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We're in USDA Zone 3.
Summer high of: 30ÂC (86ÂF)
Winter low of: -42ÂC (-45ÂF)

Our butcher shop says cold enough that we do not have any mechanical refrigeration for the building. I have spaces I'll eventually make into walk-in coolers but we got our USDA license without that. In fact, the USDA regional head was extremely impressed with our facility and told me so. We passed our licensing on the first try with a 100% score, because it was built right and then operated right. I'm meticulous. The butcher shop is about 1.6 million pounds of masonry built in six shells one within the other with insulation between each such that the freezer at the center has R-120. The reason for six shells is that each is a different temperature zone and the tend to float towards their ideal. This is a large flywheel that lets me use the seasonal outdoor air temperatures controlled by vents to achieve the temperatures I want, almost. There is space for a coolth attic where someday I'll build brine tanks to store winter's cold using thermal loops. This is above the coldest parts of the building so passive loops can be used both to chill the brine tanks and to chill the rooms below. See: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

Our house stays comfortably cool all summer long. High windows vent allowing cross winds. The shape reduces solar gain. This is pretty standard stuff but unfortunately not used widely enough in modern construction. In our house, which is 252 sq-ft, the total thermal mass is 100,000 lbs of masonry inside the insulating envelope and quadruple glazing on the windows. See: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

Neither my house nor my butcher shop freeze in the winter despite our long cold season even when not heated. I do not heat my butcher shop at all. In the winter I am dumping accumulated summer heat to the sky so that it can coast through the next summer. In our house I use a bit less than 0.75 cord of wood in a small masonry stove to bring the indoor up from about 45ÂF (7ÂC) to 72ÂF (7ÂC) during the winter as my wife likes it a little warmer. However that is a luxury, the heating, and not needed since neither building will freeze. A key thing is that rather than heating the air, as in conventional wood studded construction, I'm heating the masonry.

Neither building requires electricity to perform thermally. This is an important detail in our location because we get about two weeks of electrical outages a year, primarily in the colder half of the year.

Most people could implement this for homes and businesses. The major problem is that our current government systems subsidizes wasteful uses of energy so energy is too cheap. If energy were more expensive then people would work harder at conservation.

No magic.
No miracle.
Just science applied to real problems.

We're in USDA Zone 3.
Summer high of: 30ÂC (86ÂF)
Winter low of: -42ÂC (-45ÂF)

Our butcher shop says cold enough that we do not have any mechanical refrigeration for the building. I have spaces I'll eventually make into walk-in coolers but we got our USDA license without that. In fact, the USDA regional head was extremely impressed with our facility and told me so. We passed our licensing on the first try with a 100% score, because it was built right and then operated right. I'm meticulous. The butcher shop is about 1.6 million pounds of masonry built in six shells one within the other with insulation between each such that the freezer at the center has R-120. The reason for six shells is that each is a different temperature zone and the tend to float towards their ideal. This is a large flywheel that lets me use the seasonal outdoor air temperatures controlled by vents to achieve the temperatures I want, almost. There is space for a coolth attic where someday I'll build brine tanks to store winter's cold using thermal loops. This is above the coldest parts of the building so passive loops can be used both to chill the brine tanks and to chill the rooms below. See: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

Our house stays comfortably cool all summer long. High windows vent allowing cross winds. The shape reduces solar gain. This is pretty standard stuff but unfortunately not used widely enough in modern construction. In our house, which is 252 sq-ft, the total thermal mass is 100,000 lbs of masonry inside the insulating envelope and quadruple glazing on the windows. See: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

Neither my house nor my butcher shop freeze in the winter despite our long cold season even when not heated. I do not heat my butcher shop at all. In the winter I am dumping accumulated summer heat to the sky so that it can coast through the next summer. In our house I use a bit less than 0.75 cord of wood in a small masonry stove to bring the indoor up from about 45ÂF (7ÂC) to 72ÂF (7ÂC) during the winter as my wife likes it a little warmer. However that is a luxury, the heating, and not needed since neither building will freeze. A key thing is that rather than heating the air, as in conventional wood studded construction, I'm heating the masonry.

