Miguel Castro Jr Work Plan

Preparation and Planning

• Build a rocket mass heater in the California location to enable replicable heating methods for a worm farm at FeF during the winter.
• Train 2 worm farmers to operate and grow system to full production.
• Insulate worm room
• Build sprayer system for soil/worm food holding area
• Finish processing and packaging area
• Finalize price points with retailers
• Educational aquaponics demo setup for Nevada County resilience gathering on 6/10
• Attend Greenermind Summit 2012 to reinforce networks understanding of project goals 6/14-6/17

At Factor e Farm

• Select soil supplier after soil inspection
• Build ~300 sq ft building with sheltered processing area(doubles as my living quaters until full production is reached and utilizes the entire space; approx. 6 months)
• Build rocket mass heater
• Work with Marshall Hilton to design bicycle-powered harvester for processing the worm castings and increase efficiency by an estimated 50-60%
• Develop methods of manufacturing innovative part designed to retrofit common 5GAL buckets into worm farm production units
• Scale-up worm farm facilites (soil input at $20/cu yd to castings output at $270/cu yd bulk; estimated 1200% ~value added processing)
• Standardize worm production to match fish food supply needs of future aquaponics system.
• Work on CAD with all project
• Organize tools and shop (Apply 5S to FeF)
• Develop collaboration with National Congress of American Indians
• Fabricating
• Agriculture/farming
• General construction