Somebody needs to invent a system that allows people like me to find the tools I constantly misplace on the farm. No, really.

We have 185 acres. Even if I limit myself to the area of our farm buildings, we’re talking 5 to 7 acres. It’s really, really easy to lose tools, even big tools, by simply putting them down and forgetting where they got put.

For example, I spent most of my day before writing this post looking for my lost Sawzall. One would think a red tool the size of a large ham would be easy to find. Not so, as it turns out, when one has to search through at least three different buildings and half a dozen projects in various states of completion.

So, what I need is a system that would somehow catalog where all my tools are in some kind of a central database. Even if it just covered buildings, such a system would cover 90 percent of my tools. And, if it had a way for me to wander around the farm and find tools I left elsewhere, that would be swell too.

DLH

Read more at my Thoughts from Innisfree on the Stillwater weblog...

A recent post over on Facebook got me thinking. We have open source software, hardware, design, fabricating, even open source manufacturing. So, why not open source education?

Think about it. Nearly all of the world’s knowledge is available for free somewhere out there in the form of free lectures and courses, both online and off. What’s missing is some kind of credentialing system to give someone who has bothered to learn on their own the same kind of a piece of paper other people pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of learning.

Granted, by issues with formal, classroom education are well documented by now, but isn’t it time for all of us to accept that there are real, viable alternatives to learning in a classroom? So, who’s for it? How can we get this thing started?

Read more at my Education weblog...

While my wife and I have been living and working on Innisfree for the last three and a half years, it has always been something of a part-time job until now. Late last year, we paid off the last of our outstanding debt and as a result, we have decided to have both of us working on the farm as our primary occupation.

While this may sound idyllic, the fact is that it is a leap of faith and a huge risk. Even in the best of circumstances, farming is not a high paying occupation, and the cost of living modern life is higher than most people realize. Nevertheless, it is a risk we are willing and able to take.

Here’s to hoping and to the future!

DLH

Read more at my Thoughts from Innisfree on the Stillwater weblog...

While most of us were focused on the unfolding events in Boston, the House of Representatives passed a bill whose language would allow government regulators and corporations to, among other things, collect data on your internet usage and determine what kind of content you can and cannot access on the internet. The bill, as currently contrived, is a broad assault on the Bill of Rights, attacking the 4th as well as the 1st, 9th, and 10th amendments. The internet should be free because, without that freedom, the innovation, exchange of information, and entrepreneurship that has defined the last two decades will come to a halt. If you are reading this post on Facebook, you have benefited from the free internet. Contact your Senators today and demand they vote against CISPA.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/us-house-representatives-shamefully-passes-cispa-internet-freedom-advocates

http://www.senate.gov/reference/common/faq/How_to_contact_senators.htm

It’s exciting to me anyway. I am in the process of adding five new coffees to my lineup for 2013:

• Monsooned Indian Malabar
• Caracolillo Coffee Mill Mocha-Java
• a Paupa-New Guinean
• a Fair Trade Organic High Grown Peruvian
• Zimbabwe AA- Salimba Estate

The Malabar, P-NG and Zimbabwean coffees will be all be City Plus roasts more than likely while the Mocha-Java will be a City Plus or Vienna roast and the Peruvian will be a Vienna or an Espresso roast.

I will let you know once they are available!

DLH

Read more at my Coffee weblog...