10 ms·

I clicked over to this, prepared to hate-read it and leave a caustic comment. (background: I live on a farm, and have come across dozens if not hundreds of web

by tjic 10y ago

I clicked over to this, prepared to hate-read it and leave a caustic comment. (background: I live on a farm, and have come across dozens if not hundreds of websites that promise to "open source", and/or "crowd source" "innovative", "new" plans for farm tools, all of which are either useless, overly complicated, too much work to build, or better bought as a working product from Tractor Supply.) ...and - much to my surprise - this website actually has a fair number of really decent ideas. "Pastured pig waterer", "Home built no-till seed drill", and a few others all look interesting. FWIW, over the next year or two I'd like to design and weld up a potato row mounder and a potato harvester, both designed to attach via three point hitch to my tractor. They're commercially available, but not locally, and shipping on big stuff like this is killer.

hmhrex 10y ago
This was what I wanted to know coming over to the comments. This is really interesting to hear. I'm always curious when I see these websites if these tools are created by well-intentioned people that don't know the industry, or actual workers in that industry. I'll have to send this a long to my farmer friends.
- tjic 10y ago
  This is an example of a site I hate: http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ They've re-invented the tractor and 3-point / PTO implements, but they've done so very VERY poorly, there are no instructions, everything is hand-wavy, etc. It's condescending bullshit by "designers" who want to help third worlders with no realization that the best approach for an actual third worlder is to buy a used / discount version of the commercially available product. For example, their cement mixer design is 25% done (whatever that means), and is going to cost about $1,000 in parts alone, or $1,800 in parts and labor. Here's one that attaches to a tractor for $900 http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200660639_200660639 http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200660639_200... and you can find similar items even cheaper on Alibaba. A lot of these "let's help people farm!" websites are made by people who don't know anything about anything but seem to be compelled to do something so that they're "helping".
  - douche 10y ago
    It's not like there aren't huge amounts of second-hand farm equipment that already exists, either. My dad is still running a John Deere M tractor from at least the early 50s, and all of the implements that we hook onto it are at least of that vintage (manure spreader, mowing machine, plow, harrows, potato hiller, potato digger, etc). Farming equipment was built ruggedly in those days, and it was simple enough that you can keep fixing and patching and welding it up almost indefinitely. A lot of times, people will even pay you to haul that kind of stuff off for them, if they don't know what they have.
    - jff 10y ago
      > Farming equipment was built ruggedly in those days, and it was simple enough that you can keep fixing and patching and welding it up almost indefinitely. Interesting thing about the little old tractors, they were generally just the engine & transmission, with a seat stuck on top of the transmission and wheels attached. No real body or frame to speak of, it was all drivetrain. See this pic for an example: https://cdn1.mecum.com/auctions/gf0311/gf0311-103923/images/gf0311-103923_1@2x.jpg https://cdn1.mecum.com/auctions/gf0311/gf0311-103923/images/...
      - AstroJetson 10y ago
        Yep, my favorite bike is this one http://www.bikemenu.com/Jesse%20James%20Peterbilt%20Discovery%20Channel%20Monster%20Garage.html http://www.bikemenu.com/Jesse%20James%20Peterbilt%20Discover... He sits on the transmission. I grew up on a farm in the 60's, before the era of AC and GPS controlled tractors. Most everything was fixable on the farm with a pretty minimal tool chest
        vram22 10y ago
        What's meant by "GPS controlled tractors"? I know what GPS is but not clear how it is used in tractors; similar to how it's used in cars?
        10y ago
- randomdata 10y ago
  > I'm always curious when I see these websites if these tools are created by well-intentioned people that don't know the industry, or actual workers in that industry. For what it is worth, as a farmer myself, I'm under the impression that a lot of these projects were created for someone's garden/backyard project, not a farm. That doesn't diminish their utility in that application, but the usefulness may not translate to farm-scale. But it's always fun to see what other people are doing, even if it isn't necessarily useful on my own farm. I wish discovery was a little better though. The site makes it difficult to segment the tools that are designed for the garden and those that would fit in on a larger farm.
ourmandave 10y ago
Your comment reminded me of the PlayPump idea that was going to supply fresh water to every village. https://newrepublic.com/article/120178/problem-international-development-and-plan-fix-it https://newrepublic.com/article/120178/problem-international...
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