Neither building requires electricity to perform thermally. This is an important detail in our location because we get about two weeks of electrical outages a year, primarily in the colder half of the year.

Most people could implement this for homes and businesses. The major problem is that our current government systems subsidizes wasteful uses of energy so energy is too cheap. If energy were more expensive then people would work harder at conservation.

No magic.
No miracle.
Just science applied to real problems.

Sure, I already have. See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

and

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

You'll find a lot of articles discussing the design, construction, operation and plenty of photos.

Sure, I already have. See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

and

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

You'll find a lot of articles discussing the design, construction, operation and plenty of photos.

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

For a meat processing facility (a.k.a. butcher shop) the cost of labor is the biggest chunk of the budget pie closely followed by energy for eating and cooling. I've long (50 years) been interested in how to make systems like houses work right in our cold northern, but also hot southern, climate with minimal active systems. Our cottage and butcher shop are practical implementations of this.

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

For a meat processing facility (a.k.a. butcher shop) the cost of labor is the biggest chunk of the budget pie closely followed by energy for eating and cooling. I've long (50 years) been interested in how to make systems like houses work right in our cold northern, but also hot southern, climate with minimal active systems. Our cottage and butcher shop are practical implementations of this.

See this for our house:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

and this for the butcher shop:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

Neither is a kit plan but rather many articles discussing the various aspects. There are floor plans in some of the articles. The exact floor plan is less relevant than the basic concept: put a large mass inside an envelope and control how the natural environment heats and cools it in a relatively passive manner.

See this for our house:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

and this for the butcher shop:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

Neither is a kit plan but rather many articles discussing the various aspects. There are floor plans in some of the articles. The exact floor plan is less relevant than the basic concept: put a large mass inside an envelope and control how the natural environment heats and cools it in a relatively passive manner.

We have a large pack of livestock working dogs on our farm. I taught one to pickup trash for treats. Others observed this and picked up the behavior. One of them figured out how to increase the price by breaking trash up into pieces and getting treats for each piece. Doganomics.

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2011/0...

It's quite successful.

Lightning striking in the same spot repeatedly is a lot more likely than people think. The reason lightning may have struck a spot is due to there being a good path. Thus lightning is likely to strike that easy path again.

We have that. We live on a mountain where there is a large copper vein running under us. I have watched lightning strike repeatedly in the same spot.

There are videos of lightning repeatedly striking tall buildings during a single storm.

More over, lightning does not need to be very close to do a lot of damage. In a recent storm we had nine nearby strikes - not all in the same spot but spread out over at least a square mile of our land. We lost many miles of wire because of the EMP that the lightning strikes generated got picked up by the wires and overloaded them causing the wires to melt. Some sections of fence wire simply vanished. Google could have had a few nearby strikes that did that. This happens.

See:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2015/0...
and
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2015/0...

Lightning striking in the same spot repeatedly is a lot more likely than people think. The reason lightning may have struck a spot is due to there being a good path. Thus lightning is likely to strike that easy path again.

We have that. We live on a mountain where there is a large copper vein running under us. I have watched lightning strike repeatedly in the same spot.

There are videos of lightning repeatedly striking tall buildings during a single storm.

More over, lightning does not need to be very close to do a lot of damage. In a recent storm we had nine nearby strikes - not all in the same spot but spread out over at least a square mile of our land. We lost many miles of wire because of the EMP that the lightning strikes generated got picked up by the wires and overloaded them causing the wires to melt. Some sections of fence wire simply vanished. Google could have had a few nearby strikes that did that. This happens.

See:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2015/0...
and
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2015/0...

Actually, I have explained it and documented it extensively. See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

and then for another similar project read about how we're almost done building our own on-farm USDA/State inspected Meat Processing facility - a _much_ larger project at:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

Largely of the cost of building a house is labor. Supply your own labor and you dramatically cut the cost.

Another big part of the cost is architects, engineers and other consultants. Be your own or use available plans on the web or in books (there are many) and you get rid of that cost.

The "cost estimating of $100/sq-ft" is vastly out of line with reality.

