As I’ve mentioned in several other posts, I think the continual monitoring of conditions in greenhouses and food storage spaces is incredibly important for quality and safety and insightful for any operation. There is a really clever design for a do-it-yourself temperature monitoring system called Fido, on the FarmHack site. It uses an Arduino control …
Continue reading “FIDO – A Do-it-yourself Temperature Monitor with Text Message Alerts”
The Vermont Bioenergy Initiative, a project of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund recently released a series of videos summarizing their bioenergy related projects through-out Vermont. Visit the YouTube channel for all the videos.
As an engineer, I love data. It turns out farmers do also. At least, Pete Johnson and Isaac Jacobs at Pete’s Greens in Craftsbury, VT do. “Is it working yet?” Isaac asks as I put the finishing touches on the remote data monitoring system we have been installing in the four zone drive-in cooler. “Just …
Continue reading “Remote Data Monitoring – 1st Install at Pete’s Greens”
Thanks to all of those who took the time to respond to the food storage survey several weeks back. The information you provided has been really helpful. A clear desire for additional programming in this area was expressed, and I’ll be working to develop that. Here are the survey result highlights: 82% of respondents expressed …
Are you considering any equipment upgrades in the near future. Check Efficiency Vermont’s webpage to research available technologies and to see if any of their many incentives apply to you. They have a set of rebates specific to agriculture and some for commercial refrigeration which may apply to folks with refrigerated storage on …
Continue reading “Efficiency Vermont Incentives for Agriculture”
I’m collecting information on Vermont’s commercial food storage practices. This is most commonly a walk-in cooler or freezer on the farm or at a food hub, but there is room in the survey to tell me all about the other ways you store food. The purpose of the survey is to provide a baseline against …
Thanks to Eric Garza (UVM RSENR) for putting me onto this dense and fascinating report that summarizes the energy use in our food system. I was surprised to learn the per capita energy use in our food system increased significantly from 1997 to 2002. From the report; “Energy is an important input in growing, processing, …