Open Source Ecology Blog

My First Day of Independence

Hello. My name is Morwa. I’m the black baby wether of the Factor e Farm family. I was born on the fourth of July, or thereabouts. I’m your pop political observer of the obvious. This is my first Day of Independence. America has come far since...

Factor e Live – Part 3

This installment of Factor e Live focuses on LifeTrac – the open source, life-time, design-for-disassembly articulating multipurpose tractor/loader. It is the key to powering the CEB Press, permacultural operations, as well as: well-drilling, sawmilling,...

A Photo Journey from the Weekend of the Solstice

The well is nearing completion. Despite the ever decreasing depth of our hole, you can see water not far below the surface. If we’re lucky, we’ll end up with a year-round shallow well. If we’re not so lucky, it will be a seasonal one....

Factor E Live 2

The last two weeks were primarily spent on the well, which is now (almost) finished. So, our biweekly video focuses on our voyage into the earth, in a search for ground water. We begin with a homebrew rig that is difficult to use because we cannot easily...

Well – Solar Turbine – LifeTrac Day 1

We have finally completed our water well-drilling adventure. Everything that could went wrong – amounting to a 2 month delay – but the bottom line is that we have a 4 inch-bore well that we estimate is giving us 1000 gallons of water per day...

Down on the Farm: Wild Strawberries and Global Swadeshi

It has taken me a while to allow my experiences and inspirations from this weekend at Factor E to gestate, to ferment into tangible thoughts that I can easily disseminate to readers. Being lucky enough to sit down with Brittany and Marcin and talk face...

On Progress

Here is an overview of our overall program of action: On the CEB Press for building – we are presently building the LifeTrac tractor – an agriculture, construction, and general utility device. This device is remarkably pedestrian in appearance...

Factor e Live

Change is continuous at Factor e Farm. You may have seen this post on how our place has evolved from a plain soybean field to rich diversity on many fronts. To record these changes as they happen, we have begun the Factor e Live series. These are videos,...

Agricultural Innovations Podcast

Last week, Frank Aragona from Agricultural Innovations published a podcast interview regarding some of our work at Factor e Farm. Agricultural Innovations is a research and consulting organization involved with biodiversity, fair trade, community supportecd...

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...