While most people might not have the creativity, knowledge and experience to design and engineer the structure the actual construction cost is fairly low. Most people could do it. The problem is experts, who have a massive conflict of interest, have been telling people that people are not able, not qualified to do things. This has created an economy where people hire out for things rather than doing things themselves. That's good for stimulating the economy, but expensive.

Actually, I have explained it and documented it extensively. See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

and then for another similar project read about how we're almost done building our own on-farm USDA/State inspected Meat Processing facility - a _much_ larger project at:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

Largely of the cost of building a house is labor. Supply your own labor and you dramatically cut the cost.

Another big part of the cost is architects, engineers and other consultants. Be your own or use available plans on the web or in books (there are many) and you get rid of that cost.

The "cost estimating of $100/sq-ft" is vastly out of line with reality.

While most people might not have the creativity, knowledge and experience to design and engineer the structure the actual construction cost is fairly low. Most people could do it. The problem is experts, who have a massive conflict of interest, have been telling people that people are not able, not qualified to do things. This has created an economy where people hire out for things rather than doing things themselves. That's good for stimulating the economy, but expensive.

See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

That starting page will take you onward to many more pages that extensively document how we did it. It took two months to prep and build the shell to the closed in point. Then winter hit - we have a short construction season here in the north.

This does not include the land - I already owned that - the discussion was the cost of building the house. I was not gifted the materials. The $7,000 is the materials. Our family of five (2 adults, 2 teens, one small child) supplied all the labor while also schooling and farming. Check out the page above for pictures and the blow by blow account.

Since then we have built our own USDA/State Meat Processing Facility e.g., a butcher shop which we're just about to open for business to process livestock from our farm. That was built along the same methods as our house but with improvements in methods - we learn. See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

for details of how that has been constructed and the process of going through the regulatory hoops. It's been a journey.

See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

That starting page will take you onward to many more pages that extensively document how we did it. It took two months to prep and build the shell to the closed in point. Then winter hit - we have a short construction season here in the north.

This does not include the land - I already owned that - the discussion was the cost of building the house. I was not gifted the materials. The $7,000 is the materials. Our family of five (2 adults, 2 teens, one small child) supplied all the labor while also schooling and farming. Check out the page above for pictures and the blow by blow account.

Since then we have built our own USDA/State Meat Processing Facility e.g., a butcher shop which we're just about to open for business to process livestock from our farm. That was built along the same methods as our house but with improvements in methods - we learn. See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

for details of how that has been constructed and the process of going through the regulatory hoops. It's been a journey.

I've had an Apple pPod implant for several years. Love it. Best thing is direct access to the the Apple Store 24/7 and no bugs or malware*(^&&^*&^%-system-i98798-breach......

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2012/0...

"Not that I am a fan of Google"

I am a fan of Google. Not so much the company but the tool. It is incredibly useful. I remember back in the dark ages when we had to use libraries and carve our notes into clay tablets. Pisser that was nasty.

I object to the European Union trying to censor the world. They have no business burning our books, trashing our libraries, destroying our data. It's history. It's real. They have no natural order right to be forgotten. They have no right to impose their absurdity on those of us in other countries. If the EU wants to subjugate their population to stupidity by censoring that is bad enough but leave the rest of the world alone.

So, we all have an obligation to remember. Keep lists of those who demand to be forgotten. Discuss it. Blog it. Tweet it. Facebook it. Each request to be forgotten should be documented. Google could do this easily enough by posting all requests. That would quickly quell this dumb demand with a Striesand effect.

Link it:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2014/0...

If you send me $30,000 (a pittance compared with $3 million) I'll supply you with pork for life. Real food in the real world which you can really eat. You can also trade your real pork for other real goods with other real people or just serve it up as a delicious meal with real friends in the real world.

Hundreds of real people have send me real money like the above and smaller amounts to get their real pork CSA Pre-Buys. It's real. This money helps us finish building our on-farm USDA/State inspected butcher shop. That's creating real infrastructure in the real world funded by real people at a real farm producing real food.

Be a part of something real and get real benefits.

-Walter Jeffries
a Real Pig Farmer
on a Real Mountain
in the Real State of Vermont
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/

I'm just finishing up building a small super massive super insulated. It is concrete. No adding wires later as I want everything hidden away for easy cleaning because this is to be a USDA inspected meat processing facility. Sanitation and clean-ability are key.

