 Thanks everybody. Good afternoon. How are you doing again? I'm Scott Kelly and I'm here to talk about our project Which was actually titled the integrated wildlife management for sustainable agriculture And this project like so many other Sarah projects was conducted to solve a problem that not only we had But we felt maybe so many other People were having having these experiences. So we're fortunate to have organizations like Sarah To support our community So we have a UPIC operation in Carney, Missouri. Everybody thinks we're in the car and we're in Carney, Missouri You can come pick your produce. You can weigh and pay on the honor system And you know where your produce came from because you picked it yourself Carney's close enough to Kansas City Metro that we have a variety of customers from different demographics And here Kerry is Row how in these rows and I'm pretty sure that I was in the tractor when I took that picture so So we have young pickers who drag their parents out We get a lot of feedback that they want to go see Kerry Which is a good thing But I think that's probably because she bribes them with rides in the golf cart And we have seniors that come out They enjoy getting out in the garden They enjoy spending time out there Without all the hard work they get to pick their produce and This lady knows her tomatoes pretty well. She was telling us all about that But what really brings Our customers out is sweet corn and that's kind of the crux to this This presentation So kids look funny at us when we tell them just pick that need it right there raw And then they look like this So I don't think she lost her teeth right there That moment and we of course you couldn't notice we have a pretty good crop of crab grass that year too So Kerry here is the green thumb of our operation And that's why we named the Kerry's you picks of something went wrong Talk to her about it But I'm in the one inch in charge of sweet corn so that's I'm kind of in charge of the sweet corn And we've got the best sweet corn in northwest Missouri And all in Nebraska But early on we had a We had a serious problem right everybody's probably seen this it's grown sweet corn So who's out there? Who's getting in there damaging our corn right? So we ended up catching them red-handed, right? And we determined that through a lot of scientific Investigation that deer were bad And raccoons were bad for sweet corn So we needed we need an idea to Protect our produce From these garden pests so we called up uncle Albert and asked him to give us a hand or give us some advice And he said that you have to change their behavior and their patterns And we thought yeah, right whatever so So that's we change your behavior in your patterns so the very first night after that We put out all of our Halloween decorations That's not a joke and Then we built this electric fence surely the surely the deer raccoons would stay out but That wasn't we knew that wasn't going to be a permanent solution for us Because of our system in our operation you know That we both work full-time jobs We use tractor and implement as much as possible limited access with fencing wasn't For us in our operation and for our customers Just wasn't going to work Customers worried about electric fences and the Halloween stuff kept scaring the kids away And they're paying parents so we couldn't use that But we still needed to keep the critters out They think our sweet corn is the best also, so we're not the only ones But we needed to consider the money aspect of it Of what we could do because I always think of how much stuff is going to cost in dozens of sweet corn sold, right? and so But we thought that if we had an innovative Idea that could help other people including us That we could find some place to help us with funding that idea Because Albert Uncle Albert wasn't much help, right? So we've been subscribing to several and following several organizations of course Sarah and Lincoln universities There's Jim Pierce up there. You'll see him probably tomorrow The University of Missouri extension And we thought that if we had a unique idea Can we find one of these that would fit? with our operation and There would be something that would work for us And there's so there's a lot of different for us. There was a lot of different Ways to go there were a hundred percent grants matching fund grants Reimbursement grants short-term funding. We had to look at recipient requirements The difficulty of grant the applications I've done. I did one that was almost 70 pages long, you know, so We didn't get that one, but Anyhow, so we had to think about all those things We found that we were a beginning farmer rancher. So that gave us some advantage there In some instances But it ended up that Sarah was the best Fit for us the research aspect the available funding and the ease of application and the support network especially Made sense for us so we put together our project in Nicknamed it the guardian project and I'm sorry. That's not a real good picture, but You'll kind of get the Just of it here which consisted of myself Kerry O'Dell who's with me today? Nick St. Clair is Basically, he was our kind of our laser expert Constructed the lasers themselves Jim Pierce again with Lincoln University Helped us quite a bit and a special thanks to my friend Curt Maze Maze