Shell Lake, Wisconsin
I build for work I actually do.
Software engineer by training, farm operator by trade, fabricator by habit. I write the code, design the part, print it, and then go use it at five in the morning with wet hands.
That last step is the one most people building for this work skip.
2012 →
BS Information Systems, systems development. Production Java for a manufacturer — order systems against a real factory floor.
2018 →
Eight seasons running a working berry operation. Irrigation, frost protection, spray programmes, crew, and a harvest that does not wait.
2025 →
Parametric CAD and production 3D printing. Geometry written as code, so a revision costs an afternoon rather than a week.
2025 →
Sensors, embedded firmware, RTK GNSS, LoRa telemetry, and a small fleet of machines running agents unattended.
Most software for agriculture is designed by people who visited a farm. I have been on the other end of it — the person who has to make it work while a crew stands waiting.
It is a narrow overlap and it turns out to be the useful one. I can read a schema, design the part, wire the sensor and tell you honestly which of the three you actually needed — usually fewer than you were sold.
Independent work, remote or on-site in northwest Wisconsin.
Ag-tech
Moraine Works
Full stack
Automation
Advisory
Independent work, in various states of finished.
Availability
I work best on problems with a physical consequence — something that has to hold, measure, survive a winter or run without me.
I am one person with a shop and a farm, so I take few jobs and finish them. If the timing doesn't work I will say so in the first reply rather than the third month.
jacob@jacobkunselman.com