Forty seconds, once a day, from a kitchen.
A voice skill that reads the farm brief: what the weather did, what the fields are at, what is open, and one number. It sells nothing, it takes no orders, and it will not say anything about beer.
What the brief contains, in order.
The weather at the gate
From the on-farm station rather than the nearest town, which is nine miles away and four degrees warmer at night.
What the fields are doing
The current growth stage on the two main blocks, in plain words rather than in decimal codes.
What is happening today
Drilling, spraying, shearing, lambing, or — most days between November and February — nothing at all.
What is open
The shop, the café, the pub, and whether the car park is likely to be full.
And one number
A yield, a count, a rainfall total. The same number that leads the seasonal ticker.
What it will and will not do.
It will
- The daily brief, on demand or as a routine
- The weather at the gate, read from the farm station
- What is open today, and until when
- Whether a live camera is running right now
- The current growth stage on the main blocks
It will not
- Buying anything, ever, by voice
- Anything about beer, cider or spirits
- Your account balance, holdings or bushels
- Booking a table at the pub
- Anything that would need to identify who is speaking
Why it refuses to mention alcohol.
A kitchen speaker has no idea who is standing in front of it. It cannot tell an adult from a fourteen-year-old, it cannot perform an age check, and there is no version of a voice interface that can honestly claim to have verified anybody.
Which means the safest thing a voice skill attached to a brewery can do about beer is nothing at all. Ask it about Hawkstone and it says that it does not discuss alcohol and suggests the website, which is a slightly stilted answer and the only defensible one.
The same reasoning kills voice purchasing entirely. A speaker that can spend money on the say-so of whoever is nearest is a bad idea in a house with children in it, and a worse idea in a house with a television playing a programme about a farm shop.
What it knows, and where from.
| It can say | Read from | Refreshed |
|---|---|---|
| The temperature and rainfall at the gate | The on-farm weather station | Every ten minutes |
| The growth stage on the blocks | The crop record | When the agronomist files |
| What is open | The opening-hours record | Daily, and immediately if something closes |
| Whether a camera is live | The camera status feed | Every minute |
| The number of the day | The seasonal ticker | At six in the morning |
| Anything about you | Nothing. It has no idea who you are | Never |
Forty seconds
The whole budget. Anything longer does not get listened to twice.
Six in the morning
When the brief is written, which is when the farm gets up anyway.
Anonymous
It does not know who is asking and cannot be made to.
No purchasing
Not now, not later, not as a premium feature.
The speaker, questioned.
The two obvious ones. It is a small skill reading a public feed, and the same feed drives the ticker at the top of this site.
We receive a text intent — that somebody asked for the farm brief — and nothing else. We never receive audio and would not want it.
No. That would require it to know who is asking, and a speaker cannot honestly establish that. The patch tracker is on your phone.
Because a two-minute farm brief is a podcast, and a podcast is a completely different thing that we have not made.
The feeds behind it.
Every live number on this site, with its source and how stale it is allowed to get.