plumbing who loaned us his turn trencher all summer long so So we discussed this issue with the extension agent from the youth University of Missouri Marlin Bates up one of that it came out good didn't it anyhow? So we got a leg or letter of recommendation from Marlin at the time he was with the University of Missouri is with with K-State right so So back to our idea right here's another smart guy with ideas But the idea kind of went this way So if you had a hundred and twenty volt source controlled by two photocells to two transformers for 12 volt DC for the laser and One for 32 volt AC for the sprinkler controller that was energized by tripping the laser to another photocell that would close the relay This would happen The deer would trip the laser and the sprinkler would shoot the deer and The deer would leave Right now try to explain that in a grant application So against all odds we received a grant from North Central Sarah Sarah for a two-year project with with annual reporting And we proceeded to build these lasers and photocell devices that are full of electronic stuff Which is basically inside there's a There's a laser and there's a transformers in there There's a duno chip Took it's like a little computer that controls the relay In a photo cell to receive the laser We stuffed them into a Basically a five inch by five inch vinyl fence post to house it So then we arranged them in what I call a jay the daisy chain fashion around the you pick So that the laser from one box is pointed at the photo cell on the next box and that laser to the next photo cell And it goes basically all the way around the garden then we installed miles and miles seemed like of sprinkler piping and sprinklers so that You know, and we used as much child labor as possible There's my buddy's trencher there. So that was good to have Hey, we learned many valuable lessons Like don't put the valve so far down in the ground, right? So basically what that ended up? This is a Google Earth image of our garden. It's about an acre and about 30 And you can kind of see There's a little pointer thing you can kind of see these little these are the little laser boxes around there They're going hard to see and the yellow line kind of represents that daisy chain of a basically a laser perimeter for that acre and a third each So then of course once that was all done And I apologize for this But this is how we This is how we tested it so Getting that deer to cooperate Was a real issue and we were pretty much soaked by the end rather it was about the 12th take so So anyhow That took a lot longer than that was about a year of all that going on But anyhow the combination of the laser tripwire and impact sprinkler system automatically comes on at dusk And off at dawn and it protects about an acre and a third of produce Including our precious sweet corner, right? and that actually Coincides with our hours of operation that is from sun up to sundown our customers come out Any time that it's daylight pretty much so They come out whether we're here whether we're not some people like the solitude some people like You know socializing and so on so forth. So So we were very happy to report. Oh There's another picture Basically, you can kind of see the laser it's hard to take a picture of a laser in the daytime, you know So and there again, there's a sprinkler going off So we were happy to report that and really I was kind of astonished that When it's operational, we don't have any raccoon intrusions Or any deer intrusions so we made the paper, right? Well, not really but you can get online and do this paper thing And impress your friends, right? But we do have a do have a Facebook we do have a Facebook presence And with the Guardian itself and with carries you pick, right? And so we can spread the word about our project But for full disclosure, okay, because I don't want anybody to think that everything's perfect The laser will go on for miles and miles and laser itself So you don't want to aim it at your neighbor's windows, right? Any ground movement like after a heavy we have them sitting on concrete Pads like so any ground movement like a heavy rain or something like that will cause that laser to move So because you have to aim the laser so So we have to every night just about we have to go out and at least aim Two or three of those lasers to make sure that they're hitting the photo I from for the next one so So generally some of those have to we have nine yeah, and Since we're talking a little bit about that the limit take the number generally is determined by Changes in elevation Because seriously, I mean really you could point that laser a mile from one box to the other box if you if you were flat We were trying to maintain about an eight or ten inch. Maybe at most a foot elevation above the Ground and of course the laser straight with the ground goes like this and you got to put another one there Does that make sense? so because the raccoons are that tall right so and the You know so we had we had to get that to where we get the deer's legs if they walk through it Or we had to keep it low enough that even baby raccoons because they go in and so on so forth so It's it does deter these critters. We don't have it when it's operational It does and it does change their behavior We found one year that we could even turn