#farmhack

FarmHack.org   

Spent an amazing weekend at the Land Workers’ Alliance Farm Hack, hosted by Ruskin Mill College in Gloucestershire.

Farm Hack started in the USA, and is an open source community for resilient agriculture.  The weekend was full of conversation and inspiring ideas from technological innovations - horse drawn minimum tillage systems, solar powered winch-operated lazy weeders, Fergus’ pedal powered mill, to discussions about food access with the Open Food Network, Compost teas, open pollinated seeds, biochar and much more.  A particular highlight was hearing about the work of L’Atelier Paysan in France, a Co-operative network of about 400 farmers who exchange knowledge and open source designs for self-build farm machinery and run workshops to support farmers to fabricate their own tools and equipment.    

It was so good to spend time talking about reclaiming Agrarian culture, Common land and the Creative Commons.  Let’s stop ‘living inside the vending machine of our economy’ as Severine put it.  Check out the work of The Greenhorns, and Grange Future for a wealth of exciting projects that capture the young Agrarian revolution in America.

If you are an aspiring or existing small scale food producer in the UK - join the Land Workers’ Alliance to keep in touch with other events and training sessions that are coming up including Soil Hack and Seed Hack workshops. 

The great news is that a bunch of us from Scotland did some talking and plan to organise a Farm Hack Scotland event in 2016.  Keep an eye on Common Good Food (and support their kick-starter campaign!) as they’ll be one of the groups involved in making this happen.

Just spend the day at a Farm Hack event at Ruskin Mill college.  It was very inspiring to see so many young people into back to the land type ideologies. Interesting workshops on compost tea, food hubs, open source, a cycle milling contraption, and the best lunchtime feast I’ve had for a long time.

Heard these guys speak at Makerfaire, loved them. They had me smiling so much that at the end one of them commented on it. They just made me so happy to know such kind smart hardworking people are out there trying to make things right.