Farm Notebook Examples

Beginner-friendly Jupyter notebooks (interactive documents that mix text, code, and charts) for farmers, ranchers, and agronomists. Whether you're tracking soil health, managing livestock genetics, writing grant applications, or planning grazing rotations, these notebooks provide practical, hands-on tools you can adapt to your operation.

Who Is This For?

• Farmers and ranchers looking to use data for better decisions
• Agronomists wanting reproducible analysis templates
• Grant writers building data-backed proposals for EQIP, CSP, SARE, and other programs
• Katahdin sheep breeders working with NSIP (National Sheep Improvement Program) genetic data

Notebooks

Notebook	Description
Getting Started	Installing tools, Jupyter basics, first NSIP query
NSIP Sheep Genetics	EBVs (Estimated Breeding Values), ram comparison, mating recommendations
Grant Writing for Farms	EQIP/CSP/SARE proposals with budget templates
Soil Testing Guide	Lab report interpretation, amendment calculations
Ecological Monitoring (EOV)	Savory Institute indicators, site assessments
Livestock Health Records	Vaccinations, FAMACHA, growth curves
Pasture and Grazing Management	Carrying capacity, rotation planning, forage budgets

Prerequisites

• Python 3.12+
• git
• uv package manager
• just task runner
• NSIP CLI (for genetics notebooks)

Quick Start

The recommended path uses just, which runs all setup steps (including the NSIP CLI (command-line interface) install) in one command:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/zircote/farm-notebook-examples.git
cd farm-notebook-examples

# Full setup: install all dependencies + NSIP CLI
just setup

# Start Jupyter
just lab

Or, if you prefer manual steps without just:

# Install dependencies (includes pandas, numpy, matplotlib, tabulate)
uv sync --extra data

# Start Jupyter
uv run jupyter lab

Open notebooks/getting-started.ipynb to begin.

Don't want to install anything? You can run the notebooks in the cloud with Google Colab or GitHub Codespaces. See INSTALL.md for details.

Getting Help with Installation

• INSTALL.md -- Quick setup, cloud alternatives, and all available just commands
• SETUP.md -- Detailed step-by-step instructions for every tool, including Windows walkthroughs

For Contributors

Development

Linting and formatting require the dev extras:

just install          # Installs data + dev extras (includes nbqa and ruff)

# Lint notebooks
just lint

# Auto-fix issues
just fix

License

MIT - see LICENSE for details.