The open source project Farm Hack brought some agricultural tools to World Maker Faire New York 2012, including this pedal-powered generator.

Open source is often related to hardware or software, but there are all kinds of spin-offs that use the open source philosophy in their projects ... and Farm Hack is one of them. According to their website, Farm Hack is an open source community that brings together farmers (both young and old), engineers, architects, and designers in an effort to tweak and improve today's farming tools for a sustainable future.

The tool pictured above is the bike generator designed by Pedal Power Engineering, an engineering firm based in Essex, NY, that focuses on stationary pedal-powered machines called dynapods. There was a line of kids waiting to try out the bike generator, but Pedal Power also brought a bike-powered transplanter/weeder and a pedal-powered sewing machine to the Faire. Along with Pedal Power, there was also a greens washer and flame weeder from Vermont's Pitchfork Farms and a leaf shredder from Brooklyn's DB CO-OP.

Farm Hack currently has almost 30 tools available on their website, and they're all available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.