I recently built a humidifier I think others might find useful. This could be useful for cheese aging, meat curing, and storage of winter crops all of which require maintaining specific temperature and humidity. The details are available on the Tool Wiki at FarmHack. Take a look, and let me know if you find ways …
Category Archives: Equipment
UVM Hops Harvester, Yellow Dog Hopyard and Rock Art Brewery on Across the Fence
Across the Fence, the longest running daily farm and home television program in the country, joined us when we were harvesting last summer with the UVM Mobile Hops Harvester. In this segment, hear from Nick Aleria of Yellow Dog Hopyard in Cabot. VT and Matt Nadeau of Rock Art Brewery in Morrisville, VT about how …
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Hop Harvesting Roundup
I recently presented a summary of mechanical hop harvesters at the 2013 NEHA Hops Conference in Morrisville, NY. As I prepared that material I was struck by how far we’ve come since 2010. In just three years since our small team embarked upon the development of the UVM Mobile Hops Harvester, several independently designed mechanical …
2013 UVM Mobile Hops Harvester Summary
The UVM Mobile Hops Harvester visited six hop yards this year, harvesting approximately 400 dry pounds of hops, over a 4 week period plus harvesting the UVM Extension NW Crops and Soils Team’s research hop yard. This harvester, developed as a result of a Northeast Hops Alliance, UVM Extension, VT Agency of Ag Food and …
How Refrigerators Work: “Principles of Refrigeration”
1944 US Office of Education video on refrigeration principles. Excellent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XADVDjzFW-4&feature=endscreen
CoolBots(TM): Inexpensive Cold Storage
A downloadable PDF of this blog post is available here. Demand for on-farm cold storage of produce is increasing as local markets for these goods expand. Many local producers are asking about CoolBots™, a tool that works with a window air-conditioner to make a cooler out of an insulated space. This article collects information about CoolBots …
FIDO – A Do-it-yourself Temperature Monitor with Text Message Alerts
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 …
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Food Storage Survey Results
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 …
Efficiency Vermont Incentives for Agriculture
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 …
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Food Storage Survey
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 …