My solution is conduit. Our walls, floors and ceilings are packed with conduit for everything I intend to install and a lot of extra conduit for maybes.

See: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop and go to the various pages about construction to see photos of construction.

We're having fun in Vermont and people in our town are convinced we're building a nuclear reactor up here on Sugar Mountain... I try not to straighten out the rumor mill. Besides, we're almost done.

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2009/11/01/outer-wall-forms-up/

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2011/08/25/three-phase-power/comment-page-1/#comment-9690

We're having fun in Vermont and people in our town are convinced we're building a nuclear reactor up here on Sugar Mountain... I try not to straighten out the rumor mill. Besides, we're almost done.

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2009/11/01/outer-wall-forms-up/

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2011/08/25/three-phase-power/comment-page-1/#comment-9690

To go where no farmer has gone before...

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2009/04/01/pig-farmers-in-space/

Or you could go play with the fence energizer...

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2007/07/23/calibrating-pain-fence-testing/

Farmville deluxe and with real bacon!

That is correct, and clearly explained on the Kickstarter project and many (most? almost all?) project pages. Backers are not charged unless enough pledges have been made to meet or exceed the funding goal.

Project creators need to include in their budget:

1) Kickstarter's 5%
2) Amazon's 5% (credit card processing)
3) Marketing during the project funding drive
4) Cost to produce products to give to backers
5) Shipping costs to get products to backers
6) Development costs of the product

Wow! #6 might seem like the only purpose of the funding you say but all of those costs have to be factored in in order to bring the product to market and be able to deliver 'rewards' to the backers.

Yes, there are quite a few poorly thought out projects but the same is true off Kickstarter too. Lots of ideas and only some float to the surface, many are chaff that blows away in the wind. It takes a lot to bring a project to fruition and deliver the goods.

Projects often take longer to develop either because it is so hard to make accurate predictions of the development time even when everything goes right (not unique to Kickstarter) or because things happen - life - that slow things down.

Our family ran a successful Kickstarter project as one part of funding our on-farm butcher shop. It is really a pre-buy program, just as most Kickstarter projects are. You help pay for development and get to be near the head of the line when the product becomes available. A lot of people enjoy vicariously being part of the process. Pre-buys are not a 'walk into the store and buy it off the shelf' - important to understand. It takes time to develop and setup production - we're a little behind schedule on ours but we're making progress and will finish. Kickstarter backers helped with part of the funding and we appreciate that.

If you're curious to see a successful project funding visit http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop

We seem to be talking at cross purposes here. Perhaps we are saying much the same. My work is immensely varied. I am a small farmer. I do a tremendous amount of different stuff from planting, to caring for animals, the slaughter, to butcher, to value added processing, to studying regulations, to designing and building our own super efficient home, to building our own state of the art USDA/State inspected on-farm meat processing facility (current project). Granted, if one were living in a cubicle as a cog in the machine life might be pretty dull and in need of balance but that right there is a modern phenomenon. You don't have to be a Dilbert. Be more. Do more. Integrate your life and your work so that you enjoy both.

Cheers,

-Walter
on Sugar Mountain
in Vermont
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/

I have all the data to figure out the question on how much wood but haven't done it yet. I would guess about $30,000 in wood to build all the forms, scaffolding, braces and walers. All of it is reusable and in fact some of it has already been used in building two other projects including our house:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottage

seven years ago.

Decades ago I dreamed up the idea of 3D printing buildings - I was an engineer involved with laser printing and I was also pouring concrete on the side for our own projects using a pump truck. Great tool. I fantasized about how to get the material coming out of the nozzle to harden quickly enough to 3D print in big droplets an entire building. Never did that though I did do some work on the chemistry and materials that would have been needed.

For our projects we've just gone the molding route - e.g., build big molds, pour in liquid stone (concrete) with fiber reinforcing (steels already in place) and let it harden.

I still think that 3D printing of buildings would be a great way to do it. With our molding we build all our conduit and plumbing right into the walls, floors and ceilings. With 3D printing one could do even better. The building could be a giant machine, the wiring could be printed.

