Factor e Farm Manager

We are recruiting a farmer to test and demonstrate the usability of LifeTrac and other open source OSE equipment to provide a full, year-round diet to participants at Factor e Farm.

We are particularly interested in those people with diversified farming experience: field agriculture, forestry, greenhouses, animal husbandry, earthworks, etc. Familiarity with heavy equipment and farm equipment is a must, as is an appreciation for the soil food web. Basic familiarity with equipment maintenance, repair, torching and welding is also desirable.

The farmer is encouraged to document progress openly with a daily log and vlog on the wiki (see Marcin Log for an example) using an automatic upload platform such as an Android smart phone (provided).

Additional Duties:

• Land Regeneration Management – Factor e Farm suffers from serious erosion and fertility issues caused by decades of prior commercial row-cropping. To ameliorate this, our program calls for building berms, ponds, and other earthworks to address erosion directly, plus, extensive mulching, as well as intensive rotational grazing as a rapid way to improve the soil food web. The primary tools that are to be used in these tasks are bulldozers, ruminants, and hay-bales.

• Farmer – or more specifically – the open source agroecologist – the pivotal person in the community who provides nutrition to the FeF team and thereby is the primary contibutor to the good health of the community. The open source agroecologist is responsible for food production – from garden and orchard to field crops, animal husbandry, fishery, and forestry – and for food storage and processing, such as seed cleaning, seed saving, and oil expression. The farmer is responsible for producing food, fuel, and fiber crops (both wood and clothing) – while maintaining a diverse and integrated ecosystem and soil food web that improves in quality over time.