# Ghost Farmer: An offline Ancestor Farmer powered by Gemma > Source: > Published: 2026-10-31 21:20:58+00:00 *This is a submission for the [Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine](https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week4-2026-10-26)* Ghost Farmer is an offline chatbot that channels the spirit of an ancestor farmer to answer questions about planting, soil, pests, and harvest. Growing up in Kenya, as a farmer's child, my grand father often gave us advice on how to take care of plants in order to ensure great yield so I chose to work on Agriculture because I saw how helpful it is. GitHub Link: [https://github.com/Muen1/ghost-farmer.git](https://github.com/Muen1/ghost-farmer.git) Screenshots: `gemma3:1b`, an open-weight model) running locally through `ollama` library`stories.txt` file the ghost reads at startup, so every family gets a different ghost`/save` command that builds an "ofrenda" of advice worth keeping The whole thing is one Python file of about 60 lines. A system prompt tells the model to speak like a gentle ghost farmer, keep answers short, stay practical, and admit when it isn't sure. The family memories from `stories.txt` are added to that prompt, and answers stream onto the screen word by word so it feels like the ghost is speaking. **What went wrong:** I got stuck before I wrote any code. I tried to install Ollama with a command meant for PowerShell while I was in Git Bash, so it failed. Then the installer hung, and my terminal said `ollama` wasn't recognized. I switched to the regular Windows installer, opened a fresh terminal, and it worked. That taught me that local AI is not hard to run, but the setup can fight you if you are new to it. **What surprised me:** the ghost started inventing his own backstory. When I asked about aphids, he told me about a "dreadful infestation" from his own farming days and called them "little green devils." I never wrote that anywhere. A tiny 1B-parameter model, running on my laptop with no internet, gave a made-up ghost a personality. It's not always accurate, which is why I told him in the prompt never to invent exact chemical doses, but for a ghost story it's the right kind of wrong. `MODEL = "gemma3:1b"`). A closed, cloud-based chatbot would need internet and an account, and would send private family stories to someone else's servers. For a project about preserving memories, that felt wrong. Día de los Muertos honors those who came before us, and marigolds, the flower of the ofrenda, are a crop. For many families, the people we remember include farmers whose knowledge was never written down. Ghost Farmer is a small way to keep that knowledge speaking. You write down what your grandparents taught you, and a ghost carries it into the next season.