The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.50: DiY Vacuum Seeder and Farmers for Liberty

Episode Date: May 14, 2015

This week I'm delighted to feature my conversation with listener Bernie Woodford of Woodford Heiroom Farm. Bernie recently sent me a submission for the blog featuring the DIY Vacuum Seeder he built with simple parts for $20, for a savings of hundreds of dollars against the commercial version. Check out theruminant.ca for photos and a description of his project. Farmers for Liberty, a group Bernie started, can be found on Facebook. In this episode, we talk about the Vacuum Seeder Bernie built, as well as Farmers for Liberty. 

This is the Ruminant Podcast, and I'm Jordan Marr. TheRuminant.ca is a website devoted to good ideas for farmers and gardeners. At The Ruminant, you'll find all the episodes for this podcast, as well as some of my essays and book reviews, and photo-based submissions from you. I hope you'll check it out. TheRuminant.ca. This week's episode features a user submission, so let's get going. Hey everyone.

So in the last week, I received an awesome submission. So let's get going. Hey, everyone. So in the last week, I received an awesome submission from a listener. This guy. Hi, I'm Bernie Woodford with Woodford Heirloom Farm. Small two-acre farm in suburban Philadelphia. It's been established for, this is my second year farming as a farm. I started out as a backyard gardener about three years ago. I was kind of accidentally selling some farming. I also started Farmers for Liberty, which is a group of like-minded farmers and gardeners

to get together and pretty much promote free markets for selling vegetables. For selling vegetables, you know, we don't believe in centralized planning or subsidies, taking subsidies or anything like that. That's what we're based on. So if you are a market gardener, there's probably a pretty good chance that you know what a vacuum air seeder is. It is a piece of equipment that's really handy when you're seeding 10 by 20 inch greenhouse trays for your your seedlings and if you know what one is you probably also know that they're very expensive well bernie's got a fix for you and it's pretty cool and on top of this interview he gave me he sent me some great photos for the website so if if you need to see the photos to really understand what he did you can head over to the ruminant.ca and and check them out but more importantly the reason you're hearing this is

because Bernie took the time to get a hold of me to let me know that he had a good idea to share with the rest of you and I really hope to get more of those because this is a perfect example of just a great idea that like other farmers need to know about so please please don't be shy. You can email me editor at the ruminant.ca. You can phone me or I guess text me is what I should say. My cell phone is 250-767-6636. If you text me and let me know that you're interested in recording something or submitting something, I'll get ahold of you. Or you can call a Skype number where you can leave a voicemail with the idea or just with a message that you want me to get in touch with you. That is 310-734-8426. 310-734-8426. I'd love to hear from you. And let's speak with Bernie. Talk to you at the end. So Bernie Woodford, I am looking at an open browser tab.

I am at johnnysseeds.com right now. And I have searched for a product they sell called a precision vacuum seeder. And some market gardeners will know about these tools. It's essentially an airtight box with holes in the bottom of it. You stick a vacuum hose in one end and when you turn on the vacuum, the suction pulls air in through the holes, which are perfectly aligned to align up with certain size 10 by 20 greenhouse trays, which allows you to pick up just the number of seeds you need, hold it over the tray, and drop those seeds, exactly one seed per cell into however many cells you have in the tray.

It's an awesome looking tool and it costs $600 US before shipping. You just sent me a submission just last week and you've managed to build one of these for how much? 20 bucks without the, I already had the shop back so I didn't include that. That was just for the seating plate and the contraption that makes the vacuum. So yeah, for those parts it was just $20. Now I also just, I did double check the Johnny's site so actually it does come with a vacuum but even when you factor in, I mean you don don't need a powerful vacuum for this, I would think.

So even when you factor in the purchase of a vacuum, you're still coming out way ahead of the price, especially when you factor in that if you want to create different trays, like let's say you use a 72 hole flats like you do, but you also occasionally use 128-hole flats. Another tray, if you want to get a second tray for the commercial one, costs $150. Right, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're ahead by a lot. I'm just looking at the shop vac that I have.

