Jaden - Fake Predator

There are many problems that can and will occur while working on a farm but with the help of different tools these problems can be lessened or solved. A problem that has repeatedly occurred on farms are pests eating and destroying crops. The fake predator project is to stop pests, specifically voles from destroying crops. This project is designed to look and act like a hawk which is one of the voles' most dangerous natural predators. The fake hawk has an adjustable head and wings along with a voice box that generates hawk sounds to scare away the voles. This project was specifically designed to help Land Sakes farm, with the ability to adjust the height of the hawk so it can fit in the high tunnel and be easily stored away. As well as being waterproof so the hawk can handle weather changes. The fake hawk is perfect for any farm who wants to save time, money and resources. 

Macy - Fake Predator

This fake hawk solves pest problems on farms, specifically voles. This idea sparked from information gathered, which showed that voles often don’t destroy crops out in fields due to predators. The Vole Vigilante was born to create the illusion of a predator, with multiple features to scare off the voles. 

These features include hawk sounds, movable wings, a movable head, feathers, and other artistic designs to replicate the look of a red-tailed hawk(commonly seen in Massachusetts). With all these features, the Vole Vigilante will scare off the voles, similarly to a scarecrow. This project is intended to help Land Sakes Farm. Recently they have had vole problems inside of their high tunnels. The Vole Vigilante will help save the farm: time, money, and crops.  

Seeds and Sprouts is a decorative chalkboard made for Land Sake Farms’ flower gardens in Weston, MA. This functional art piece is made to help improve the farms’ community and customers by having a space to display data. Creating a magnetic chalkboard-like base, Land Sake Farms’ staff can use the board to convey different information to their visitors. Some of the information considered was to have an illustrated birds-eye-view image of the different areas of the flower garden. There would also be a key at the bottom of this “map” displaying and showing what types of flowers are in each area allowing customers to have an easy experience finding their specific flower needs. Another piece of data that would be displayed on the board is a list/ compilation of flowers that are currently in season, which would also be displayed with the additional laser-cut and painted flower magnets. 

Seeds and Sprouts’ artistic and visual aspect, includes multiple different layers. Creating a flower field-like border, three stationary layers of laser-cut wood resemble a flower garden. This brings dimension and visual interest to the pieces and hopefully intrigues visitors of the farm and flower gardens. Each layer on the laser-cut garden is also painted with acrylic with a weather-proofed finish to ensure a long-lasting effect. These layers are attached to the bottom half of a 2x3 ft piece of sheet metal which is covered in a couple of coats of chalkboard paint. 

Jade:

Humanless High Tunnels is an innovative and fully automated system that facilitates the regulation of temperature, humidity, and ventilation in soft-wall high tunnels. The system is specially designed to enable farmers to install a monitoring system quickly and easily, which regulates the temperature and humidity levels within the high tunnels. Additionally, the system automatically rolls and unrolls the sides of the high tunnels to regulate ventilation and humidity.

Humanless High Tunnels offers an efficient and effective solution for small farms by taking on the time-consuming task of monitoring and regulating the environmental conditions within the high tunnels. This allows farmers to have more flexible schedules and downtime, which can lead to improved productivity and work-life balance.The system is composed of three primary components: an array of sensors that are placed inside the high tunnels, a central computer, and the door system. The sensors operate continuously to report the atmospheric conditions within the high tunnel to the central computer. The computer then uses this data to determine when the side doors need to be opened or closed to regulate the temperature and humidity levels.

Wyatt:

Humanless High tunnels is an aid for farmers who want their plants to thrive indoors without anyone monitoring their high tunnels. Farmers at a local farm called “Land Sake” have expressed an issue with their high tunnels. The plants inside these small greenhouses need fresh air every day, and so someone has to be at the farm every day to roll up a tarp that protects against the environment. If plants do not get enough humidity and the right temperature, they can get a plethora of diseases. 

