Fri 27 May 2011
Posted by Chris
Greetings from Factor e Farm.
Life has been busy around here.
We’re in the middle of a production run, so we’re working pretty much round the clock. What’s cool is that as we’re building things, we’re finding all these things to improve about the process. There’s a lot of room to grow, and we’re pumping out a lot.
Here’s a few photos of the past week. (more…)
Sun 22 May 2011
Posted by Chris
Hello everyone. I’m Chris Fornof, the newest member of Factor e Farm.
Well, here was my first 4 days.
Day 1:
Mon 14 Feb 2011
Posted by Marcin
Factor e Farm, our land-based facility for Global Village Construction Set development, has now been alive for 4 years. We encountered the place as an empty soybean field abused by commercial agriculture. This video shows in 4 minutes what has happened in the last 4 years – and points to the plans for the next 2 years. These are exciting times indeed.
4 Years oif Factor e Farm in 4 Minutes from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.
The current plan is 50/2/2 – the entire set of 50 Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) technologies to be completed in 2 years within a $2.4M budget in a scenario of rapid, parallel development. By year-end 2012, we want to be done with the basic GVCS shown above, so we can move on to applications – such as the infrastructure for a real community. This is a big, hairy, audacious goal. It requires that a large parallel development team is recruited, that a scalable development process is realized, and that the organizational infrastructure to support this task is established.
We have about 200 True Fans now – including two at the Angel level. Subscribe.
Wed 5 Jan 2011
Posted by Marcin
Happy New Year!
Over the holidays, I got a chance to meet Juliet Schor (author of Plenitude) in New York City. Juliet teaches at Boston College, and she co-founded the Center for the New American Dream. She wrote about Factor e Farm in her recent book, Plenitude: The Economics of True Wealth. She recently got a McArthur Foundation grant to do a case study on Factor e Farm. What I love about Juliet is that her core message is a mouthpiece for the practical work of Factor e Farm. I feel like I am listening to myself speak when I listen to Juliet. Her core message is that we can improve the economic system far beyond its present morasse of inefficiency and artificial scarcity.
Juliet Schor and Plenitude from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
Mon 1 Mar 2010
Posted by Marcin
We will be holding our annual Plant Propagation Workshop on March 20. See the documentation from last year’s workshop – blog post and announcement.
This year, our workshop will feature more raspberry propagation, plus grafting of apple, pear, peach, apricot, plum, and cherry. We will be using root stocks and scionwood from our nursery plantings. The workshop will take place at Factor e Farm from 1 to 4 PM on Saturday, March 20. We will start with a brief overview of the open source agroecology program that we’re pursuing, to set a context for our plant propagation efforts. The admission is free for True Fans, and $40 for others, and you may be able to take some plants home with you. We will also give a brief tour of our facilities. Email us or call to sign up or for more information, and if you are signing up, payment must be received by March 13. See other details from the announcement above.
Thu 4 Feb 2010
Posted by Marcin
This winter, we had 1-2 feet of snow, and the cover lasted for about a month. This was harsh on the orchard – because an army of rabbits thus had a 1-2 foot pedestal and could reach above the existing tree guards. There was significant damage, but the trees will grow back – from below the damage at the very worst. Here is an example, which I covered with chicken wire after the damage was done already:
The rabbits, which for some reason exploded in population this year and kept the crockpots busy – were not the only issue. Subterranean creatures exploded, too. Look at these tracks, which to my guess, are voles or moles:
How could this happen if the ground is supposedly frozen during this colder-than-normal winter? (more…)
Sun 31 Jan 2010
Posted by Marcin
William Cleaver will be joining us at Factor e Farm on May 1 for a Dedicated Project Visit. He’s coming from across the big pond – from the United Kingdom – and we are planning for a 3 month stay.
William is not a novice to creative dexterity – he’s involved in repair and demolition of industrial chimney stacks and natural draught cooling towers – at heights. See for yourself:
He has experience with various tools, welding brickwork, ropework, woodwork, and general shop. He’s traveled the world, studied Romance languages, taught English in Chile, and is certified to teach high ropes courses. He is now showing great interest in the deeper message of post-scarcity, resilient community creation.
