Archive for July, 2009
Friday, July 31st, 2009
Dedicated Project Visits
Inga and I refined a collaboration procedure for development work at Factor e Farm. We are focusing our development efforts on dedicated project visits – a topic that we’ve discussed a number of times, and finally put down on paper.
All together, on-site collaboration includes first-time visits, work days announced at the Factor e Farm …
4 Comments » - Posted in Accomplishments,Challenges,Collaboration Platform,Collaborators,Dedicated Project Visits,Documentation by Marcin
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
CEB Vault Construction Workshop
Here is our formal initial announcement of the 10-day Compressed Earth Block (CEB) Vault Construction Workshop. It will be held at Factor e Farm, in the Kansas City area, Missouri, USA, at the end of September, 2009.
Examples: Modern, earth-sheltered vault homes made of compressed earth have been built in Germany and other countries, but …
8 Comments » - Posted in CEB Vault,Factor e Team,Infrastructure,Inga's House,Workshops by Marcin
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
The Eagle has landed….
…well, actually I’m a Leo (August 7th and don’t forget!) but I have landed, I did it, I made it, I’m here!! I spent my first night on a bed, not the floor. Expecting (almost) nothing is working great, you should try it, too.
Marcin actually shot a short video of me after my first …
5 Comments » - Posted in Inga's House by Inga
Monday, July 27th, 2009
Touchdown expected at 6:30 p.m. today!
In 4 1/2 hours my daughter Angela will drive me to JFK to catch the flight to Kansas City. The suspense is almost killing me…. My dad always said: expect nothing and you will not be disappointed. Hey dad, I’m trying!
My next message will come from the heart of OSE. Hang in there!
1 Comment » - Posted in Inga's House by Inga
Friday, July 24th, 2009
Zero Turn MicroTrac
MicroTrac achieved zero turn motion. If one walks around rapidly, one can turn the walk-behind tractor around in place. MicroTrac is turning out to be a beautiful freak:
Play this freak show. play_blip_movie_2416745();
To do this, we added two small, freely-turning wheels to MicroTrac. This replaced the rigid wheels from …
7 Comments » - Posted in Abundance,Diet,Farm Equipment,LifeTrac,Local Food Systems,MicroTrac,Open Engineering,Open Source Nursery,Open Source Tiller,Permaculture by Marcin
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Spike Up
A bale spike comes in handy in many situations. It’ typically used to move large, 2000 pound hay bales around. With the rainy weather here, some farmers were not able to keep their hay from rottings, so we got our hands on 18 additional hay bales like this. First, we’re mulching the orchard with …
3 Comments » - Posted in Bale Spike,Farm Equipment,Open Source Agroecology (OSA),Open Source Ecology by Marcin
Monday, July 20th, 2009
HydraRaptor’s Second Child
Chris Palmer of the HydraRaptor project just printed us a copy of parts for RepRap – the 3D printer that can print a copy of itself. Chris is an avid developer on the RepRap team, and the documentation of his work is superb. He has already printed a copy of RepRap for …
1 Comment » - Posted in HydraRaptor,RepRap by Marcin
Sunday, July 19th, 2009
Finally: my bags are packed, let the adventure begin!!
I can’t believe how much stuff I accumulated in only 4 1/2 years and what a pain it was packing it all and then lugging everything up to the third floor of my son’s place (very old house – oldest part is over 400 years old) in Klagenfurt! Downsizing, minimizing from now on.
Next steps: …
No Comments » - Posted in Open Source Ecology by Inga
Friday, July 17th, 2009
Soil Pulverizer: Prototype 1 Complete
In preparation for CEB construction – and in particular for the Vault Construction Workshop introduced in the last post, here is the soil pulverizer construction and testing of our first prototype. We started on the drawing board:
and moved on to reality as an attachment for LifeTrac:
Open Source Soil Pulverizer from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
We …
4 Comments » - Posted in Open Source Ecology by Marcin
Sunday, July 12th, 2009
Taking it to the Next Level: CEB Vault Construction
We’ve got some great news on Inga’s House. We have succeeded in inviting Dipl.-Ing. Dittmar Hecken. He is the hands-on instructor from the Earth Building Course that Inga attended at the University of Kassel, in Germany. University of Kassel is the home of Prof. Dr. Gernot Minke’s group – world leaders in earth construction …
