About this project

          Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is !

              Help Fund First Fruits Farms

Remember R2D2 and the Skywalker ranch? We hope to make that vision of a small family farm of the future, a reality today.

Healthy local food is not available at a cost that all families can afford. By reducing labor and energy costs, we hope to bring affordable, organic, locally grown food to every neighborhood.

Help us change the world by developing a robot controlled DIY neighborhood farm which is powered entirely with free, local, sustainable, renewable energy sources like yard and food waste. Help us revitalize local communities with a sound, food-backed local currency.

We are recycling motors, engines, and materials to develop a series of greenhouse robots that anyone can replicate with simple tools and access to their local dump, craigslist and freecycle.org.

Compost greenhouse heater and transplanter robot prototypes

If minimum funding is secured, the robots developed will include at least:

• Greens transplanter
• Greens harvester
• Greens autoseeder (below)

The renewable energy systems will include:

• Anaerobic digester - methane and organic fertilizer production
• Compost greenhouse heating system (shown below)

Prototype compost heat exchangers full sized will be double the dimensions - 8' x 4'

and a greenhouse environmental control system that will control:

• Nutrient water pumps
• Greenhouse heating and cooling systems
• Fans
• Greenhouse polyfilm inflation

Don't stop funding at $15,000

We have plans for more development to provide a system to grow a wide assortment of vegetables, in addition to greens. We want to add robot managed fish tanks to create an eco-friendly, closed loop system.

Other systems planned are:

• machine vision controlled tomato and vine crop robot
• geothermal cooling
• evaporation reclamation system
• rain catchment cisterns
• storm water injectors for excess run off
• virtual internet farming for disabled workers and community gardeners
• online market place to promote community members that accept Just Money for goods and services like craigslist
• plant health monitoring, and much more.

Any additional technology developed with kickstarter funds will also be made open source subject to the First Fruits "feed the poor" requirement.

How we will use your money

The majority of first $15,000 in funding will be used for materials and parts to develop the above robots and renewable energy systems.

Funds will also be used to finish essential infrastructure including:

• Entrance to farm
• Poly Film to finish covering all 8,000 square feet of hoop houses
• materials like polytubing for radiant floors and other materials we can't acquire from recycled sources
• Internet and computer
• Print up some Just Money Notes to raise more money locally for food production

"I Understand the need for sustainable local food and energy, why are you guys issuing your own money?"

Good question. Labor and energy are the two main components of a greenhouse operating budget. Money is needed to both acquire the other operating necesities as well as capital items like the greenhouses themselves. Our first greenhouse was purchased with 2000 JUST MONEY greens. Bank created interest bearing is just not sustainable over time as been recently evident. So we decided to create and alternative similar to CSA shares but with the added benefit of helping our community. Watch this Money as Debt II Video to understand why bank debt money is unsustainable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCu3fpg83TY & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2LjbBfh7Ug&feature=related

Our current progress includes these acquisitions:

• Crop share lease on our two acre site
• 8,000 sq ft of greenhouse(hoop house) framing acquired
• 20,000 gallon water tank which can become 4 fish tanks
• 5 donated 330 gallon totes
• 6,000 feet of hydroponic NTF gulleys
• 2 prototype compost heating drums
• Autoseeder prototype
• Robot transplanter prototype
• 2 greenhouse transport robots made from recycled power wheelchairs
• outdoor transport utility robot
• Precision GPS location system - 1/2 inch accuracy
• Kinect 3D camera hack to provide vision to our robot farmers
• one 275 gallon oil tank modified for anaerobic digester
• microcontroller and software for compost heat drum
• microcontroller and software for drip bucket system
• DIY low cost 3 axis motor controller designed and built
• 30 homemade drip buckets and drip tubing
• Design of Five Green Just Money Note
• Mini excavator
• Several tons of rubber mulch for use as radiant floor insulation
• Mini milling machine and CNC conversion kit
• Arc welder
• Site clearing by our local Conservation Core
• plastic barrels from Coca cola
• Coffee grounds from Starbucks
• Yard waste from local landscapers
• 900 sq foot hoop house built and floor insulation laid
• 800 square foot workshop footing dug and soil cement floor laid
• dozens of recycled motors, fans and pumps acquired
• Well drilling rig for water and geothermal wells

spring 2011 progress video

DIY Motor Controller - used to control greenhouse gantry transplanter and harvesting robots and virtual every other robot prototype except wheeled transport and field harvester robots. as various greenhouse robot design are finalized we will layout controller boards for each.

 

Mobile robots controller (1st prototype)

 

Here's a partial list of people that have pitched in for our project:

• Paul Mock - Mock's greenhouse - took farm notes for our first greenhouse, donated rockwool & tomato plants- Paul is our hydroponics mentor
• Dr. Carl Camp - 25 years of bioreactor design experience - anaerobic digester
• Mike Bowersox - VP Ben Lewis plumbing - donated excavator and welding
• Bob King Jr. - Halpro - machining for anaerobic digester and material for CNC conversion
• 3 student design teams from University of Maryland's Mechanical Engineering Department
• Chris Rubin - volunteer
• Souleymane Coulibaly - videographer
• Courtney James - marketing, design and farm work
• John Scourtis - #1 volunteer
• Diana James - farmer's wife

Technical advisers include:

• Rick Cohn - UMD AG - biomass systems
• Reinhard Radermacher - UMD director Enviromental Energy Engineering
• Santiago Solares - UMD ME department student adviser
• David Mears & Tom Manning - Rutgers Controlled Environment Agriculture
• Lou Albright - Cornell hydroponics lighting expert

Our community partners include:

• Bethel World Outreach Church - land partner
• Manna Foods - distribution of our First Fruits to the poor
• F.O. Day - control system for excavator robot
• Wes Ady - 6,000 square feet of greenhouse framing, 20,000 gallon water tank
• Pete Hanna - 6,000 feet of NTF hydroponic gulleys and 2000 sq feet of hoop house frames
• Montgomery County Conservation Corp - site clearing and prototyping
• Our House - built composting heating drums
• Montgomery County Transfer Station - tons of parts, materials, motors engines, etc.
• Starbucks - coffee grounds for compost heat exchanger

Dozens more have chipped in as well.

The Goal: Affordable food in every neighborhood

This Kickstart will do more than start one local farm. It will bring healthy food to every home and school, convert our wastes to energy and fix our local economies.

After our farm is up and running, we will be putting these systems in schools, rooftops, neighborhoods and inner city food deserts. 

No one can solve all of our problems, but we believe we can make communities healthy again with your help.

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