  Gordon Murray recently designed a flat pack truck for the third world: "[The Ox is] The world’s first ‘flat-pack’ truck [...] designed to provide low-cost all-terrain mobility for remote parts of Africa and the developing world" [1] I wish they would try to disrupt the first world first instead. [1] http://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/news-articles/the-world%E2%80%99s-first-%E2%80%98flat-pack%E2%80%99-truck-revealed,-set-to-bring-aid-to-remote-parts-of-africa-and-the-developing-world.html http://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/news-articles/the-world%E2... Edit: And a truck like this is just the thing for transporting crops or doing farm related tasks. This statement from 1 makes me worry, but I think it was meant to instill confidence, which is also worrisome: "It is unlike any other vehicle and has no direct competitor – whether from a concept, performance or pricing point of view."
  - Avshalom 10y ago
    Of course you can buy like two Nissan frontiers or like 5 pixos (retail) for the price of of one of those, and spare parts and knowledge base for those is pre existing.
  - pimlottc 10y ago
    Good grief, they go on about being "flat pack" and easy to put together but offer no photos of it as shipped or during the assembly process...
    - sandworm101 10y ago
      Worse yet, they are playing tricks with the perspective. Look at the loading ramp. That's actually the rear gate unmounted and used as a ramp. But see how photographing it from that angle makes it look so much longer. The entire thing is a deathtrap. A used toyota pickup is better in every regard.
burfog 10y ago
It seems to me that the obvious set of plans would be to replace all electronics of a modern piece of equipment, or to upgrade something older to modern capability. For the modern stuff, equipment can be unfixable without factory authorization. The rest (tires, frame, pistons...) is perfectly fine, so just replace the electronics. Older stuff doesn't do GPS, automated steering, and so on. That should be doable. It could probably be split into model-specific parts and more general parts, allowing at least some of it to be done as a large production run.
- vvanders 10y ago
  Older stuff does just fine w/ 3pt hitch & PTO. You can hook up new implements to a 50 year old tractor. The biggest issue is finding parts for some of the less common makes/brands. Modern stuff is partially complex due to new emissions standards(things like DPF, regeneration and UREA). An open source ECU that solves those problems would be a good step. Clutch based tractors aren't that complex, there's just a large amount of capital investment in building them and very little incentives to make them open.
  - colechristensen 10y ago
    This is the key, somebody needs to make a minimal-electronics tractor new with even a moderate amount of openness.
    - burfog 10y ago
      Ideally yes, but drop-in replacement electronics for a popular model would be almost as good.
    - randomdata 10y ago
      What's the market? I can't imagine ever wanting to trade my modern electronics-filled tractors for the stuff we have run in the past, even if it was in brand new condition. I look forward to the day that I can upgrade my tractors to ones with even more electronics in them. Yeah, the electronics can break. But even on the equipment I own where the electronics are not critical to the operation, you still end up fixing it ASAP because you quickly miss not having it. Electronics have become heavily used because they add a lot of value. Perhaps not in the case of the aforementioned DEF, but that's a legal requirement, and even the most basic tractor you could imagine would still require it.
localtalent 10y ago
I've met them in person a few times while working for a magazine that documented solutions in resource-constrained (not necessarily poor) environments. IIRC, many of these projects came from actual farmers, not design students. There's a related project, the Greenhorns [0] working to recruit new, young farmers and support them as they get going - part of that is cutting equipment and labor costs. I chatted a couple of farmers who were using the produce washers built from old washing machines. Is it a solution for large-scale industrial farming? No. But from hobby farmers up to ones doing a 50-100 share CSA model, it makes a lot of sense and reduces barriers to entry.
- snikeris 10y ago
  [0] http://www.thegreenhorns.net/ http://www.thegreenhorns.net/ There ya go.
- vanderZwan 10y ago
  > IIRC, many of these projects came from actual farmers, not design students. As a designer, if there is one thing that pisses me off about my own field, it is that design students often are not encouraged enough to co-create with real stake-holders and end up just throwing ungrounded high-concept nonsense out there.
  - staticvar 10y ago
    The Greenhorns and National Young Farmers Association helped organize a Farm Hack event at RISD in 2012 where they brought together design students and farmers. Here's a link to the forum where a lot of the work was posted http://farmhack.org/forums/farm-hack-rhode-island-2012-risd http://farmhack.org/forums/farm-hack-rhode-island-2012-risd
  - localtalent 10y ago
    It hurts the field as a whole - when impossible-to-build CG renders and endless piles of pie-in-the-sky Post-Its becomes synonymous with 'design' it makes it that much harder to convince organizations to put resources behind including design in their planning and production.
quickaccount 10y ago
I grew up on a farm and I used to love reading through Farm Show magazine to see all the DIY inventions the other farmers would come up with. I just checked and it looks like it's still published though there's not much available on their website without a subscription which is too bad.
MustardTiger 10y ago
>They're commercially available At absurd prices though. It isn't just the shipping, small scale farm/market garden stuff is priced ridiculously high.