Humanless High Tunnels is here to help farmers have some freedom and save money on workers. Rolling up a high tunnel tarp can take up to 10 minutes to do by hand, and must be done every single day, sometimes more than once a day. Using a DC motor, an Arduino, and a humidity sensor, Humanless High Tunnels will automatically roll up your tarp based on the humidity in the high tunnel. Once the humidity levels reach a certain percentage, the sensor will tell the motor to roll up a rail, bringing the tarp with it. 

Emerson:

“Scaling Up Agriculture” is a fully automated scale designed to easily weigh and log yield data. The project is the product of a collaboration between Nuvu and Land’s Sake Farm, a non-profit in Weston, MA. During a visit to the farm, employees detailed the current produce weighing system. The system the farm used before this project was inefficient and left a lot of room for human error. They first weighed their produce then scratched down those numbers only to later upload to a google sheet when an employee had time. This wasted a lot of valuable time that a farmer could use to be in a field harvesting more produce. The scale weighs agricultural products normally, however its unique design then uploads that data to the google cloud. “Scaling Up Agriculture” not only compiles the farm’s data, but synthesizes it too. “Scaling Up Agriculture” uses a web interface to organize the data, plot and graph data about soil health, weather trends, and uses public records to compare Land’s Sake Farm’s growth history to other farms in Massachusetts. 

“Scaling Up Agriculture” combats Land’s Sake Farm’s basic system and expedites the process with its unique design. “Scaling Up Agriculture” is made with code using a large circuit. The circuit is built on a 20x20” plywood sheet, with four load cells placed in custom 3D printed brackets. The load cells measure yield weight. There is also a rotary encoder button and LCD screen within the circuit. The screen is used to display a produce type, and acts like a selection menu. Once a product is picked, the button can be pressed to officially select the type of produce. All of these elements are connected to ESP32 microcontroller wifi connected arduino. Once the wifi connected arduino connects to a local wifi network, it then utilizes ‘If This Then That’ software to automatically connect the data to a google spreadsheet. The project was made to be versatile, durable, and supportive of a small business’ (Land’s Sake Farm) produce weighing process. 

Tommy:

“Scaling Up Agriculture” is a weighing scale that works to weigh and aggregate and upload yield data directly from the implement to the cloud. This project was born out of a partnership with Land’s Sake Farm in Weston, Massachusetts. The farm detailed their weighing process, which required many steps from data collection to data synthesization and had much room for error. This project works to streamline that process, saving important time for farmers. After compiling yield data, “Scaling Up Agriculture” plots the data on a graph next to environmental factors that impact yield, such as weather and soil health. Land’s Sake Farm’s data is also plotted next to publicly available data on local farms of comparable size. 

Land’s Sake Farm will benefit from this design because it makes their data collection process more efficient and faster, saving working hours and allowing the farmers to spend more time out in the fields. The data will then be synthesized into a simplified, usable form and plotted automatically against other relevant data to better inform decisions on the farm. The scale uses four load cells, which are all grounded to each other and then feed into a breakout board. The breakout board attaches to a battery-powered ESP-32 Microcontroller that is connected to the local Wi-Fi network. The user selects the type of produce with a rotary encoder and an LCD screen, and then the ESP-32 processes and uploads the data directly to a Google Sheets document. Once the data is uploaded it is plotted and then displayed on a mobile web interface, where it is compared to other publicly-available data such as the weather and inputted data such as annual soil testing readings. Scaling Up Agriculture automates data collection and usage on Land’s Sake Farm, allowing the farm to make more informed decisions.

Drip tape remover is a device that efficiently re-spools drip tape for recycling. Plastic waste is a major problem that has disastrous consequences if not solved, from worldwide health complications to mass extinction and destruction of natural environments. Agriculture waste is over 5% of plastic waste in the world today. Land Sake farms aim to reduce their own waste, which is mainly drip tape irrigation. Each year, Land Sake farms throw away about 665 pounds of drip tape, or over 60,000 plastic bags! Since drip tape cannot be reused with LSF’s current method of extraction, we created a device that can re-spool and prepare the drip tape to be recycled