I bet we'll see that within a century on mass scale.

What I like about masonry is that the buildings are so permanent, low maintenance and energy efficient. Fire proof too - that's really nice.

3D printing buildings is a cool idea. It can be done in masonry, that is to say fiber reinforced concrete, which would produce low cost, high mass, highly energy efficient buildings. I just did one like this but poured it rather than 3D printing it. Sort of the same thing. 1.6 million pounds of concrete later we have a super insulated building that is built as bottles within bottles for extreme energy efficiency. In our case it is an on-farm USDA inspected slaughterhouse and butcher shop for our family farm.

See: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop

I developed many of the techniques when we built our house in a similar manner. Prior to that we did even smaller models as animal shelters and desktop models. All along I fancied that much of this could be done just like 3D printing. The pumper we use is not all that different.

7,000 volts is not a high voltage fence. Our farm fences are 10,000 volts. It's not the voltage that will kill you though, it is the amperage that does you in. For this reason the fences are high voltage and low amperage. It hurts. However, if you're determined you can grab ahold of the fence and hang on right through the shocks. I've done it many times when needed.

See this article:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2007/07/23/calibrating-pain-fence-testing/

It doesn't have to be expensive to build a house than can withstand hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, fire, etc. Nor does it have to be very large. Our family's home cost only $7K to build and is a comfortable 252 sq-ft for five people. We built it in two months by ourselves - just about anybody could do it.

As an added bonus, our house's 100,000 lbs of masonry (stone, brick and concrete) stores heat very well so the house is cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Even without auxiliary heat the house stays above 45ÂF in the dead of winter here in the mountains of northern Vermont when it is -25ÂF outdoors for extended periods. We burn a mere 0.75 cord of maple hardwood a year in our wood stove to bring the cottage up from that to a toasty 70ÂF for my wife who likes things a little warmer.

Another advantage of this construction is it is virtually maintenance free. No painting, no roof to repair or reshingle (the roof is a concrete barrel vault), and the house can be earth bermed for even better performance and to make it blend with the landscape.

Because the house has such a high thermal mass we are able to have a lot more windows than a conventional house without overheating. Our east, south and west walls are virtually all windows. Shutters can protect the windows during bad storms - a simple, traditional method of quickly closing up.

Our house will also probably last hundreds to thousands of years. Far longer than conventional stick built houses.

Frankly, there is no good excuse for building the fragile stick built houses.

Location is also important. Don't build where it will flood. That land is better for forests, fields and crops or just wildlife.

If you are curious and would like to see our house visit:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottage

where you'll find pictures and articles about how we built it.

It's treated like this is the way we always raised food when the truth is factory farming is less than a 100 years old and it didn't take over until the 60s. All the problems we are having with food production are directly related to factory farming. Also the fact that middle men are allowed to force farmers to sell below cost and let farmers survive on federal farm aid. I ran onto this site a year ago where this family is field raising pigs on grass then supplimenting their diet with free milk curd from a dairy, rather than dumping it and risking environmental problems they feed it to the pigs. He also buys surplus bread by the ton. The waste milk is delivered for free and the bread is dirt cheap but the bulk of their diet is grass. The pigs learned to eat the grass from sheep and now the mothers teach the piglets. They are also fed some out of date fruits and vegetables but the bulk of their diet is plain ole grass. They are healthier and the meat is tastier. All pigs could be raised this way but corporate America is convinced you can make farm animals the same way you do a car. All you get is diseased unhealthy meat. The only reason for the shortage is expensive feed so take away the cost of the feed and virtually all vet bills and the problem goes away. Each sow averages 8 per litter twice a year and some have over 20 a litter twice a year. Even starting with a handful in a few years you have a substantial herd so if they dropped the factory farming the numbers would come back fast but you also have to get rid of the middle men that reap all the profits. Farmers usually receive an eighth to a tenth of the retail price. No wonder they don't want to raise pigs anymore. Here's that link. http://sugarmtnfarm.com/products/piglets/

When I do replace the cable I'll probably write about it on my blog. Watch:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/

Probably fall-ish. If it doesn't happen before we freeze in for winter then it will have to wait until 2013.