by tjic 10y ago

hmhrex 10y ago

This was what I wanted to know coming over to the comments. This is really interesting to hear. I'm always curious when I see these websites if these tools are created by well-intentioned people that don't know the industry, or actual workers in that industry. I'll have to send this a long to my farmer friends.

tjic 10y ago
This is an example of a site I hate: http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ They've re-invented the tractor and 3-point / PTO implements, but they've done so very VERY poorly, there are no instructions, everything is hand-wavy, etc. It's condescending bullshit by "designers" who want to help third worlders with no realization that the best approach for an actual third worlder is to buy a used / discount version of the commercially available product. For example, their cement mixer design is 25% done (whatever that means), and is going to cost about $1,000 in parts alone, or $1,800 in parts and labor. Here's one that attaches to a tractor for $900 http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200660639_200660639 http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200660639_200... and you can find similar items even cheaper on Alibaba. A lot of these "let's help people farm!" websites are made by people who don't know anything about anything but seem to be compelled to do something so that they're "helping".
- douche 10y ago
  It's not like there aren't huge amounts of second-hand farm equipment that already exists, either. My dad is still running a John Deere M tractor from at least the early 50s, and all of the implements that we hook onto it are at least of that vintage (manure spreader, mowing machine, plow, harrows, potato hiller, potato digger, etc). Farming equipment was built ruggedly in those days, and it was simple enough that you can keep fixing and patching and welding it up almost indefinitely. A lot of times, people will even pay you to haul that kind of stuff off for them, if they don't know what they have.
  - jff 10y ago
    > Farming equipment was built ruggedly in those days, and it was simple enough that you can keep fixing and patching and welding it up almost indefinitely. Interesting thing about the little old tractors, they were generally just the engine & transmission, with a seat stuck on top of the transmission and wheels attached. No real body or frame to speak of, it was all drivetrain. See this pic for an example: https://cdn1.mecum.com/auctions/gf0311/gf0311-103923/images/gf0311-103923_1@2x.jpg https://cdn1.mecum.com/auctions/gf0311/gf0311-103923/images/...
    - AstroJetson 10y ago
      Yep, my favorite bike is this one http://www.bikemenu.com/Jesse%20James%20Peterbilt%20Discovery%20Channel%20Monster%20Garage.html http://www.bikemenu.com/Jesse%20James%20Peterbilt%20Discover... He sits on the transmission. I grew up on a farm in the 60's, before the era of AC and GPS controlled tractors. Most everything was fixable on the farm with a pretty minimal tool chest
      - vram22 10y ago
        What's meant by "GPS controlled tractors"? I know what GPS is but not clear how it is used in tractors; similar to how it's used in cars?
        10y ago
randomdata 10y ago
> I'm always curious when I see these websites if these tools are created by well-intentioned people that don't know the industry, or actual workers in that industry. For what it is worth, as a farmer myself, I'm under the impression that a lot of these projects were created for someone's garden/backyard project, not a farm. That doesn't diminish their utility in that application, but the usefulness may not translate to farm-scale. But it's always fun to see what other people are doing, even if it isn't necessarily useful on my own farm. I wish discovery was a little better though. The site makes it difficult to segment the tools that are designed for the garden and those that would fit in on a larger farm.

ourmandave 10y ago

Your comment reminded me of the PlayPump idea that was going to supply fresh water to every village. https://newrepublic.com/article/120178/problem-international-development-and-plan-fix-it https://newrepublic.com/article/120178/problem-international...

