Tumble Action Vegetable Washer

Tumble Action Vegetable Washer FARM HOME Food 24-4-3 "We grow vegetables in an 8-acre garden and sell them locally in town. To wash the vegetables before packing them we came up with our own portable washer," says Joel Waldner, Lethbridge, Alberta. The unit works something like a cement mixer and consists of a plastic barrel mounted inside a steel frame that's supported by four small castor wheels. Vegetables are loaded into one end of the barrel via a plastic chute. A hand-operated jack is used to raise the loading end of the barrel, allowing vegetables to gravity-unload out the other end. The barrel is rotated by an electric motor which chain-drives a steel shaft that's fitted with a pair of small rubber wheels. As the wheels turn, they rub against the barrel to rotate it. Water is supplied by a garden hose that hooks up to a steel pipe, which runs inside the top end of the barrel and is equipped with four nozzles. To spray water onto the vegetables, the operator simply flips a switch that opens a solenoid valve. "It's not hard to build, and it works. All the vegetables come out nice and clean," says Waldner. "We screwed lengths of 3/4-in. dia. PVC conduit onto the inside of the barrel every 10 in. or so in order to help carry the vegetables around as the barrel is rotated." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Joel Waldner, 67 Tudor Crescent, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1K 5C7.

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