We discussed the following tentative plan, with both of us working in the shop and as needed:
May – Work on finishing or building Sawmill/LifeTrac II/MicroTrac II/ anciliary implements for construction – all in preparation for building.
June – begin building autonomous, zero energy housing with solar space. Experiment with CEB floors, CEB masonry stove and chimney, stabilized bricks, stabilized reject lime bricks, stabilized brick walkway and driveway, stabilized retaining walls, and others. We plan on winter food garden and sprouting in the solar space. If progress on the steam engine goes well, we’ll aim to install combined heat and power on the masonry stove.
July – continue building until comfortable accommodations for the winter are ready for several people.
We’re looking at building zero energy homes that look tentatively like this:
(Credits: Aigars Bruvelis in Blender)
Here is a CEB floor example from Abe at Vela Creations:
See more of his photos here.
Other than this, William is learning Kdenlive on Linux for movie editing, as well as and QCad for CAD work. These are staple tools now at Factor e Farm. William will begin preparing some of the technical drawings for the sawmill, so we can collaborate on making that happen over distance until his arrival.
We do want to consider bringing in additional help from the CEB general contractor, Floyd (see last blog post). We will consider hosting a CEB workshop if progress is good. If the CEB fabrication is going well – there could be resources generated to really get things moving forward, and continue to build more structures. I think now is the beginning of really settling into the land – and getting the place to look half-way presentable. We’re open to all kinds of ideas, such as the proposed CEB vault construction and others – but we’d need other people to get involved to push those projects forward. Otherwise, we’re sticking to basics and all types of experiments in the process.
Thu 7 Jan 2010
Posted by Marcin
From post-scarcity communities, open business models, open source tractors, land stewardship, to starting some serious building this year – here’s the latest:
If you are liking what you heard in the video, don’t forget to subscribe to the True Fans to help make the work happen sooner rather than later.
Tue 20 Oct 2009
Posted by Marcin
I would like to share today’s letter to our True Fans with the greater world. It provides the latest insights on the Factor e Farm experiment.
Dear True Fans and Supporters,
First of all, thank you all for your unwavering support. You have all demonstrated commitment to our work by putting your money and your time into moving us forward. Your support is essential to a baseline level of funding for our work at Factor e Farm.
I’d like to announce a conference call for this Friday, 11 AM GMT -6 (Chicago and Kansas City – USA time). If you’d like to participate, please refer to the conference call procedure and policy – http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Conference_Call_Policy . This will be a weekly call, and it is our second to date.
The topics are several, focusing around the exciting prospects of perhaps the most important day of Factor e Farm to date on Nov, 1, 2009 – product release of the modular, high performance, open source CEB Press – The Liberator. Here are the items for discussion.
Initial product release – a Beta Version 1.0 – will include a manual machine, with a large, tractor-loaded hopper and grate, that can produce between 5-7 bricks per minute. The power source is external and modular, and so it the Arduino-based controller for automatic control. Both are not included in the initial release, but will be offered as modules in further releases. Product Release means formulating the hardware license, and associated enterprise, PR, and marketing strategies. This also provides a chance to refine OSE Specifications – for branding our products in a groundbreaking way. We are prividing thought leadership and practice on the creation of post-scarcity economics. (more…)
Mon 7 Sep 2009
Posted by Marcin
Friends and family still harass me. They still keep telling me to ‘get a real job.’ I’ve got a good response now. It is:
Ok. I can ‘get a real job’, work for 6 months, and then buy a Soil Pulverizer for $25k. Or, I make my own in 2 weeks at $200 cost, and save the world while I’m at it.
Which one makes more sense to you? You can see which one makes more sense to me. It’s just economics.
Now you can kindly donate and make other breakthrough work happen
I just thought this is worth sharing. Open source all the way.