It's a little two-gallon, one-and-a-half-peak horsepower shop vac. So it's not even one of those big ones that roll around on the floor. This is just like a little lightweight carry-around type of thing. It sits right on the table. Anyway, you have managed to build a pretty decent analog for really cheap. So, yeah, let's talk about it. So what did you do? Well, I came across a seater. I was watching one of the Cornell University videos on YouTube, and the lady in the video

was using one of them, it's a seater flats, and I was like, wow, that's a pretty cool tool. And then I, you know, I was searching around, and I saw like wow that's that's a pretty cool tool and then um I you know I was searching around and I saw the price on them and uh you know with with me being uh you know it's my second year at the farm and things are kind of tight you know budget-wise and everything so um you know six seven hundred dollar unit wasn't in the uh in the budget so um um but uh yeah so what I did is I was kind of thinking what I could use that would be large enough for the plate seed, or the seed plate, and then what I could use to create the vacuum underneath of it to hold the seed in place. And I was kind of looking online, and one of the places I stopped and picked up my bags for the farmer's markets,

it's a restaurant store. So they have these bacon trays that are pretty shallow. They've got just enough of a lip on it to keep the seeds in place. So I was measuring out my flat, and I came across a bacon plate or sheet that's like 25 1⁄2 inches by 18 inches was the dimensions, which is large enough to cover the area of a C-flat. So then I also went to Home Depot and I found a 22 by 16 tote, like a little storage tote. It's about 8 inches deep, too. It's not real deep. So what I did is I marked out where the holes were

and lined up with the flat, you know, the cell locations on the flat and drilled the holes through the baking sheet. There's 72 holes that fit my flat. And just kind of took the smallest drill bit that I had and just put little holes in, drilled through. And then what I did is I flipped it over and I attached the tilt covering it so, you know, when it's sealed so it creates a vacuum. So I used like liquid nails around the perimeter. I screwed it in place, too, with some sheet metal screws. And I also caulked it to make sure I had a nice airtight seal.

And then I took, I think it's about an inch wide drill bit, like a circle bit, and I drilled out a hole in the side of the tote for the vacuum hose to slide into. And then when you turn it on, it creates a vacuum, and then the air is getting sucked through the holes that were drilled into the baking sheet, and it holds the seeds in place. So what I do is I just kind of spill the seeds onto the plate, shake it around until the holes are filled with seed, dump off the excess. Sometimes, you know, you might have

to position some, some might get double, double seeds on a single hole. So you might have to just flick a couple of the seeds off. And once you get everything where you want it as far as you know seat count everything just pour off the extra and then flip it over on top of the flat and then cut the power on the shop vac and it drops the seat right into the already prepared flat that's that's ready to go. I guess I should mention too, I also did build a little frame to help me line up the flat with the cedar

because it's a little tough to see underneath once you flip it over and everything. Okay. So I'm just going to interject real quick and say you have submitted photos and description of this so people can find this as a, as a post on the ruminant.ca, but I was wondering about that, this last issue. So I was looking at one of the photos, you've got a small piece of a very small piece of, I guess, a piece of wood lining the baking tray. So that that's, you've, you've put that in there in the right dimension so that it, you can easily fit it over a planting tray so that you know you've got it lined up correctly

exactly yeah yeah so i made a i made a little it's like a little frame out of a two by four which i dropped the flat into um and then i have the piece of wood that's on the baking sheet and i have arrows drawn on the baking sheet so the arrows lined up with the arrow on the baking sheet lines up with the arrow or my frame and then I have the one piece of scrap wood on the baking sheet itself and that that just shows much when I line it up the arrows up I want to make sure that the piece of the two pieces of wood the frame piece of wood and the the baking sheet piece of wood is or are touching together so and the baking sheet piece of wood are touching together. So that way I know it's perfectly lined up.

So that's just one of those things after I first tried it out, I was like, I don't know how I'm going to be able to see where the seeds are dropping. So I had to come up with something quick. But yeah, it works pretty good though. Pretty smart, man. quick but uh yeah it works pretty good though pretty smart man and uh so now practically speaking um when you use this do you figure using this contraption you are saving a lot of time if you compare it to simply seeding each hole in the flat one by one yeah yeah the only thing um what i was really aiming to do with this thing is to use it for brassica seeds.

I grow a lot of kale at the farm, so, you know, how tiny the brassica seeds are. And to, you know, drop those into each individual shell. It sucks. It really sucks. It's forever. Yeah. So, but the problem is the smallest drill bit that I had in the little, you know, pack of bits that, you know, came as a set, that was still a little too big for the brassica seed. So I don't know how I would make the holes even smaller

if I can find a smaller drill bit. So I kind of gave up using this is using this for Nebraska seeds but for like the larger seeds like your you know squash or watermelon or zucchini seeds there it's awesome for that real quick I mean I'm seeding a a tray in I don't know 30 seconds I think right right that's so yes it's so... It's nice. You can knock out a lot in a short order, so instead of sitting there dropping a seed in each cell. That's awesome, Bernie.

