Swadeshi Dialogues 2: Neosubsistence
Neosubsistence refers to a lifestyle where we bypass commerce or business as usual and replace it with peoples’ true callings. This constitutes a novel economic experiment – one without precedent – one which requires us to drop all preconceptions...
Springtime 2010
A week ago, the first signs of food plants appeared as winter passes away. The pictures show: (1), lettuce from last year self-seeding; (2), garlic; (3), stinging nettles – a great salad green when steamed, or eat fresh after rolling to rid of stingers;...
Budding Out
The fruit propagation workshop went well. Two people showed up. 2 weeks later, these cherry trees are already budding out: We got a donation of 50 more EMLA 111 apple rootstocks, which can be obtained from Willamette Nurseries for under 70 cents each....
OSE Swadeshi Dialogues
This is part one of a discussion on important issues related to resilient communities. Swadeshi means ‘own land’ when translated from Sanskrit – and it indicated self-reliance, or extended further – responsibility. This series,...
Solar Village 2010
William and I have been hashing out the details of construction for the coming year. Our plan is at this wiki page and further details on techniques to be used are here. We are currently planning on a CEB-straw bale hybrid – a double CEB brick wall...
Windpower
Just ten miles from Factor e Farm – 100 windmills of 2.1 megawatt capacity were installed over the last two years – with 100 more forthcoming. It’s quite a sight. I asked a couple of local farmers about them – and they told me...
Resource Development Professional
Our strategy for supporting the development of the Global Village Construction Set is threefold: (1), crowd funding methods, (2) sales from products, and (3) standard non-profit sector fund-raising. We have been demonstrating $1500-$2000 monthly budgets...
Documentary Work
We will be doing a 3 minute promotional video for the 1000 True Fans – 1000 Global Villages campaign this summer, and a 15 minute documentary on OSE this fall. Sean Church – a student at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Film Program...
CEB Press: Building on RepRap and Arduino
The CEB automation for the Liberator Beta 2.0 open source CEB press builds on other open source projects. We are using: (1), power drivers from the RepRap project for driving the solenoid valves; (2), Arduino as the controller-brain for the brick-pressing...
Bootstrapping and Dedicated Project Visits
We are currently in the phase of fabrication optimization for the high performance, open source, Compressed Earth Brick (CEB) press. This is our route to financial bootstrapping of the research and development efforts. We are looking for people interested...