off the water, right? But the next year all their offspring weren't trained and So the being what you know when Uncle Albert said about changing their behavior and their patterns, right? that really became a we could realize that because We'd we'd get you'd see the little baby raccoons inside the garden in their paw prints And you see the adults outside so we were changing that marcoons Again the laser needs to be shot at the photo eye and If it's not shooting at the photo eye the water goes off And it's time to where it goes off for 30 seconds and turns it turns itself back off again But then if it's not aimed it turns on so a couple times We had a pretty outrageous water bill while we were sleeping the things you know going off and stuff like that So there's there's some downsides to it. Look at me and I think the last most important thing is if there's a conflict between the laser device and a brush hog The brush hog usually wins So really, you know, that's it. I mean we've got we want to thank the Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society for letting us present this and of course North Central Sarah University of Minnesota and Lincoln University there and Lincoln University's innovative farm small farmers outreach program that we're all very helpful in this project, so We have any other questions How many sprinkler heads right or sprinkler how many sprinkler heads? I think we've got 36 I think and that's a distance thing you have so much water pressure Blah blah blah the sprinkler shoots 30 feet that sprinkler shoots 30 feet. So basically they're about 60 50 60 feet apart and That's also how far it is your laser go because the laser Each individual box in the group. You can't see it within the ground. There's a controller and that controller controls all the sprinklers back So if that makes if that makes sense Yeah, I think that most I think we have four in one place because it's you know up towards the north end there It's pretty like I said, it's flat Only changes in elevation about six inches. So, you know, you can really stretch out. It's when it's you know We got other places so that distance kind of can have kind of Determines how many heads you're gonna have in between and of course water pressure too. So did I other consider any other deterrent? a Big dog, you know, because really a lot of times they say Large-guard dog or big dog or I really got the idea from you've seen these little Sprinklers you hook to the end of your hose, right? Maybe not and you stick it in the ground and the dog comes over and the neighbor's dog comes over and Deficates in your art. Well, it's that's what they're designed. So when the dog comes over there sprinkler So I kind of saw that I thought well, you know, that's great, but You know, it's a little so I just had to take that onto a little bigger scale. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean the fencing just wasn't you know the fencing just wasn't gonna work for us I mean normally you just put electric fence around there and you get it You know and we did that for a little while while we were getting this all up and running And we found you know You couldn't put it you couldn't put this high off the ground because little because little raccoons Baby raccoons go under and then you couldn't put that I guess big ones to jump over and But so we couldn't use those things no no each box There's a hundred and twenty volts that runs all the way around there in the trench And then it stubs up to each of those Ways are there and then it goes back in the ground into the into the controller. Does that make sense? refinements Yeah, we're we're working on there's there's a couple of things that we're working on those lasers Nick very smart guy and he actually built those lasers from scratch Because really at that point in time, you know looking at a You know, it doesn't have to be an industrial laser just a good quality laser But still those were back and they were a hundred bucks a piece just for the laser So he built those lasers from scratch way more economically So but we're looking at some and it's a large driver and now you can get those lasers With the driver built in and I think I paid 40 bucks for it or something like that So we're looking at some of those refinements. I'd like to look more into solar As far as having a solar situation Where you know, you could run it all off of a like a little garden battery garden tractor battery or something like that You have to find some controllers that are 12-volt and they were not one very successful at finding the 12-volt controllers for the sprinkler system And that would simplify things quite a bit Have nine nine laser boxes around there. Yeah And they go out. I mean, that's probably the that's probably the biggest Mouth function we have is is that the lasers eventually burn out now some of them Go on for a couple of years and other ones go on for a couple of months So it's that's kind of a when we're not sure why it'd be true for with you But it might add that You know, this just this doesn't have to be water necessary. I know some people have had some people have had Success with propane cannons You can shoot fireworks at them. I don't you know what I'm saying You know that it just triggers whatever you want to trigger All right, you know, yeah Believe me