Agricultural Plans and Equipment

This year I am trying to get a lot of things done. A big one is getting a small farm going.

In that spirit we have been planning and taking some actions. The farmed area will be fairly small. Less than 5 acres is what I think we will end up with this year. One acre tilled will be a success. It will have to be very low maintenance.

Making gardens and land improvement are the orders for the year.

The heart of the plan is a small tractor. We signed the papers for a Massey Ferguson 1528, it is a hydrostatic drive ,28hp compact tractor, with payments.

Necessary accessories are:
-5' tiller,
-12" post hole digger
-5' 3pt hitch rotary mower
-5' 3pt hitch finish mower

Items on the wish list (pretty much any attachment that would fit our tractor):
-cultivator
-disc harrow
-fork lift attachment for the front loader
-weight box for the 3 pt hitch (to counterbalance the fork lift etc.
-backhoe w/ thumb
-3pt hitch round bale mover.
-logsplitter
-generator

I am planning on tilling up as much yard as possible to convert to garden;-). To put that into perspective, our house lot is 2 acres and I mow about an acre besides to put a path to our small pond and the area around our animal shed (goat and chickens)

If I convert 2 acres of that to garden, it immediately reduces my wasted time on lawn maintenance.

I am going to try to rotary cut as much as I can, we have 5 acre area that is becoming overgrown but I think I can get it cleared, and we have about 10 acres of woodland with swamp in parts. That will be a chainsaw challenge as it is is wooded with a 20-30 year old stand of trees, it was clear way back. Also there are many, many rocks. I am hoping I can manipulate them with the loader. I really wanted a backhoe with a "thumb" attachment to pick up smaller rocks (ones small enough to grab with the thumb but big to move by hand. The thumb is a arm that is either fixed or moves that is positioned to pinch things you want to pick up with the backhoe bucket. It sticks down so you basically have a "jaw".

This weekend I am trying to do yard cleanup and work on the bikes a little. Sarah and I got a pair of bikes yesterday to use as parts for a 3 or 4 wheel bike and scavenge to fix her bike and build Nathan one.

I am ready to test drive one of the 3 speeds I got last weekend, did a hose off to clean the dust and debris from it. I think it was stored in a dirty garage for the
last 30 years. The tires are cracked so I will have to get "new" tires. I think it is cool because I have not seen them for so long. I don't know if they are cool now or not. My guess it not, but you never know.



If it doesn't rain this afternoon I will take it out for a ride with S.

Solar Cooker

I had to come home early today and on a whim decided to warm my precooked chicken lunch under the fresnel lens I have. It did work but took 30 minutes to do what the oven does in 15-20. I did cook it in the open and am thinking of trying the experiment again in a glass enclosure. Maybe use a pyrex dish overturned. As it was the chicken sizzled and came out slightly browned.

Human Powered Generator - Bike Version

A long time dream of mine has been to make a pedal powered generator. I remember as a kid in the 70's seeing articles about people that did this with converted bicycles. I never got around to it, but the idea stayed with me.

Lately I set up my mountain bike on a stationary trainer stand. It does what it is supposed to do but the idea of the "wasted" energy bothers me and so I started thinking about bike generators again.

I had my own ideas but I decided to check the current state of the art and found it to be pretty good.

Here are some sites I thouht were worth linking.
Exercise bike conversion. I really like how they reused a bunch of scrap to make theirs.
http://www.angelfire.com/80s/sixmhz/bikegenerator.html

Dave Butcher's site has useful information, and sells plans for his gen bike.
http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen/stats.html

This site is ok also, and he made a style more like what I was thinking of.

http://www.mattshaver.com/bikegen/index.htm


One thing I really want to add to the design are super capacitors, they are expensive but very cool. I have been reading about them but Dave Butcher's site shows him using a Maxwell Technologies 58 Farad 15 module. It is really interesting. Buying the components to make a module, is a little less expensive, but you don't get the neat packaging. The price for the 58 Farad Module is $185.

http://www.maxwell.com/ultracapacitors/products/modules/bmod0058-15v.asp
http://www.prestostore.com/catalog.php/tecategroup.com/dt9239/pd30235/BCAP0350_E250_Ultracapacitor