Gabrielle Work Plan

Month 1

Abstract: First month involves creating a detailed site survey + general land stewardship plan (Site Plan). It also involves startup of a summer garden and beginning of responsible animal husbandry - starting with dairy cows in a mob grazing scenario. Documentation work involves creating a resource list of local agriculture stock + skill resources. Learning involves basic fabrication up to the skills required to maintain and modify tractor and implements.

Tasks:

• Maintain Factor e Farm Agriculture Resources wiki page
• Take charge of organizing ag tools
  • Gabi Shopping List for manual and powered tools
• Create a Factor e Farm Agriculture Resources wiki page
• Create a Management Plan for Dairy Cow by Saturday standup meeting
  • Include materials, costs, ergonomics of milking and pasture, health, grazing plan, shelter, scale, milking infrastructure, reproductive timeline, food supplements, medicine
  • Budget and sourcing of stock and materials
• Survey - 2 weeks
  • Conversation with Dan Shellenberg - Saturday - sourcing equipment + basics of technique
  • Review the online video, post on, and create Surveying 101 wiki page
  • Source open source GIS and mapping software
  • Pasture, berming, long term planting (hazelnuts + chestnuts) ponds master plan
• Garden Plan
  • Review Monday standup meeting

Learning Plan

• One month
• Fabrication - weld + torch - DONE
  • Rationale: all skills required to fix a tractor or modify agricultural equipment - DONE
  • 10 hrs welding - DONE
  • 10 hours torching - DONE
• Diagramming, graphics software - DONE
  • Project ideas: sketchup site plan, preliminary designs for dairy milker & combine
• Three Months
  • Site plan - File:Siteplan.skp
  • CAD up to Fabrication Drawings - sketchup learned, but still would like to learn AutoCAD
  • Dairy Milker and Combine - IN PROGRESS (12/12)

Month 2

Month 2 involves continuation of agriculture operations, to be determined in detail after results of month 1.

• Propose a replicable, economic sustainability model for Factor e Farm Neosubsistence Agricultural operations
• Produce a Vision Statement for Factor e Farm open source agroecology

Milestones

Full, year round diet for 12 people

• Greenhouse built (14” wall, 6” space with 4” bricks)
• Single spade plow tested and implemented - deemed best for draft power
• Double spade plow tested and implemented - deemed best for lose, deep soil, Lifetrac's wheels compact the soil too much though
• Keyline subsoil plowing 2012
• Edible fence planted (N line, S line, 3 acre pasture on NE corner)
• Pond dug
  • Fish stocked
• Shallow dam dug with LifeTrac (toothbar bucket)
• Horto Domi fully functioning (water hookup, planted, worms)
• Bees
• Root cellar/storm shelter/shroom house dug
• Open Source Combine

Pig

• Fence built
• Water infrastructure
• Shelter
• Pig sourced

Dairy

• Cow shelter dug and built
• Second cow bought
• Dairy Milker prototype
  • CAD
  • Bill of Materials
  • Fabrication

Hay

• Mower refurbished, adapted to LifeTrac, implemented - we paid Gary to mow instead
• Rake refurbished, adapted to LifeTrac, implemented
• Baler adapted to LifeTrac and implemented

Accessibility

• Road connecting back through front, passing pond
• Terraces around HabLab dug and planted
• Terraces on hill dug and planted

Planning

• Site plan finalized - File:Siteplan.skp
• Scalable, replicable model rewritten to reflect a full growing year
  • Documented: crop, acres, yield in pounds
  • Season summaries

etc

• Bat Houses
• Mushroom propagation

Ongoing Work

In addition to:

• planting
• setting up pasture
• research and planning
• construction
• site clean-up
• production runs
• planning
• irrigation/water infrastructure
• food processing/fermentation

this is what I do every day: