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...
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...
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,...
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,...
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...
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...
Does Anyone Know Where I Could Get a 250 Mile Per Gallon Car?
I was looking for a one cylinder diesel engine today for our new Troy-Bilt Horse rototiller. It appears that the Horse model is the simplest, longest-lasting rototiller of all tillers – so we snatched one up. It was made in the 70’s, and it...
Fertile Birthing Period
I’ve been asked a number of times about the progress on the CEB press. The best answer is that we’re in a fertile birthing period. If you went through the presentation in yesterday’s blog – you know that we decided to build our...
Presentation on the Global Village Construction Set
Last week we spoke at the University of Missouri, Columbia. The topic was the Global Village Construction Set: Open Source Engineering for Sustainable Living. I focused on the construction of economies that utilize local resources. I proposed the route...
CEB Infrastructure
In order to build with the Compressed Earth Block press, and in order to produce these machines at Factor e, we need a certain level of infrastructure. Here is what we are doing: Say you want to fabricate CEB presses. Start with a facility: CEB walls...
