About Us

People, Places, Projects & Events

 

HackerFarm is a collection of people, places, projects, and events. It’s a hackerspace in an agricultural context located in the countryside in Japan.

We’re interested in exploring technical solutions to agriculture and sustainability problems by facilitating prototyping, experimentation and information exchanges.  We favour open source and open hardware projects.

People

We are a collection of people who’ve escaped city life to live in the countryside. Out here we have more space, time, and access to tools, knowledge, networks, and opportunities that allows us to work on interesting projects.

We come from different backgrounds and have different interests including biodynamic and sustainable farming, food, technology, writing, art, gaming, performing, and manufacturing. What we have in common is that we like to create, build, take things apart, learn, and share.

Places

Residency

This is where people stay whilst they’re here to work on personal or HackerFarm projects. We also do lots of homestead hacking.

 

Hackerspace

This is our digital fabrication place. We have various equipment including a laser cutter, drill press, T-shirt printer, badge maker, and sewing station. We’ll be adding more equipment and stations as we go, such as a CNC machine, and a lapidary and jewellery section.

 

Mad Cherry Growing Plot

This is the residency garden plot and is one of the places we grow vegetables and play around with different growing techniques (fresh, homegrown fruit and vegetables are tastier).

 

TeaHouse

The TeaHouse is the place where we hang out, come up with ideas, design, write, and plan projects. It’s also where we hold smaller workshops, screenings, food and drink tastings, and cook. It has a professional food smoker, professional oven, gas stove, and a selection of tea. 

 

Greenhouse

At Greenhouse we focus on sustainable farming and agriculture-related projects. It has 3 greenhouses, a small fruit orchard we’re converting into a food forest, and a double story barn we’re converting into a post harvest processing centre.  It’s also another place for people to stay if we need it. 

Projects

Individually and together we work on various projects including:

• FarmLab where we experiment with different growing techniques and develop open source hardware for indie farmers,
• water level and pressure sensor monitoring,
• boar trap monitoring,
• LED lighting design
• robotic arms,
• Greenhouse irrigation systems
• educational curriculums for manufacturing and publishing, 
• plus storytelling, gaming, clothing and printing projects.

We try to keep our project pages updated but if there’s a project you’re interested in learning more about, feel free to contact us.

Check out our projects here

 

Events

We get together regularly for small bbqs, board game and philosophy nights, whisky tastings, building and maintenance days, planting, cooking and harvest parties.

We also run repair, hardware, programming, writing and other workshops out here and in Tokyo. We host various Meets Ups including the Business, Agricultural and Technology, Maker Pro Design and Manufacturing, and Printing and Publishing Meetups.

Each year, we have the HackerFarm Shenzhen and Mexico trips, and in 2018 we’re hosting HackerFarm’s first Mini Writers’ Retreat and Games Carnival.

Check out our upcoming events here