here I am on the plane to buenos aires and here it goes my carbon credits… my ass is a square, I’m still with a cold, 39º of fever and 13h on the same seat doesn’t give any health:)
we will pass the next month working with Judith and her team. yep I’ve said we, tiago will come from lisbon next week;) we don’t have a final plan only some ideas, but one thing is for sure we will be refarming a lot hehehe first things first: Judith, where do you keep all the trash in your city?
we have a wiki and we are proud of it :)
this december I’ve been with dani quilez (bcn) and tiago (lx) preparing this precious tool. is still on her beginnings so see it as a draft.
is yours also! use it and contribute with your ideas, thoughts or criticism :)
sharing has always made us smarter
bufff living on the edge. the clock is always tick tack and the boards came on my last day in portugal:) but I still had time to assemble 2 boards with tiago in lisbon hehehe
the job is perfect and clean although they forgot to print the silkscreen layers.. this boards came from the other side of the planet swimming trough sharks and skipping santa-claus-snail-mail-traffic. we asked seeedstudio.com to make them. it cost us 89$ plus 33$ shipping to portugal. 122$/ by 10 boards “on vacation” and 10 “on the sofa” gives a 6.1$ each board. nice price since it was a very ultra-low-small production.
here it goes the local-sustainable-environmentally-friendly-talk of the refarm speach :( and wait until you see the list of countries where the components are made.. there falls the local talk also..
but on the “safety” side of the materials used on this boards there is only one component that we still didn’t find a Rohs compliance version and that is the LDR (Photo Light Dependent Resistor) everything else is “green”
well green is what they call it but is more a greenish-brownzing.. the RoHS directive, stablished by the european union, calls for the near elimination of 6 chemical substances used in most electronics and electronic equipment: Lead(Pb), Mercury (Hg), Cadmium (Cd), Hexavalent chromium (Cr6+), Polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) and Polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE). despise all the components that we are using in this project are at least “RoHS compliant” we still have a scarecrow that would damage the environment and ourselves if not correctly disposal upon is end of life. and you know how are the objects, they don’t last forever but some of their raw material do. take mercury for example: it crosses all the food chain and rests on the top. by the way is you , your neurons, your cells, your friends, your mother and her grandson.. there is something in the word ecosystem..
list of countries in which last significant manufacturing process was carried out:
what a niiiice workshop we had :) for the ones that have the pleasure to know donostia you can imagine the great time that we had here. great food, great weather, great people and an amazing landscape. here you feel the power of the nature on all her glory :) the sea is strong, the trees are huge, the green is dense and the people are mimetic to these surroundings.
we where invited by jon and josemi. they are both professors at the university of architecture. the day started with david juarez from straddle 3 describing the flying 5Y journey of their recent co-work on open.hack.arquitecture. a work where ecosystems and the needs of home or public space for humans are in a constant dialog. like josemi observed “david has spoken 1 hour and breath 2 times” a breathless presentation indeed! then I made a smaller (and slower;) presentation of the refarm project, we all went to eat and then we started to built. we built a hanging farm and a vermicompost based on this design. we didn’t find fabric on the streets so the vermicompost is unfinished. the farm has mentha piperita and allium schoenoprasum obviously we made 1/2 L mojitos for everyone when we finished the workshop :p on the farm we implement the watering system but is unfinished. the water pump is not in a very good condition, should be replaced. we didn’t finish the holes in the tubes and we must put the sensors in place and the board. luckily there is an “arduino” group here in donostia so the electronics implementation should be easy :)
today me and dani quilez are in fablab-bcn hosted in IACC with susanna tesconi, our friend from interactivos09. we made an “agreement”: they let us use the lazer cut and we exchange their kindness with a refarm presentation and mini workshop. we are here making the boxes for the seeds and for the eletronics. we use cardboard that we found this evening in the middle of the street on our way to IACC :)
next 10 december, we will be here in donostia. the day starts with david juarez and then I’ll give a small lecture about refarm. after we feed ourselves we’ll go built farms all together :)
in the middle time we’ll travel to portugal spending there the kristmas. we’ll expect to have the boards delivered from china!! how sustainable.. and assemble them in altlablx.org. if you are near come and give us a hand :p
great november I should say.. we’ve been in cáceres making farms with wheels, we had a food-meeting in cacis.cat. feed our bodies and draw great plans together around the table on open-air :) news soon I promise. in between I’ve been fighting with eagle (the software that I use to draw the electronic boards) and the boards are almost ready for factory. since we are in a hurry and we don’t have a lot of cash we’ll produce only 20 each. there are 3 boards now: refarm on vacations, refam on the sofa and refarm lights on. we’ll postpone to january 2 boards: refarm on the wall and refarm on mini vacations. all to fit in buenos aires schedule. buenos aires?? yep, buenos aires.. we were invited by the artist judith villamayor to collaborate on her project articultores.net. me and tiago we’ll be in argentina from 29jan > 10mar. if you are near you know, be our guest and come refarming with us. talking about who is near who and friends that you miss around you, we never thought that we would have the chance to visit so soon our friends, santiago, belén and nahuel :)
cu soon hehehe
someone cut the ropes of our hanging farms :( some plants didn’t survive.. FUCK! GRRRR!! one year tanking care of this farms and some asshole send them to the ground.. buff say no more.. what a day today at hangar.. and top of the pops the day finished with the cops entering in our farm and taking notice of our ID.. luckily we’re here making farms or should I say bombs? rest in peace arnica montana and the giant angola’s garlic… in your place we now have a brand new red car ;(
is time to play CSI lol
if this is a blog about process the bills must be exposed. I’ve been lazy with this… the bills are not huge but I have.. how to say.. billdiversity :) 300 types of bills in 300 kinds of paper and there are things that are priceless.. the time and dedication of 19 people until now. but I’ve got all the data, every screw, every metro ticket, all the hours that every person is connected with this project.
here you have the timesheet of refarm, next week the accountable bills and who pay them. you just need to ask and I give you the password. transparent but not anonymous ;)
here we are @ cáceres:) me and andreas puck we’ll be holding a workshop tomorrow about openhardware. we will talk about materials, built some prototypes of urban farms and expand our area of DIY. pics on our flickr account :p
this is one of our hanging farms.
I call it the cook’s farm. the idea is to have a selection of flavours that are used to give some sense to the food as a meal :) we’ve got Parsley (Petroselinum crispum), Chives (Allium schoenoprasum), Garlic (Allium sativum) and some space for the cooker of hangar put some plants at his choice. the second part of this post title are the words of one of the hangar’s guards. the original expression is: “esto no es un huerto esto es una chapuza!” and was his last argument on the “is this a park for a car or a place for a farm” discussion.. I’m sure we’ll soften his heart and feed his body when he taste some of the herbs or use some tomatoes on his “pa amb tomaca”. or does he eats cars?