Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/30/how-rolls-of-turf-are-made.html
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I’ve tried to move a small patch of turf with hand tools.
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There is a turf farm outside of Lawrence, KS I have driven by.
What I find so interesting about that machine is how perfect it is for that task - but how completely useless it would be for anything else.
that’s where the lead, linotype and a dozen guys with pica rules used to be before they were all canned and replaced by a couple of computers.
Well at least they didn’t take them out back and shoot them like they did with all the horses we didn’t need any more.
I wonder how many workers jobs consumers used to be required to do that. Consumers are just workers in their off hours, something our overlords seem unwilling/unable to accept: if they have no money to spend, they can’t consume much.
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Doesn’t matter. It is shitty work that should be done by a robot. Yes I know the jobs are needed but people should not have to do that kind of labor just to subsist and the same goes for a lot of jobs currently done by people that will be done by robots in the not so far away future.
The problem is how do we as a society deal with it when 85%+ of the labor and services are done by robots and I hope there are smarter people than me working on that problem now.
As far as the machine goes it is a pretty cool bit of specialized engineering,
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I think you are missing the point. I agree, robots should do robotic work. But a consumer society — one that includes people who buy food and stuff — needs consumers, ie, people with a jingle in thier pocket. I’m sure people are thinking about the post-labor age but all to many of them are people who aren’t interested in shrinking their piece of the pie.
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While I’m more familiar with other ways of rolling grass, I wouldn’t mind using this method to make a fatty.
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Now if we could just figure out how rolls of surf are made!
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Protip: if you don’t water your newly sodded lawn, large patches of it will die, especially on slopes.
A house a few blocks from our home put down a new lawn a couple years ago (part of a major renovation). And last summer, they ripped it all up and put it down again… because nobody bothered to water the sod, and huge chunks of it died and went to weeds. And once again, they didn’t water it this summer and huge chunks of it have died again already.
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Imagine coming home to your gated community suburban little patch of paradise, and finding that the sod thieves had rolled this truck over your now barren dirt, robbery in broad daylight!
That’s the trouble with having an economy based on consumption- -it’s unsustainable in so many ways. I used to think what a tragedy it was we were reducing arts education even as we developed automation/robots to replace workers - I figured if we had better education in creative fields, manufacturing fields these people will have something to do when robots take their jobs. Well that came faster than people thought.
Of course, as pointed out this job is terrible and unrealistic to do by hand at any large scale. I have run a turf-cutter before and it’s hard work, certainly not something that can be done all day by the same person. Look at the cutting bar in the video - imagine trying to steer that and maintain consistant depth of cut, etc. Impossible to have volume of production and consistant depth of cut.
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BlockquoteI wondered at this odd layout for months until someone clued me in: that’s where the lead, linotype and a dozen guys with pica rules used to be before they were all canned and replaced by a couple of computers.
When I was a kid I saw a Linotype machine in operation, and it made a huge impression on me. With many exposed moving parts it was a wonder to watch.
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Gay-space? Is that anything like a maker-space?
They’ve got money for sod, but not for a sprinkler system
This is Toronto. Once the sod is established, you dont need to do anything except unleash some goats on it when the grass gets too high. But while its getting established, you must water it or patches of it will die.
Just like with a balled and burlapped tree. If you want it to grow quickly (or at all, depending on the soil), you must water it for the first couple years after planting.
That’s just so industrial. We only buy locally sourced and artisanally produced turf.
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We have a lot of these sod farms near me. Rolling/cutting machines have been the usual course of action for a really. Really. Long time. used to be a separate all mechanical device you towed behind a tractor. It’s always been a fairly mechanised kind of agriculture. Because it’s a pretty new kind of agriculture.
What jobs better machines have replaced are indeed shitty. Sub minimum wage, off the books farm hand positions. Once worked by African Americans relocating from the south. Who lived in horrid conditions in company/work camps/cabins. And now worked by Hispanic immigrants who do the same.
And on the plus side sod farms are horrible for the environment. Take a hell of a lot of fertilizer and irrigation. While fostering run off that spurs erosion. Fucks the wetlands. And removes the top soil. Among other things.
But we gotta have nice lawns.
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I doubt it. That would likely be fatal.
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Been there, done that when I was putting in a garden for my wife. Those kick sod cutters work really well, but I’d hate to have to do that for an entire lawn.
What does this have to do with “gay space communism”?