""That's something of an oversimplification. Merely producing is not enough to succeed, since efficiencies of scale kills dozens of family farms a day. There is also marketing value, distribution, all sorts of lockout/contract/exclusivity/undercutting complications, weather/climate, choosing the wrong crop in a bumper year.]"

We do the marketing, transportation, delivery, distribution, deal with weather, etc. So it really isn't an over simplification at all. As I said, we do vertical integration and that includes all of those things. Check out:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/

*grin* That's why we have Kita and friends. See:

Raven Baiting

In addition to the avian missiles they've captured there is one raven flying around with a big chunk of it's left wing missing - a perfect bite mark care of Kita. It makes a very distinctive silhouette in the sky. That raven now stays up valley of us.

"Rather than simply being dumped, SuperMUC's waste heat is designed to be converted into building heat during winter. Presumably it is mostly radiated away in summer"

They might be storing the heat rather than dumping it in the summer.

We are building a meat processing facility. Meat processing facilities use a lot of energy for heating water, cooling carcasses, freezing and general storage & air conditioning. To reduce our energy needs we're storing winter in thermal mass so that we can use it during the warm seasons. We're also using the 'waste heat' from our refrigeration compressors to heat water in addition to solar hot water and the backup of propane heating for the water. All of this will save us enormous amounts of money since we won't have to buy as much energy. Good for our carbon foot print and even better for our bottom line as more money will stay in our pockets rather than being dumped into the environment. IBM could do the same.

See http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop

Kickstarter is not about investing.

Kickstarter is somewhat about supporting a project you believe in.

Kickstarter is mostly about buying a product. Most successful projects offer a 'reward', a product, for the 'pledge', payment, by the 'backer', customer. Kickstarter just likes to call it Backers, Pledges and Rewards. They try hard to avoid the term investment as that is dangerous. See below.

In return for pre-buying you get product and you get some satisfaction with helping to be an early buyer that helped make something possible. But it is really a transaction in most cases, a payment for goods or perhaps services.

When you buy a Pepsi you don't expect to get a share in the profit. You're buying a product. With Kickstarter the product doesn't usually exist yet so it is different in that it is a pre-buy.

An example is our family raises pastured pigs. We're building our own on-farm USDA inspected butcher shop (http://smf.me) and as a part of raising funds we pre-sold our product, pastured pork. We did this initially locally through CSA Pre-Buys and then this spring we did a Kickstarter project that raised an addition $33,456. When we finish construction and have our licenses we will then ship product from our farm to customers, some of whom joined our adventure via Kickstarter.

In our case the product already exists, we've been raising pigs on pasture and selling our pork for almost a decade. What is new is we're bringing the meat processing on-farm. This resolves a major bottleneck and helps to keep more of the money on-farm while also providing more humane handling for the animals and better quality for the customers. 369 people thought that was worth doing so they backed our project on Kickstarter. About a hundred more had already backed us prior to that. We provide product for backing. This is different than going to a bank for a loan (they aren't lending) or giving away a share of the business to investors (we're rather small for that as the project is only about $150,000).

Until recently it was illegal to solicit investment such as on Kickstarter which is why it is not an investment angle. With the new law that just passed there may soon be other web sites like Kickstarter that do offer investment opportunities. Alternatively, if you want to own the project and get profits then start your own business. That also gives you control.

With any project that's buying on the future, pre-buy or investment, you need to carefully consider if the project creator can deliver. Kickstarter says about 50% of the projects succeed. What they mean is 50% get successfully funded. As anyone with significant investment or business experience knows, not all funded projects will get to the production stage or be sustainable businesses. I have seen several Kickstarter 'successes' that never produced. It happens. But I think that most do succeed once funded. Caveat emperor.

Our project already successfully completed its Kickstarter run. Check it out at http://smf.me/

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop

1. Kickstarter fixed it. Good for them.

2. Nobody was harmed in the making of this joke.

3. Ideas are freely available on Kickstarter. They do make that point. If you can't stand your ideas being known don't Kickstart them.