Thank you so much. So if people want to check that out, I mean, you really need to see the photos that Bernie has sent. They can check those out at theruminant.ca. Bernie's website for his farm is is uh woodford heirloom farm.com and now bernie if you don't mind i'd love to just ask you about this other group you form farmers for liberty yeah farmers for liberty uh kind of started as a um i guess a counter to um i guess a lot of the stuff i was was kind of shocked when I started talking to some of the farmers.

You know, even the local ones are some of those, you know, especially the ones that I talked to online. Where there's more, I don't know, I don't really know how to describe it, but I guess they were looking more towards, I guess, government to provide everything for the farm i guess in the form of subsidies and then also expecting government to pay for their customers uh vegetables and some type of you know supplemental nutrition plan or i don't know if you guys have them up there but um yeah i can change the name of them down here every so often. So, you know, I don't know. It's just kind of, I mean, the way I look at it is, you know,

if you're not making a profit running your business, you might want to look into maybe doing something different instead of relying on this. So, yeah, I just kind of started the group um that that promote um you know free markets and uh you know i kind of look at it as true fruit uh food freedom i mean you know what's freer than growing it and selling it directly to your your you know your customers and stuff without all these you know burdens and regulations and stuff. And then the other thing that I'm pretty concerned about is the more farmers that you have, I guess, on this subsidy gravy train, I think it's just easier for the politicians and the bureaucrats to keep coming up with these regulations and stuff that really

hurt the small farms. Because when there's all these people, you know, all the farmers on these programs and stuff and depending on that money, it's just nobody's going to stand up and say, like, hey, this is not right. You know what I mean? They're just going to kind of keep quiet and just

keep going about it. Yeah, well, look, I can relate to at least some of what you just they're just gonna kind of keep quiet and just yeah keep going about it yeah well look i can relate to at least some of what of what you just said bernie i mean i know that as a farmer i get asked occasionally um in surveys or surveys is how it often comes up but but just like what do i need what do i need from from government and i'm not i'm not against um supports, but whenever I'm asked, I have a really hard time figuring out how to answer that question. It's frustrating, you know, to be farming in an area where real estate values are so darn high. But even so, I'm not therefore prepared to say, well, subsidize the purchase of my land or whatever, that sort of thing. I guess what I'm saying is I can relate to the sentiment that ideally I should, I don't know, I just have a mentality myself that I should be able to make it work if I'm good at farming.

I don't think it applies. Personally, I don't think it applies to every single branch of farming i think there are obstacles in the way of many other types of farmers uh like i'm a veggie grower that that make it that make it really difficult um i guess i i'm thinking of the livestock industry and and and how hard it is for a small scale livestock grower who is concerned for example about animal welfare when they're up against tyson foods you know and the economies of scale and systems that that the mega size um livestock industry is uh kind of set up for so but but anyway i i i do i do bristle a little when when

you know it seems like our community is is, really pushing that message of more support, more support, more support. It doesn't, I don't, I don't know. I haven't put my thumb on it. Cause I'm not, I'm not dead against the idea of support, but I, and yet I don't readily come up with what I want. You know, I, um, so maybe, maybe I'd fit more in the camp of like, you know, I think you use the phrase kind of just let me do my job, you know, remove, remove barriers, but just let me do, do my job. Yeah, no, I agree completely. It's just, um, yeah, the barriers are, you know, I mean, you know, there's, there's things that I'd like to do, um, you know, with the business and stuff, but I need all these extra licenses and inspections and all that other crap that goes along with it.

By the time you add everything up, it's like, is this even worth getting into? You know what I mean? So I just kind of just keep pushing it aside. I'm not sure if I'm going to eventually get into it or not. I just got to see what the market demands are and whether or not I think it's profitable even with all the extra, um, expenses as far as, you know, licensing. Yeah. Well, I'll give you, I'll give you a good example from British Columbia in 2006, the government brought in quite hastily, some new regulations for, um, anyone who wanted to raise livestock for slaughter to sell

that mandated that it could no longer be slaughtered on farm unless the farm was federally inspected, which was not reasonable for many, many farms, and required them to use an abattoir. The problem was that there was a lack of abattoir infrastructure in many pockets of the province. And the reasoning given just felt really hollow, which was like in the name of public safety.

