We’ve been asked a few times to recommend reading lists to people so I thought it was about time we listed a few of our favourite books. We read a lot and this list are the ones we think are the most informative, inspiring or plain useful. I’ll add more books to the shelf as [...]

A couple of months back I was lucky enough to win an Arduino starter kit from the folk at Mindkits. With the Christmas break upon us we’ve finally had some time to get our first project underway - a wireless water tank level gauge.
Our main water tank for the farm is out of view of [...]

We are in the middle of a scheduled power outage thanks to our lines company. The last “planned” outage for maintenance we were supposed to have never happened, so I was a bit blase when the letter arrived announcing today’s outage. Someone new must be in charge because at 1:00pm exactly our power went off.
Thankfully [...]

This post should help restore some geek balance to the “farmgeek”. We had the pleasure of a visit from our friend Dave this weekend and as a result of some logistical issues I was lucky enough to have possession of his reprap for a few days. What is a reprap? From the reprap Wikipedia article:
The [...]

We are very fortunate to have a prolific spring on the property that supplies all the water we need. While we currently use petrol and diesel-powered pumps to move the water around the farm, we have always planned on using more sustainable methods.The first step is the installation of a water ram pump.
Ram pumps work [...]

For those wondering “what the heck is a paddock vac for”, well it’s a vacuum for the paddocks - more specifically the manure in the paddocks. This one is powered by a Honda 4 stroke 50cc engine and stores about a half a cubic metre on board.
The two main reasons for using it are: we [...]

With the stables fit out finished it was time to finish off the solar power project for the shed. This is our first foray into solar power so we started small, modular and scalable. We really just wanted the ability to run lights and the occasional small appliance (like horse clippers) from the 3-bay shed. [...]

Not having any comfrey here at the new farm we mail ordered some last week. One kg of roots arrived in the post so today we planted it. Comfrey is fantastic stuff for composting or feeding to stock. It easily grows from sections of root and you can split it up each Spring to increase [...]

Karen has been using Twitter for ages for a lot of her work around communities and technology stuff. I’d been reluctant to try it due to the fact I don’t spend enough time in front of the PC (although a few wet days soon put paid to that argument).
Now I’m using it I have to [...]

Well it’s almost live. Every 30 seconds or so our wee web cam takes a pic of the farm. Normally it will be facing outside during daylight hours, but as it’s dark outside right now, Karen whipped up a pretty good impression of what’s out there for your viewing pleasure.
The camera is a nifty little [...]