Winter Orchard Damage
This winter, we had 1-2 feet of snow, and the cover lasted for about a month. This was harsh on the orchard – because an army of rabbits thus had a 1-2 foot pedestal and could reach above the existing tree guards. There was significant damage,...
Full Local Diet
In general, half of OSE technology work focuses on RepLab, and the other half focuses on open source agroecology. Both are connected, and one feeds the other. Effective food production is critical to post-scarcity, resilient communities. We are doing...
Spike Up
A bale spike comes in handy in many situations. It’ typically used to move large, 2000 pound hay bales around. With the rainy weather here, some farmers were not able to keep their hay from rottings, so we got our hands on 18 additional hay bales...
Opportunity abounds at Factor e
From my initial survey I would estimate an ideal population of this site to be about 20-30 people. Rules of thumb for estimation go at 5 people per intensively cultivated acre, in practice the number is higher but that’s good for a rough estimate....
Facility Sanitation Improvement (by a factor of ‘e’)
To our colonic relief, we added a second composting toilet, a public outhouse with privacy. Now no one needs to wonder who is going to enter the vestibule while performing defecation maneuvers. Albeit temporary, it satisfies our immediate needs. Thanks...
Hexahatch Revolution Incubator Design
Six revolving tubes filled with eggs; the Hexahatch Revolution Incubator design is done and we will be building it tomorrow as part of a workshop. The design is open source on the wiki, complete with bill of materials and implementation plan. The cost...
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...
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 Propagation Workshop
Yesterday we held the Plant Propagation Workshop. It snowed the same day, but inside the greenhouse, we propagated raspberries from root cuttings, and grafted apple and peach trees. We used a grafting tool to do the latter: Here is the transcript of the...
An apple a day
 Last year, local fruit was a specialty item. A hard frost killed nearly all the spring blossoms. The only place I could find apples was at a commercial orchard. They estimated that 90 percent of their crop had been killed by the frost....
