Tools

Calculators, references, and infrastructure built from direct operational and gardening work.

These tools started as things built to solve specific problems — planting timing questions that kept coming up at Freighter View Farms, the need for a reliable daily summary of Great Lakes vessel activity, a reusable repository for the AI agent instruction work that came out of the Saginaw County 911 deployment. They are practical tools, not marketing assets. Each one is linked to the context that produced it.

Gardening Tools — Zone 6a Michigan

Zone 6a Planting Calculator — Bay City and Saginaw Bay

Month-by-month seed starting and transplant guide calibrated to the Bay City frost window. Covers tomatoes, peppers, brassicas, cucurbits, and direct-sow crops. Built from years of season tracking at Freighter View Farms. The most precise Zone 6a timing resource for the Great Lakes Bay Region.

Heirloom Seed Saving Guide

Fermentation method for tomatoes, dry processing for beans and squash, isolation distances, harvest timing, and storage conditions for Zone 6a Michigan. Written from the Freighter View Farms seed library. Specific enough to use directly.

Michigan Frost Dates — Great Lakes Bay Region

Last spring frost and first fall frost data for Michigan growing regions, with specific context for the lake-effect zone around Bay City and Saginaw Bay. Covers how proximity to the lake moderates frost timing compared to inland locations at the same latitude.

Seed Starting Guide

Equipment, medium, lighting, and timing for indoor seed starts in Zone 6a Michigan. Covers the setup that actually works for a home gardener without a greenhouse — not the ideal setup, the practical one.

Great Lakes and Maritime Tools

Great Lakes Gazette — Daily Maritime Brief

A daily newsletter updated automatically each morning with vessel movements, port reports, water levels across all five Great Lakes, and National Weather Service marine forecasts. Built on live AIS vessel tracking data and NOAA feeds. Free and updated every day during the navigation season.

Great Lakes Freighter Tracking Guide

How to watch vessel traffic on the Great Lakes using live AIS data — which tools to use, how to read vessel information, and what the seasonal patterns look like from Bay City and the Soo Locks.

AI and Agent Infrastructure

AgentBase — Open Agent Instruction Registry

An open registry of agent instruction files — system prompts, skills, workflows, domain packs, and safety filters for AI agents. CC0-licensed and MCP-compatible. Built from the implementation work that produced the Saginaw County 911 AI deployment and the Prepared deployment tooling. Free to use, fork, or extend.