The collective

An association of farmers, developers and researchers, based on an organic farm in Charente-Maritime, France.

Aerial view of La Vauzelle: the farm buildings, the vegetable garden, the market-garden plots, the holm oak wood and the pond.
La Vauzelle, in Saint-Porchaire, Charente-Maritime.

La Vauzelle, our farm

The association’s headquarters is a working farm in the Saintonge area of western France, farmed organically since 2017. This is where the community’s tools are tested, demonstrated and taught, under the conditions of a real farm in Charente: its soils, its climate, its constraints.

8 rue du Bouil Bleu, 17250 Saint-Porchaire, France

Area
32 ha of certified organic land, 11 ha of it irrigable
Soils
Clay-limestone “groies” and red chestnut soils
Habitats
2 ha of holm oak wood, 1 ha of wetland, a well and a walled vegetable garden
Buildings
3,000 m² of farm buildings and 650 m² of living space
Networks
Fibre, long-range wifi and a LoRa network for sensors
Guidance
An RTK base station on the Centipède network, “LAVZ”, for centimetre positioning
Energy
On-site solar power

REBUS, a FarmLab in the making

OSFarm is preparing a third place for open digital agriculture at La Vauzelle: somewhere to learn, experiment and share free tools on a working farm, not in a lab cut off from the field. Every tool will be documented and reproducible, so that farmers leave with solutions they can maintain themselves.

  • Training and making. Second-hand servers running Linux, sensors and weather stations, installing the community’s software.
  • Research and development. Field trials of GORT, GAIA and AOG+, fed by the data of a digital twin of the farm.
  • Hosting. Two- to five-day bootcamps, groups from chambers of agriculture, agricultural colleges, machinery cooperatives and farm cooperatives, demonstration days.

Discover the REBUS project (in French)

Planned timeline

  1. 2026 Project set-up and building works
  2. 2027 First services, digital twin and first bootcamps
  3. 2028 Consolidation and publication of the model as open source

Provisional budget of €218,700, with the EU’s EAFRD fund through the Pays de Saintonge Romane and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region; the funding plan is being put together.

The board

Current projects

Commons built by the members, each with its own team and working group. Write to the group to take part.

Want to visit La Vauzelle or join a project? Get in touch.