Evolve to freedom

The Search for Freedom
Are you tired of selling your time only to make money for somebody else, leaving only rare moments and weekends to do what you love (if you have any energy left at that point)? What if you could eliminate the bureaucracy in your life? What if you could end your personal financial contribution to war and keep your money out of the coffers of corporate leaders? We are developing the tools, the networks and community to make technologically modern self-sufficient living possible for everyone. Is it time to begin producing only enough to provide yourself a quality life? Are you ready to divorce yourself from systems that require coercion, injustice, and ecological ruin, while fostering a connection to the land and developing your own true talents? This radical move is increasingly within your reach.

Self-sufficient Modern Living
How?

Gather a team of 10 or more skilled people who want to live differently, visionary mindset included. This may be the most difficult aspect of making this dream a reality. As more and more people become fully disenchanted with the things they do to make a living in this society, this becomes more doable.

Raise the funds to buy a 10 acre plot of land and install an open source personal Fabrication Laboratory (Fab Lab). Pick up some scrap metal from the nearest junkyard and cast it, providing the raw materials you will need to build a technology base for you new community. A personal Fab Lab plus a computer with access to open source software and blueprints gives you the power to build your own machines with the click of a mouse and some wrench turning. It brings the economic power of automation and design efficiency into the hands of smallholders.

Build a high production compressed earth block press to create high quality, comfortable housing from on-site dirt. When issues of ecology are brought into consideration, it becomes clear that compressed earth bricks are one of the most advanced building materials known to humankind. Provide for your food needs by planting an orchard, building a greenhouse, creating a garden, and raising a few lactating animals, a pond of fish, and a coop of chickens. The addition of a microcombine increases the ease of grain production. Fabricating your own LifeTrac tractor can greatly reduce the labor needed to build housing and get a successful system of food production up and running.

A solar power system feeds energy to your new stronghold of peace, with a few days storage in case the sun goes into hiding. The sun sends you no bills. A backup system may involve planting a fuel crop, or going to a local restaurant for waste oil to make biodiesel on extremely cold days as the crew as Factor e Farm did in earlier years. A variety of means of providing energy are being explored.

If scrap metal becomes unavailable, you may be able to extract aluminum from your on-site clays in a furnace fueled by compressed gas produced from waste wood chips.

Don't have enough money for an advanced Fab Lab? Build one for yourself piece by piece starting with a smaller system. A 3D printer (RepRap) can be made for under $400, and requires nothing more powerful than a |OLPC computer. A Multimachine open source drill-mill-lathe costs a few hundred in parts. The components of the Fab Lab are being designed to be constructed from openly available plans, and these two technologies give you the start you need to construct one for yourself, substituting sweat equity for cash.

OSE is taking another tack, building the Global Village Construction Set machines along with the tools needed to fabricate them. Because of this, the prototypes of the GVCS contain off-the-shelf commercially produced parts. After an initial set, including a Fab Lab is prototyped and tested, people constructing subsequent sets should be able to purchase or trade for parts created by another GVCS.

Financing
A number of small enterprises could be used to support the construction and development of a community building towards self-sufficiency. For example:
 * Orchards set up as a passive U-pick businesses.
 * Sale of fabrication services to local farmers.
 * Tree propagation workshops.
 * Training workshops for earth block building.

Low on money and high on vision? We like to help others, and we'd like to share what we have to help others build their own infrastructure. Anyone is welcome to come use the tools we have to help in the fabrication process. We are also happy to share rootstock and seeds if you do the propagation work.

Freedom
For the rest of your life, do what you really want. If pressing world issues are a concern of yours, lend your time and effort to finding innovative solutions. If you want to give more energy to your personal development and understanding, take the time to do so. When you control your destiny, everyone benefits.

Imagine that as your operations get off the ground, you cannot help but notice that everyone around you is going off-grid, starting to produce other open source items of Fab Lab industry. Government workers are leaving town as they have no more problems left to solve or create...