 
other permaculturists.

Bob Waldrop, Oklahoma City
www.bobwaldrop.net