But I did some research on it at the time, and there really didn't seem to be any evidence that there were any major health issues stemming from slaughter and sale of animals from small scale farms in British Columbia. So it seemed like there perhaps were other motivations at play. And I mean, then you think of the broader context of the BSE scares coming from the large livestock industry and how there's a lot of paranoia around that and you can start to see that that maybe the government had other motives than truly public safety but it's just an example of a new barrier that was put in place a new regulation that was honestly crippling for small-scale livestock

producers in British Columbia right right yeah I was just actually the first thing I thought of fire you know you you were just explaining that to me, the first thing that popped in my head was they probably did it as a public safety issue. So as soon as that popped in my head, that's when you said that they did do that in the name of public safety. But I don't know. The way I look at it is the local farmer has an to um make sure the stuff leaving his farm is in good shape i mean he wants repeat customers so you know if you're getting your customer base sick or or worse um chances are they're not going to come back and you know purchase uh purchase anything from you so um or worse um uh you know uh you know legally speaking i guess as you know

maybe suing or something like that but um yeah i i don't know i i like you said i think there is more a lot more to a lot of these these regulations well i guess it could just easily become you know even if there are good intentions coming sometimes, or I would even perhaps suggest often what it really becomes about is, I mean, I could, I, okay, look, I don't want to get, I don't want to get too conspiratorial, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that, um, it's, it's often the larger farms that are more equipped to implement new government programs and be able to afford that. It's certainly applied to the livestock example I just gave. I could think of other examples like any, you know, new, new regulations that could, could drop, uh, for veggie producers to, um, you know, have UV treatment for their

water that is sprayed on their vegetables, something like that, where it's a larger farm that's going to be able to benefit from that and, and, or at least afford to implement that. And therefore that now becomes a barrier to entry for for smaller scale farms um so yeah you can start to just see how that that that insidious regulation creep can be a problem so i think it's really interesting you started the group um so how can people find the group it's on facebook you said yeah it's a facebook group uh right now um i do have a domain name, Farmers for Liberty, but it redirects right to my farm website. So it just redirects right now. I don't have a website built up.

But if anybody's on Facebook and they're interested, they can just search Farmers for Liberty and a page will pop up. Kind of follow it. And if anybody wants to, I guess, contact me about anything, especially like the Cedar plans or anything, if there's anything that's missing as far as details or anything, they can just go ahead and just contact me through the Woodford Heirloom Farm website. Sure. Okay, well, Bernie Woodford, thank you so much for your submission and for joining me on the phone. I really appreciate your time. Bernie Woodford, thank you so much for your submission and for joining me on the phone.

I really appreciate your time. Not a problem, Jordan. Hey, I'm just glad that the podcast is continuous this year. So I know when you started on backup, you said that was a goal of yours this year. So I know I'm enjoying it. So I do listen to you. Thank you, Bernie. I want to jump on that uh you're the reason i have an episode this week one of the hardest parts for me is uh is making the time to book guests because it's it's time consuming and i'm i was i i usually i

you know i've been riding on a on a backlog that i've built up and i'm kind of get running low so your submission turned into this episode. And so, and that's why I invite other people to, uh, to send me a submission and I'll, after when I record, when I do post-production on this episode,

Bernie, I'll, I'm going to share that information again. So anyway, thanks again. And, uh, um, I'm looking forward to,

uh, to putting all this great information up on the site. Cool. All right. Thanks, Jordan. Wasn't that great? I thought that was great. I can't wait to build one of those things this coming fall.

I hope you like that, and I hope you're enjoying the podcast. I recently invited you to send me an email and let me know what you think of the show. And some of you have, and your feedback's been really positive for the most part and just really encouraging. So thanks to those of you who did that. And as for the rest of you, I'll encourage you to do the same. Whether you like the podcast or don't like it, if you want to write me and let me know what you think, it'd be really helpful. Editor at theruminant.ca, which is the same email to use if you would like to make a submission.

If you were going to stand on stage in front of a group of farmers and gardeners and tell them something cool you're doing or something you think they need to know about, what would it be? Think about that and then get a hold of me. I'd love to receive a photo-based submission for the blog, or even better, I'd love to interview you for the show. So that's it for this week, folks. Have a great week of farming, and I'll talk to bleed us dry.

We could be happy with life in the country. With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands. I've been doing a lot of thinking Some real soul searching And here's my final resolve I don't need a big old house Or some fancy car To keep my love going strong

So we'll run right out Into the wilds and graces We'll keep close quarters with gentle faces And live next door to the birds and the bees And live life like it was meant to be Bye.