There is, in my opinion, no better way to spend a weekend than in an exceedingly well-appointed shop, with a bunch of friends, building something awesome together. Here's a glimpse inside just such an activity, as it was unfolding this weekend, where 20-odd farms participated in a collaborative build project to assemble electric row cover roller machines from raw materials into many copies of something decidedly awesome.

These "autoconstruction" activities happen as often as we can manage, typically a few annually, through the efforts of the CAPÉ Autoconstruction group which seeks to improve farmers' access to appropriate technology by designing and facilitating collaborative fabrication of the tools we need to make our farms better.

Many thanks to co-organisers Matthieu Brisset and Amélie Bourbonnais and host institution colleagues Daniel Rodier and Alain Robitaille who have always gone out of their way and given up weekends and holidays to provide us access to these amazing facilities so that we can accomplish so much in so little time.