Archive for May, 2008
Friday, May 30th, 2008
Agricultural Innovations Podcast
Last week, Frank Aragona from Agricultural Innovations published a podcast interview regarding some of our work at Factor e Farm. Agricultural Innovations is a research and consulting organization involved with biodiversity, fair trade, community supportecd agriculture, permaculture, and appropriate technology, among others areas. Its aim is to promote cutting edge practices in all of …
9 Comments » - Posted in Global Swadeshi,Global Village Construction Set,Interviews by Marcin
Thursday, May 29th, 2008
Solar Conversion
Factor e Farm would like to announce that we are finally in the process of converting our operations from generator-based electricity to 100% solar electric.
Thanks to Ronny’s behind-the-scenes work while he was with us this winter, we recently received a donation of solar cells from Ersol. Ersol is a German wafer and solar cell …
5 Comments » - Posted in Accomplishments,Digital Fabrication,Open Source Inverters,Solar Energy by Marcin
Monday, May 26th, 2008
Global Swadeshi Dialogues
Yesterday, Vinay interviewed me for the first of the Global Swadeshi Dialogues weekly interview series. This interview is perhaps the most clear description to date of the essence of our experiments with Open Source Ecology, and its implementation lab – Factor e Farm. If you can bear the 54 minutes of time, this will …
No Comments » - Posted in Global Swadeshi by Marcin
Monday, May 26th, 2008
C-Lover
A slight breeze will make you turn your head. What is that wonderful smell?
I would have guessed it was a row of Lilacs in full bloom. But the goat ate ours. Besides the lilac season is fading fast.
I diligently searched the hedge row for the savory scent, with no luck. …
No Comments » - Posted in Open Source Agroecology (OSA) by Brittany
Sunday, May 25th, 2008
First Year at Factor e Farm
It is interesting to reflect upon the changes that Factor e Farm has gone through in just one year. We started at Factor e with a clean slate: bare land – after its last ever soybean monoculture was harvested.
Now the place looks a little different, to say the least. A diversity of plants and …
3 Comments » - Posted in Global Swadeshi,Open Source Agroecology (OSA),Permaculture by Marcin
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
Mulch Track
The farm is bustling with activity, mimicking the natural abundant growth period of spring.
Moving silos, planting, mulching, building a trencher and tractor, finding and fixing an old rototiller, adopting a cat, raising ducklings, milking, watering, grafting, and waiting for well parts. Those have been the prominent activities on the farm for the …
3 Comments » - Posted in Abundance,Accomplishments,Animal Rights,Open Source Agroecology (OSA),Quality of Life by Brittany
Monday, May 12th, 2008
Global Swadeshi
In the last century, Gandhi was recognized as the leader of swadeshi as a challenge to invading colonials. Swadeshi is a Sanskrit word for economic self-reliance. Vinay and Lindsay are now building Global Swadeshi – a social network, mainly engineers, working on global economic self-reliance as part and parcel of political autonomy.
Global Swadeshi is …
2 Comments » - Posted in Global Geopolitics,Global Swadeshi by Marcin
Thursday, May 8th, 2008
On Biofuels
Today I had an interesting conversation with Fabio Barone, a Master’s of Science student in Holistic Science at Schumacher College. We discussed bioproducts – biofuels, bioplastics, and others – which are one of the keys to localization and the Global Village Construction Set. He is writing his thesis on bioproducts – within the context …
4 Comments » - Posted in Biofuels,Bioplastics,Bioproducts,Global Village Construction Set by Marcin
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
Yama Loves a Baby
Sometimes I regret that Yama will never be a mother. She loves babies.
Every visitor and newcomer receives a warm welcome from Yama, but babies receive a special whimper of pure eagerness. For example, when we brought home
ducklings , Yama was pure bliss, whimpering before they even emerged from the car. Their chirps …
No Comments » - Posted in Abundance,Animal Rights by Brittany
Sunday, May 4th, 2008
Growing a Permanent Society
We are proposing the creation of Global Villages that contain: (1), permanent agriculture, (2) 100% renewable and local energy production, (3), biofuel production, and (4), permafacture.
For the permanent agriculture side a good example for our land would be a plot with hazelnuts and chestnuts as the staples, plus walnuts – all intercropped with wheat, …
