our.windowfarms.org

We are almost there on kits, Folks. We would love your input on a couple of things.

For more about why we are making kits, read this.

Here’s how kits are looking.

You will choose between a 2-column or 4-column windowfarm. You WILL have to be able to screw at least 4 screws into your upper window sill. The bottom bottle of each strand will be the reservoir.
We will probably produce the first batch by hand ourselves here in the Brooklyn shop but the next batches may be handled by an awesome little organization that hires the disabled just North of the city.

Get a sneak peek of the one we have in Brooklyn headquarters here.

Major points up for debate:
1) To give you the bottles or ask you to supply your own. If you supply your own, you need to drill through the tough end very precisely and this can be a dangerous task with a drill or a red hot cylinder. However, sourcing the bottles and getting them to you is very expensive on our end. What do you say? Would you be willing to pay a premium to not have to find, drill, cut, and paint your own bottles?

2) To include the pump or not. The petco pump is the best one we have found and it comes with air valves. However, some people have found that their pumps are duds. Having to deal with Petco’s duds will be a big burden on us that will take away from our mission work. We’d prefer to simply have a button while you are buying you kit that you press to order your pump from Petco separately. Is this a deal killer?

3) Lights. Almost everyone really needs them but no one ever wants to get lights. That is, until after they start raising their little baby plants and the plants come out looking leggy/scrawny. You can pump them full of nutrients but if they don’t have enough light to process the nutrients through photosynthesis, it is very sad =<. Anyway, I'm thinking we will sell lights as a separate kit. You would buy individual strands. Sound good?

Also, if you have a great business mind, experience with this kind of production setup, and some time to volunteer, we would love to hear from you. Send me a message by finding Britta under members.

Another suggestion for an income stream to support the Windowfarms Project mission that would simultaneously provide local jobs and green collar training is a mobile installation crew.

I have gotten messages from at least ten individuals- including one senior citizen in Manhattan- requesting such a service.

We already have one awesome local highschool kid on the windowfarms core team, Roy.

I would love to give Roy and other kids like him a job going around the city on bikes with baskets to come help you install your windowfarm properly and to make sure you are set up well to maintain it.

Perhaps you would buy a kit and then choose to add on the additional service of an installation.

Do you know how we could fund the startup costs for this new piece of the venture and train a bunch of kids ASAP? If so, please shoot me a message.

What pricing seems reasonable to you guys? Should we price it similarly to a visit by a plumber?

I just got a suggestion that we hold workshops at the windowfarms headquarters for folks who want to build their own systems.

For the most part, we have been trying to keep all the know-how building online here on the website so that people based elsewhere can benefit as well (like the Finland Windowfarms team!!).

However, I am considering holding workshops occasionally again at headquarters in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We would ask for a $25 per person donation to the project in exchange for a “cooking show” kind of demo session and customized troubleshooting advice.

Interest? We would probably hold the first one in April 2010 sometime.

Why are we making kits if this is an opensource hardware project?

Building your own windowfarm is always an option and enabling anyone who has more time than money to do this is the whole point. That is the “charitable” cause we are working for here at Windowfarms headquarters.

However, we are also trying to get as many people as possible to have windowfarms so we can do collective research on how to best grow plants under the local conditions of our homes. This is our secondary research mission. NASA is researching how to grow plants in the space station and we are researching how to grow plants in our apartment windowfarms– both unlikely but potentially viable venues for veggie plants given a little help from us humans.

A lot of people have asked us, the core team, to just make kits. Not everyone is willing to be a hardware hacker and lots of people with valuable skills to add to the project (foodies, gardeners, teachers, parents) just say they are not handy enough to build their own. We want to get these people on board so the hackers can learn from the gardeners and we all build new skills!

Finally, this will be a source of income for the project. Believe it or not, it takes a lot of time and money to run the windowfarms project and frankly, I’m going broke. We used the funding we raised on Kickstarter earlier this year to set up a shop, improve the fundamental infrastructure of the website for higher traffic use, and to start testing components for kits.

I would like this to be a source of local green jobs for some of the dedicated volunteers whose time and brilliance have made this project possible. If we cannot pay some of them for their time, they need to move on to other work soon and we will lose their valuable accumulated knowledge. Instead, I hope we can bring them on in a more permanent capacity to have them help me train a new workforce of NYC local kids who will then be ready for the coming greencollar market in NY.

If you have some great business experience, legal acumen, good connections, and/or some time to volunteer to help make this mission happen, please send me a message.

Check out this little video of the latest windowfarm design on our Youtube channel.

Kits will be a lot like this.

Please check out the excellent work of the Finnish Windowfarms team. This shot is a sneak preview of them installing the first few LED lights on the windowfarm they made out of Finnish recyclables in the window of the Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki.

Their work on adapting the Windowfarms Project for Finland is part of a larger program called Herbologies/Foraging Networks at the Pixelache festival happening this month in Helsinki.

Niko Punin was responsible for development of the grow spectrum LEDs and has some very interesting ideas that we will be watching closely in the future!

More pictures here:

Windowfarms Finland on Facebook

Check out this video of Britta and Maya talking up the WF movement:

Windowfarms on Daily Candy NYC

With the help of over 230 people, The Windowfarms Project managed to raise just over $28K in 38 days! Thanks to all who pledged their support!!

see for yourself: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/windowfarms/turn-our-cities-windows-into-vertical-veggie-farm

Coolhunting named the Windowfarms Project- both the evolving designs and the crowdsourced innovation- one of their top 5 design innovations of 2009!

I hope it helps!

http://www.examiner.com/x-33903-Austin-Green-Architecture-Examiner~y2009m12d27-Seven-day-countdown-on-kickstarter-for-The-Windowfarms-Project

and posted you on our firm’s blog

http://mjnealblog.com

Let me know your thoughts! And congratulations on your efforts!

Viviane Vives