The Sunflower River Blog
Sunflower River Work Party July 24th
Sunflower River will host our next work party on Saturday, July 24th, from 9 a.m. till sundown. Come whenever you like for as long as you like; we have plenty of flexibility and plenty to do! We will again primarily be working on the earthbag wall, which is proceeding fabulously. We have begun the plastering process, and Ian will be there to lead a team of people with plastering, while we also have a crew work on building the next section of wall. We're almost to the front of the property! It's getting very exciting, and looking really good. (lots of pics on the blog if you want to see how it's been going: http://sunflowerriver.livejournal.com ). If you wanted to come down and do something that doesn't involve mud, the garden can always stand to be weeded. As always, we will provide a farm-fresh breakfast around 11 a.m., and a hearty vegetarian lunch about 3pm.
And save the date--we're hosting a Community Dinner for all you fabulous human beings on Friday, July 30th, in the evening. More details will follow soon!
Hope to see you on the 24th!
UPDATE: if you want to participate in the plastering (i.e., throwing mud at the wall), you'll need gloves, preferably something waterproof (like those plastic-y gardening gloves, or dishwashing gloves, etc.), as there is lime in the plaster mix. It's a lot of fun.
Fri Jul 9 11:48:51 2010 | Kat Heatherington | Comments | permalink
Augmented Reality
[This is follow-up to part 1: Learning Environments.]
At Ostara this year, I was brainstorming with a group of friends over the idea of building a sensor network at Sunflower River. A system to collect real-time information on temperature, humidity, wind, soil moisture, and light level.
This kind of measurement is required to do the kind of analysis that Grow Biointensive does. I'm not aware of a more extensively researched growing method, with years of experimental data and the distilled lessons from that. I want to do something like this at Sunflower River To build a solid record of what is working for us and why.
More broadly, it helps make the invisible visible--it brings attention to factors that affect the farm that are difficult or impossible to measure.
From sensor networks, we began to talk about wireless Internet access over the entire farm. We have wireless access in the house, but at Ostara everyone was in the ritual ground, where the signal doesn't reach.
Having wireless Internet access to every location on the farm would allow us to create an augmented reality environment for the farm. We could attach QR Codes to any object of interest, and a user with a suitable device (like an Android or iPhone) could read that code and be directed to a page on our website describing that object.
For a user with a suitable device, this would allow for detailed information about a subject to be transmitted in the context in which it is being used. If a WWOOFer needed help remembering how to care for our rabbits, that information could be looked up while the WWOOFer was standing at their hutches.
If you combine these two ideas, suddenly the farm is a very data rich environment. Not only could one look up material in the context where you need it, you could also look at the history of activity around that area, review sensor logs, even record your own data. Sunflower River would become an augmented reality environment.
I'm very excited by this idea. However, most of our WWOOFers do not show up with smart phones. If I'm going to go to the effort to attach QR Codes to everything in an effort to create an augmented reality environment, I haven't helped most of the visitors to the farm. In a future post, I'll discuss low-tech augmented reality: the deep information version of labeling our shovels.
Learning Environments
One of the missions of Sunflower River is to be a training and education center for farming, permaculture, sustainability, and consensus decision making. Not only are we working to be a model sustainable farming community, we're looking to be a place to teach and transmit the skills required to replicate that model.
I've recently been doing research to make Sunflower River a better learning environment. A learning environment is an environment designed to make learning and teaching faster and more effective. One in which lessons can be demonstrated and which accepts a degree of experimentation performed by the people in that environment.
The physical layout of a space affects how quickly a person can learn a task. In the language fluency game "Where are your Keys?" this knowledge is embedded in the technique of Set Up, of having nothing in the environment not used in the game.
When Lynn Langit hosts one of her Teaching Children to Program workshops, she hangs example software programs on the walls of the classroom to inspire creativity and exploration.
At Sunflower River, I've been focusing on the physical layout and arrangement of resources and tools as our first step in creating a learning environment . I'd like the environment to be discoverable: to permit a new volunteer to learn what tools are available and what they are called. This can be as simple as labeling tools with their name. It would be even better if the environment inspired curiosity--if it took someone who wouldn't normally ask questions to start. If the environment inspired everyone to task "What is that?"
Optimizing the environment like this has a measurable benefit. Frequently our WWOOF volunteers have no prior experience with farming. If we have to train one of them, we're very likely to need to repeat that training. The faster and easier this is, the quickly our volunteers become effective.
Not only should it be easy to "grab a shovel," it should be easy to demonstrate how to properly use it (And yes, there is proper and improper shovel technique) and for that user to understand the reason they're shoveling.
Each level should help a volunteer see the level beyond that. "That is a shovel" should naturally lead to "This is how you use a shovel" should naturally lead to "This is why we're moving dirt."
Future posts will take this broad analysis and discuss specific technologies we're using to create a learning environment at Sunflower River.
[continue to part 2 of this series, Augmented Reality]
Escape from the Dog Trap
The feral dog we've been having trouble with is still coming around the property. We managed to catch him in a trap, but he broke out before we could call the county. He's still at large.
Seeing this cage makes me worry about our fences.
Clearing out an old wood pile
We have recently acquired a library copy of "A Field Guid to the Plants and Animals of the Middle Rio Grande Bosque." I've been wishing to make a study of the life around Sunflower River, and this book has finally catalyzed that.
This is the first blog entry for the Sunflower River Plant & Animal Catalog, a photo blog documenting the plants, animals, and insects that call Sunflower River home.
I hope eventually to both document everything living here, as well as provide habitat to increase the number of creatures that can live here. I can't provide good habitat unless I understand what lives here and how it contributes to this ecosystem. This project is also a way for me to learn what I can do to increase biodiversity at Sunflower River.
This blog should also serve as a seasonal and historical timeline of habitat activity, allowing us to measure our environmental impact. By documenting our ecosystem over time, we can determine which creatures are thriving, which are dying, and what is changing as we continue to transform Sunflower River into a working farm.
Kit and I spent part of today clearing out an old wood pile near our acequia. This pile has been on the property since before we purchased it, and much of the wood was in an advanced state of decomposition.
Several of the insects we photographed today I haven't identified yet. If you recognize any of the invertebrate pictured behind the cut, please speak up!