Taking Open Product Development to the Next Level
We have previously introduced an open collaborative product development process. Developing an effective open source product pipeline – as a worthy competitor to corporate research and development (R&D) – remains one of the hottest topics...
Spring Rains
For the record, check out what our place looks like during the rainy season in the spring.
Open Source Tractor Walkthrough
Here is a walkthrough for LifeTrac. We cover the basic structure and hydraulics design. This is for those of you who want to study the design more closely, or may be replicating this in the future. Keep in mind that this is the first prototype, and several...
Solar Village Underground
Pretty soon we will demonstrate that we can press 3000 bricks with the CEB prototype two. We have been thinking about our village design. For some time now I was considering earth-sheltered ecotecture, such as this beauty found at undergroundhousing.com:...
Recruiting a Farm Manager
Any good village will have a robust, low-maintenance agricultural operation. I always dream of the near-future time for us here – of orchards dripping with fruit, trees dribbling with nuts, open source combine and tractor making easy time of formerly...
Hexahatch: the Open Source, Automatic Egg Incubator
So far, we’ve built a Hexayurt, two Hexacubes, and now we’re adding Hexahatch to our hexaform product line. Hexahatch is a 6-tube, 60 max capacity chicken egg incubator, with automatic egg turning. The construction is simple and symmetric,...
Heavy Duty Lathes, Chickens, Heavy Hoes, MicroTracs, and Soil Pulverizers
Any good village should not go without the above. The heavy duty, 12″ chuck, 20 hp, open source lathe design is complete. Yes, 20 hp from LifeTrac. It’s $360 in parts – which is awesome because because these things sell for thousands....
Fruit Tree Grafting and Raspberry Root Cuttings Details
The plant propagation workshop of last weekend did not offer a chance for good documentation of the process details, so here’s another take. We propagated 200 raspberries and about 50 peaches and apricots. We’ll need to feed a village.
Perspectives on Local Economic Power
Here’s something to think about regarding our recent refocus on locally produced fuel and steam engines at Factor e Farm. Energy is slave labor without the slaves. At Factor e Farm, doomsday peak oil scenarios are not particularly threatening because...
Basic Bookbinding
For the record, we keep log books/journals at Factor e Farm. Anyone visiting for more than one week is required to make a notebook for records, data, pictures, numbers, etc. This is useful for keeping track of Factor e Farm history, passing on work to...