0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
Gordon Murray recently designed a flat pack truck for the third world: "[The Ox is] The world’s first ‘flat-pack’ truck [...] designed to provide low-cost all-terrain mobility for remote parts of Africa and the developing world" [1] I wish they would try to disrupt the first world first instead. [1] http://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/news-articles/the-world%E2%80%99s-first-%E2%80%98flat-pack%E2%80%99-truck-revealed,-set-to-bring-aid-to-remote-parts-of-africa-and-the-developing-world.html http://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/news-articles/the-world%E2... Edit: And a truck like this is just the thing for transporting crops or doing farm related tasks. This statement from 1 makes me worry, but I think it was meant to instill confidence, which is also worrisome: "It is unlike any other vehicle and has no direct competitor – whether from a concept, performance or pricing point of view."
- Avshalom 10y ago
  Of course you can buy like two Nissan frontiers or like 5 pixos (retail) for the price of of one of those, and spare parts and knowledge base for those is pre existing.
- pimlottc 10y ago
  Good grief, they go on about being "flat pack" and easy to put together but offer no photos of it as shipped or during the assembly process...
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    Worse yet, they are playing tricks with the perspective. Look at the loading ramp. That's actually the rear gate unmounted and used as a ramp. But see how photographing it from that angle makes it look so much longer. The entire thing is a deathtrap. A used toyota pickup is better in every regard.

burfog 10y ago

It seems to me that the obvious set of plans would be to replace all electronics of a modern piece of equipment, or to upgrade something older to modern capability. For the modern stuff, equipment can be unfixable without factory authorization. The rest (tires, frame, pistons...) is perfectly fine, so just replace the electronics. Older stuff doesn't do GPS, automated steering, and so on. That should be doable. It could probably be split into model-specific parts and more general parts, allowing at least some of it to be done as a large production run.

vvanders 10y ago
Older stuff does just fine w/ 3pt hitch & PTO. You can hook up new implements to a 50 year old tractor. The biggest issue is finding parts for some of the less common makes/brands. Modern stuff is partially complex due to new emissions standards(things like DPF, regeneration and UREA). An open source ECU that solves those problems would be a good step. Clutch based tractors aren't that complex, there's just a large amount of capital investment in building them and very little incentives to make them open.
- colechristensen 10y ago
  This is the key, somebody needs to make a minimal-electronics tractor new with even a moderate amount of openness.
  - burfog 10y ago
    Ideally yes, but drop-in replacement electronics for a popular model would be almost as good.
  - randomdata 10y ago
    What's the market? I can't imagine ever wanting to trade my modern electronics-filled tractors for the stuff we have run in the past, even if it was in brand new condition. I look forward to the day that I can upgrade my tractors to ones with even more electronics in them. Yeah, the electronics can break. But even on the equipment I own where the electronics are not critical to the operation, you still end up fixing it ASAP because you quickly miss not having it. Electronics have become heavily used because they add a lot of value. Perhaps not in the case of the aforementioned DEF, but that's a legal requirement, and even the most basic tractor you could imagine would still require it.

localtalent 10y ago

I've met them in person a few times while working for a magazine that documented solutions in resource-constrained (not necessarily poor) environments. IIRC, many of these projects came from actual farmers, not design students. There's a related project, the Greenhorns [0] working to recruit new, young farmers and support them as they get going - part of that is cutting equipment and labor costs. I chatted a couple of farmers who were using the produce washers built from old washing machines. Is it a solution for large-scale industrial farming? No. But from hobby farmers up to ones doing a 50-100 share CSA model, it makes a lot of sense and reduces barriers to entry.

snikeris 10y ago
[0] http://www.thegreenhorns.net/ http://www.thegreenhorns.net/ There ya go.
vanderZwan 10y ago
> IIRC, many of these projects came from actual farmers, not design students. As a designer, if there is one thing that pisses me off about my own field, it is that design students often are not encouraged enough to co-create with real stake-holders and end up just throwing ungrounded high-concept nonsense out there.
- staticvar 10y ago
  The Greenhorns and National Young Farmers Association helped organize a Farm Hack event at RISD in 2012 where they brought together design students and farmers. Here's a link to the forum where a lot of the work was posted http://farmhack.org/forums/farm-hack-rhode-island-2012-risd http://farmhack.org/forums/farm-hack-rhode-island-2012-risd
- localtalent 10y ago
  It hurts the field as a whole - when impossible-to-build CG renders and endless piles of pie-in-the-sky Post-Its becomes synonymous with 'design' it makes it that much harder to convince organizations to put resources behind including design in their planning and production.

quickaccount 10y ago

I grew up on a farm and I used to love reading through Farm Show magazine to see all the DIY inventions the other farmers would come up with. I just checked and it looks like it's still published though there's not much available on their website without a subscription which is too bad.

MustardTiger 10y ago

>They're commercially available At absurd prices though. It isn't just the shipping, small scale farm/market garden stuff is priced ridiculously high.