We are building a nano-scale on-farm USDA meat processing facility for our farm. We're using Kickstarter to fund it in part (see http://smf.me/ for details - tomorrows the last day May 15th). I'm open sourcing it. Go see my blog and see the floor plan, read about all the neat things we've developed to make it more energy efficient, smaller, lower cost and useful. If you want to do the same thing then more power to you. Share ideas.

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/

Kickstarter isn't about success of the project. It is about funding the project so that it might succeed. Thus there is no bubble to burst on success of project activity.

If you want to have more assurance that the projects you back are going to succeed then make due diligence, just like when financially backing any project. Ask yourself some important questions:

1. Is it a good project / product that has a market?

2. Are the people doing the project experienced in doing this type of project?

3. And most of all, is the project something you want to back? Maybe your back because you want that type of project to succeed. More likely you back because you want the product produced by the project.

If the answers are yes to all three then there is a very good likelihood the project will succeed not just in funding (what Kickstarter is about) but to completion and production of the product (after Kickstarter and what you're really concerned with).

In the real world most businesses do NOT succeed. Those that get to the point of producing a product often don't last very long thereafter. It takes a lot more than just a good idea to last in the market place.

So, what's a good project? Take our project for example:

http://smf.me/

We are building an on-farm USDA inspected nano-scale slaughterhouse, butcher shop and smokehouse for our pastured pork.

1. There is need, a market for this project:
A. The number of meat processing facilities has declined.
B. There is a bottleneck in processing, especially in the fall.
C. Our farm alone justifies the cost of construction and operation of such a facility because we need reliable, secure, quality processing every week of the year.
+This is a project with a guaranteed market since we already pay for hired butchering. Bringing the butchering on-farm means that the 50% of our income that goes to an outside butcher will now stay on-farm. Vertical integration and Just-in-Time Farming.

2. We are experienced and reliable:
A. We have nearly a decade of experience raising pastured pigs.
B. We have 18 months apprenticing to learn the art of meat cutting.
C. We have decades of experience in construction and design.
D. We have decades of experience in business, marketing and farming.
E. We have a long time established weekly delivery route delivering high quality pork to long time customers year round.
F. We have a huge stack of letters of recommendation and testimonials from the above customers you can check out as well as in our Kickstarter Video.
+In other words, we're very experienced and reliable.

So this leaves you with question #3:
3. Is our project something you want to back?
A. You believe in improving local, small scale agriculture.
B. You like our Open Sourcing of our butcher shop, sharing the information so others can build their own in other communities.
C. You like pork and bacon!

So, go to our project (http://smf.me) and check out the video, read the description, see all the great rewards. We are already 122% funded. Money we bring in now goes towards the next stage of construction, the on-farm abattoir. And, you can get T-shirts, ivory tusks and best of all, our delicious pastured pork shipped right to your home.

If you don't feel a project meets those three criteria, don't back it. Of course, never back a project for more than you feel comfortable with.

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/

I already got mine. Check out the pPod:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/the-apple-ppod/

Great little implant.

So the difference is insignificant. The 'conventional' farming is destroying the land and wasting fossil fuel. I can raise livestock on pasture far more efficiently than a factory farm. I use virtually zero electricity, propane, gasoline or diesel. I guy no grain. The animals are out on pasture. Conventional hog farmers are losing money many years and in the best years only make about five to ten bucks a pig. I make 25 to 50 times more profit per pig than they do. At the end of the year, conventional farms only exist because they're subsidized by the tax payer. I get no subsidies yet I'm profitable and sustainable.

By the way, check out our on-farm butcher shop project.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sugarmtnfarm/building-a-butcher-shop-on-sugarmountainfarm

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop

I have prior art that predates the Professor by more than a decade. Case over. The troll needs to go back under his bridge.

