3-D printers are the talk of the farm

These kinds of printers melt various kinds of filaments, including plastic, and build objects one thin layer at a time, using blueprints written in code that users either create themselves, or get from sharing services. The first farm use for the 3-D printer came from agriculture major Sarah Fallon, who figured out a way to make the nipples used for giving chickens water. (In addition to row crops, the school raises sheep, chickens, pigs and turkeys.) The chicken waterers cost pennies on the dollar compared to the ones the school had been buying. And the inexpensive filaments they use are made from corn syrup, and thus biodegradable. It’s been a learning curve for the faculty members, from soldering to looking for other uses for the printer. Crockett focused on making a series of tubes that they hope will serve as housing for pollinators in the college’s orchard. Bees, whether mason or bumblebees, tend to burrow into rotten wood to lay eggs and hibernate. If you take a piece of wood, drill holes in it and put it out for the bees, theoretically they’ll find it, mark it by filling the holes with mud, and then anyone who wants to keep them safe – from the harshest winter temperatures or from hungry predators, like bears – could pick up the wood and move it into a shed or some such