From her classroom at Hampshire College in Amherst to villages in the Sahel region of Africa, Donna Cohn is on a decade-long mission to find a more efficient way to thresh pearl millet.
That is the staple grain in the Sahel, the semiarid region between the Sahara Desert to the north and the Sudanian Savanna to the south. A more efficient thresher would ease the work of women who grow pearl millet because the threshing process is so labor intensive.
Threshing loosens grain from a plant and precedes winnowing, which separates the grain from the chaff. The processes are combined in the mechanical thresher — with a motor on top of a plastic bowl and a wooden box below — that Cohn is working on perfecting with partners Richard “Roo” Trimble and Susan Hanna, who live in Shutesbury.
A pearl millet plant is fed through the motor on top, and a stripped stalk emerges at the other end, with the bowl collecting the chaff and the clean grain falling into the box.
Cohn, an associate professor of applied design at Hampshire, has puzzled over the project since 2007 when one of her students told her about threshing practices in Namibia, where it is done on the ground, often leaving pebbles mixed in with the grain.
Cohn began growing pearl millet on the Hampshire campus and her classes worked on thresher designs. She took an early prototype to Ghana and Mali for field tests. “People really liked the idea of the thresher, but this one was not fast enough and not reliable enough.”
Cohn got a boost in 2013 with a $100,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for projects benefiting farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. That allowed her to focus on the thresher in a semester-long class and bring in other designers, which is when Trimble and Hanna joined her team.
Now they are working with the National Institute of Agricultural Research of Niger, with tests of their latest solar-powered model planned later this year. Once they have a design that has been satisfactorily field-tested, they hope to begin production and sell subsidized versions of the thresher in the Sahel region.
That’s a noble goal to lighten the burden for women farmers some 5,000 miles across the world.
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Inmates from the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction began cooking in the Northampton Senior Center kitchen at 67 Conz St. last week, preparing meals served at Mary’s Bistro.
The bistro has not made enough money to stay open steadily, says Heather Cahillane, the assistant director and volunteer coordinator at the senior center. When she learned about a culinary arts program for jail inmates, she thought the graduates might want a place in the community where they could volunteer their services and perfect their skills. She took the idea to Hampshire County Sheriff Patrick Cahillane, who also is her father. It was an easy sell.
“The nice thing is, it is a win-win for everybody,” Heather Cahillane says. “It gives our seniors a way to have affordable, fresh healthy lunch available at the senior center and it’s giving the men a chance to practice their skills and put something on a resume and really be ready to go out into the workforce again.”
The bistro reopened last week, and will serve a seasonal menu of soups, salads and sandwiches on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Anyone is welcome to buy lunch.
We applaud the creative solution and are sure that many meals will be enjoyed there.
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Congratulations to Doris Hebert and Kay Madden of Easthampton, Joan Staszko of Southampton and Jane Nevinsmith of Hadley who last month were each given a President’s Lifetime Achievement Award for passing 4,000 hours of volunteer service.
They take part in the Retired Senior and Volunteer Program for people 55 and older that is run by the Hampshire Council of Governments. Volunteers are matched with hospitals, senior centers, libraries and other nonprofits.
Hebert volunteers at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital coffee shop in Northampton; Madden takes part in the Easthampton Community Center crafts group and knits and crochets items for newborns, veterans and terminally ill people; Staszko packs brown bags with groceries for seniors at the Easthampton Community Center; and Nevinsmith volunteers at the Hadley Senior Community Center.
All earned deserved recognition for their selfless service.