Category: Sustainable Agriculture
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Planning Tames the Postharvest Beast at Wild Work Farm
Lissa Goldstein runs the farming operation at Wild Work Farm in Keene Valley, New York nestled in the Adirondack Mountains. Wild Work is a diversified vegetable farm with some blueberries and fruit trees. When Lissa heard we were building out examples of wash/pack areas she reached out to share details of her shipping container project,…
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Duijndam Machines – Used Equipment from Europe
Way back in 2019, we visited Duijndam Machines in The Netherlands. We had heard from growers in the northeast about this fantastical place where used equipment from European growers goes, not to die, but to be reborn. We had to see it for ourselves. And to bring home some video of our tour. The video…
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Exclusion Netting for Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD)
If you grow berry crops you’ve most likely heard of spotted wing drosophila (SWD, Drosophila suzukii). This invasive pest has caused significant crop losses in the region since at least 2011. While there are chemical pesticides with varied efficacy, one practice that we’ve focused on is physical exclusion with netting. Pioneered in the region by…
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Drying and Curing Herbs and Flowers (Hops, Hemp, and Everything Else!)
Many farms are exploring market diversification and season extension by drying or “curing” herbs and flowers. Whether the crop is culinary herbs (e.g. sage, rosemary, thyme), traditional herbal medicines, decorative flowers, hops for brewing, or CBD hemp the basic approach is the same. Drying boils down to removing water from plant matter by evaporating it…
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Shedding Some Light in the Shed – Lighting for Indoor Work on the Farm
As the days shorten and we turn the clocks back, it may be a great time to think about installing or improving lights in some of our indoor spaces. Maybe you could use a bit more light to see the drill size marking in the workshop. Or, perhaps, you’d like to be able to sort…
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The Ag Engineering Podcast
Where we talk tools, tips and techniques to improve the sustainability of your farm Andy was awarded a 2019 Northeast SARE Grant to produce The Ag Engineering Podcast. In this podcast, we share tools, tips and techniques to improve sustainability on your farm. It was launched in December 2019. This podcast features short-format, easy to…
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Safe and Efficient Drying and Curing of CBD Hemp
UVM Extension Agricultural Engineering, Resource Innovation Institute, Efficiency Vermont, and VT Division of Fire Safety recently teamed up to provide a webinar as part of the UVM Extension NW Crops and Soils Team Hemp and UVM Extension New Farmer Project series. This session focused on safely and efficiently drying and curing hemp to support customer…
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Ventilation in Greenhouses and High Tunnels
I had the pleasure of facilitating a workshop at the 2019 NOFA-MA Summer Conference about Ventilation in Greenhouses and High Tunnels. It provided an opportunity to collect information from various sources, ground truth observations with growers, and to revisit some fundamentals. The big takeaway, for me, is that there are many, many ways to ventilate…
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Summer Twilight Series – Event Schedule
Join us on our series of 2019 On-Farm Workshop for Commercial Vegetable and Berry Growers! Attendance at these events is free for members of the Vermont Vegetable and Berry Growers Association. The cost is $10 per-person for non-members, payable on-site. Refreshments will be served. Membership in the VVBGA costs $55 per farm, per calendar year.…
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Briquetting a Better, Burnable Cow Patty
Chris recently served as a technical advisor to Rose Marie Belforti on her recent NE-SARE funded project to demonstrate a hydraulic press used to make fuel briquettes from manure and bedding. The machine, dubbed the “Biomass Beast” by Rose, was built for $5,766 and Rose demonstrated production of briquettes at a rate of 90 dry…