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop

Check out our Kickstarting the Butcher Shop project at:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sugarmtnfarm/building-a-butcher-shop-on-sugarmountainfarm

We raise pigs on pasture. They will literally walk many miles a day. Generally they walk a ways and then graze or root, walk a ways, eat again, walk, eat, etc. From their night area near our house in the home fields they walk out as far as a mile at times, usually less though. The incline could work. The big sows and boars weight 800 to 1,400 lbs. With the right motivation they would walk for an hour or so but then they're going to want to lay down and rest so if you want continuous power you'll need to have at least two of of these running and be swapping out animals frequently.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/csa

We raise pigs on pasture. They will literally walk many miles a day. Generally they walk a ways and then graze or root, walk a ways, eat again, walk, eat, etc. From their night area near our house in the home fields they walk out as far as a mile at times, usually less though. The incline could work. The big sows and boars weight 800 to 1,400 lbs. With the right motivation they would walk for an hour or so but then they're going to want to lay down and rest so if you want continuous power you'll need to have at least two of of these running and be swapping out animals frequently.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/csa

How about investing in real small farms.
You don't have to be a huge investor.
Make a small loan. Buy pastured pork.
Build a future of real food.
See below.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
Save 30% off Pastured Pork with free processing: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/csa
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop

How about investing in real small farms.
You don't have to be a huge investor.
Make a small loan. Buy pastured pork.
Build a future of real food.
See below.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
Save 30% off Pastured Pork with free processing: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/csa
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop

I type, with my fingers, very quickly and accurately. I do not think about the individual letters. My hands are trained to short cuts. There are many things that I type frequently and those I type even faster, about 300 wpm. I love the idea, but it can't be based on letters. A keyboard may look like it is based on letters but it has a very good short hand / short cut system between it and my thinking. Thinking about the individual letters would slow me down considerably.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
Save 30% off Pastured Pork with free processing in our CSA Pre-Buy
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project

I type, with my fingers, very quickly and accurately. I do not think about the individual letters. My hands are trained to short cuts. There are many things that I type frequently and those I type even faster, about 300 wpm. I love the idea, but it can't be based on letters. A keyboard may look like it is based on letters but it has a very good short hand / short cut system between it and my thinking. Thinking about the individual letters would slow me down considerably.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
Save 30% off Pastured Pork with free processing in our CSA Pre-Buy
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project

Health and exercise fight this to a large degree. Both physical and mental exercise. This is much like people saying their bodies get weaker as they age. Not me. I am 46 years old and I am as strong or stronger than I have ever been. Every day I push both my body and my mind to work hard. Then I rest both of them. I also eat right and all of that good stuff. It really does make a difference. If you want strong muscles you work out. If you want a strong brain, work it. This is part of why I chose what I do. I farm. It is very mentally and physically invigorating. I'm outdoors much of the day. There are always new challenges. I also program, write, draw, take photos and do other interesting things. Don't get in a rut.
Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/
http://hollygraphicart.com/
http://nonais.org/

I am extremely good at math and sciences. People are a bit more of a mystery. I used my skills to develop a number of inventions (some of which you may well use). I also farm, raising pastured pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks and geese. It's a great life and my skills at math & science come in very handy giving me a deep understanding of things on the farm including mechanical, biological, chemistry, physics, statistics, etc. I love it. Our kids got my math and science skills plus my wife's people skills. What a deal. Cheers -Walter Sugar Mountain Farm in the mountains of Vermont http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ http://hollygraphicart.com/ http://nonais.org/

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/snowwolf/index.php/2007/09/16/fly-away-dragonfly/

When we bought our farm in the early '90s there was no phone. We face wrong for satellite and there are mountains in the way. Cellular connections aren't an option either. The first winter here I laid a mile and a half of twelve pair UG cable inside 1" diameter black plastic water line on the surface of the ground from the last pole (POTS NID) to my house. That has worked fine for sixteen years. I laid twelve pairs because when DSL or ISDN became available I wanted to have the capacity. We now have DSL (aDSL for those who care) although we are far beyond the official range of the circuit. The reality is it works much further than they say and we get excellent speed. So, if you can lay your own cable over the necessary distance you may well be able to get broadband.

Another alternative is to install your own WiFi system with a long distance extender from the nearest NID where DSL is available. A pair of devices like http://cellamericas.com/ASU24005g-802.11g-wifi-access-point-wifi-repeater-wifi-bridge-outdoor-wifi-pr-16309.html may do the trick for you. This is probably what I'm going to replace my cable with because we get a lot of lightning here due to the copper vein in the mountains and over the decades the EMPs have blasted many of our wire pairs. I've found the EMPs don't harm the WiFi.