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  • From: "Bob Waldrop" <bwaldrop@cox.net>
  • To: "'permaculture'" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Developing a practical appropriate scale microcombine and other important machines
  • Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 22:52:32 -0500

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




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