Looking to upgrade your wash-pack space? Check out this interview with Taylor Hutchison from Footprint Farm talking about their motivations for building a new barn (house!) and including all the features they implemented to make it food safe and efficient. Stay tuned for a written case study, and a downloadable pdf coming soon. The playlist …
Continue reading “Footprint Farm: Post Harvest Case Study – Video Series”
So you’re starting to farm, or scaling up your production. You hear talk about produce safety and cleanability. You are checking out what other farms are doing and are looking for harvest crates and storage bins. You probably noticed lots of people use many different things. Some use 5-gallon pails, milk crates, muck buckets, some …
Download this Postharvest Case Study as a PDF Here! Lisa MacDougall has led Mighty Food Farm through start-up, relocation from rented land to owned land, and now through the construction of a brand-new 60 ft x 90 ft wash and pack shed. She’s done this all while producing a diverse mix of organic vegetables, tree …
Continue reading “Mighty Clean and Comfortable – A New Wash and Pack Shed at Mighty Food Farm”
To learn more about forced air cooling visit go.uvm.edu/forcedaircooling To download the PDF version of this plan click here! Farms that need to cool smaller volumes of produce can also benefit from forced air cooling. Whether cooling stacked pallets, pallet bins or individual cartons, the same principals apply. A smaller pallet cooler was noted on …
Continue reading “Construction Details for a Counter-top Forced Air Cooler”
To learn more about forced air cooling visit go.uvm.edu/forcedaircooling To download the PDF version of this guide click here! Framing: 2”x12” lumber to make a 43” wide x 74” tall x 11-1/4” deep plenum for suction air distribution. Plenum Panel: 3/8” CDX Plywood with an 11-1/4” circle cut out for the blower suction inlet. Position …
Continue reading “Construction Details for a Pallet Forced Air Cooler”
A downloadable/printable pdf of this article is available here. Introduction The preservation of quality in fresh market and storage crops on small and medium-sized farms in the Northeast depends on the rapid reduction of pulp temperature and maintenance of relatively low temperatures to slow metabolic respiration. There is strong foundational work showing that rapidly reducing …
Here is a video shot during some field experimentation last week working in a cooler.
Download the PDF Fact Sheet Here! Introduction It is easy to ignore the thing beneath our feet, but floors are an important part of produce wash and pack areas that deserve special attention. They can impact efficiency, ergonomics, employee health, worker fatigue, personnel safety, and produce safety. There are also a number of design features …
Continue reading “Floor Design for Vegetable Wash, Pack and Storage Areas”
This presentation was given by Chris Callahan from at the Great Lakes Expo in Grand Rapids Michigan in December 2017. He discusses the differences between fruit and vegetable storage needs, finish surfaces for wash/pack areas or coolers as well as temperature and humidity controls. A frequently asked question we get is about vapor barrier …
Continue reading “Post Harvest Handling & Storage for Small Farms”
This video is an episode from Across the Fence! It holds an interview with Judy Simpson as well as a description of the product. The video below highlights the 9min segment specifically talking about the DewRight. Read the write up from Vermont Business Magazine here. Read the press release from UVM’s University Communications here.
