Volunteer at Factor e Farm

last updated on March 12, 2009

All Visitors are Welcome at Factor e Farm

To further public education, participation, hands on experience and still achieve our facility goals, we need to make all visitors' time productive. Facility tours are $50 per group. Other visitors must pick a volunteer project from below that they will work on when they visit Factor e Farm. Note: This applies to first time volunteers only.

People who have helped us before and are welome without the above facility tour fee. However, we still request that all visitors cover the cost of their stay, as noted in the next section.

All visitors will pre-pay before visiting, either by mail or by a one-time donation to our PayPal account. All payments are non-refundable. To arrange a visit, please send a email in the form of:

To: opensourceecology@gmail.com

Subject: {Your Name} {Volunteer Type'} {Volunteer Item}

Fees

Our time is very valuable. As we are currently getting large numbers of real and virtual visits, we need to stay on track of our work. While we would like to engage in longer discussions on all of our work, the actual builiding of the world's first, replicable, open source global village comes first. Because of the increasing volume of visitors, we simply need to make sure that we are compensated for time spent away from real development work along our core mission. Here is our fee schedule, and special cases are considered on a case-by-case basis, as we go through reorganization of our organization.

• First-time visitors - everyone who comes to our facility for the first time pays a $50/person tour fee. This applies to prospective Factor e Farm team members as well. The reason is that we have a low acceptance rate - primarily because our place is different than most people expect - so this compensates us both for our time and ensures greater commitment on the part of the visitor.
• Day volunteer visits - volunteers coming for unscheduled work days pay $25 per person for the first day, and $15 per person for successive days. This applies to stays of up to one month. (The first-time visitor fee also applies, if it's a first time visit.)
• Month-long projects - after a participant exceeds an initial stay of 30 days, their daily fee drops to $10/day.
• Organic volunteers - we provide housing for organic agriculture volunteers, but any extra food not provided by the farm must be covered by the volunteer.

The above does not apply to dedicated project visits. These visits are carried out under an explicit agreement, with a mutually agreed-upon proposal for a clear deliverable.

Note: We reserve the right to change these guidelines as we continue in our organizational development. Check the 'last updated' date on top of this page to determine the currency of this information.

Choose what level of participation you will volunteer at when you visit Factor e Farm

Virtual Visit Volunteering (after you donate, we build and post pictures/movies on the stages of your project online) <paypal>1</paypal> or Pay another way

• Build an Organoponic Raise Bed Remotely $225
• Build a Chinampa Remotely $1,000
• Build a Solar Cube Shelter Remotely $430
• Chick Hatching Remotely $51
• Build a Heavy Hoe Remotely $75
• Micro-Berm Around a Tree Remotely $50
• Remote Propagation of rasberry and other plants $50
• Make Biodiesel Remotely $85

Labor Volunteering (if you just want to visit to see how Factor e Farm works) Please send email before paying to ensure scheduled visit.

• Build a Raised Bed during your visit $50, takes one full day
• Build a Solar Cube Shelter during your visit $50, takes one full day
• Build Heavy Hoe $50, takes 1 hour, must run torch, grinder and welder
• Micro-Berm Around Tree $50, takes 1 hour
• Propagation of rasberry and other plants $50, takes 1 hour (in early spring)
• Make Biodeisel $50 takes one day

Project Volunteering Labor and Materials Purchase (if you're seriously considering becoming a part of Factor e Farm)

• You Build Your Factor e Farm Solar Cube $380 pre-paid, non-refundable, food is $10/day for length of visit
• You Build Your Factor e Farm Organoponic Raised Bed $175 pre-paid, non-refundable, food is $10/day for length of visit

How to volunteer

Volunteers should email OpenSourceEcology at gmail dot com. Also check out the Volunteer Application. We host Organic Farming Volunteers and Student Projects. See [1] for more info.

Factor e Farm is also looking for:

• People to work on GVCS projects, and in particular, the Build a Village Program
• Organic farm volunteers for facility management, and food, energy, and housing provision.

Volunteer Development - Motivating Alignment and Collaboration of Volunteers

The first step in aligning a dedicated and voluntary team of developers is to recognize that such a team is available. Normally, the success of gathering collaboration is unquestioned, yet, in this case, it is instructive to raise the question whether such collaborators exist because we are looking for full commitment from unpaid individuals, and on top of that, for a project that is far beyond the norms of established society. To convince ourselves that such a team exists, we must prove:

  1. the endeavor has high value
  2. the value is practical or achievable
  3. volunteers can comprehend the value
  4. people without ego and angst exist in the population at large
  5. the value of the endeavor is so high that egoless people can shift their full attention to the endeavor. 

Note that we assume that the unpaid individuals - those, in particular, with full commitment - must qualify as what is best dubbed independently wealthy. These individuals are those who have free time because they do not have to work to make a living. These individuals could be ones who either have big savings, low expenditures, or both - such as monied individuals, voluntary simplicity followers, the unemployed, or those who do not have significant costs of living because of their particular situations.

1. High Value. We start with the stated goal as the definition of value: The approach of this project is to identify a small but comprehensive infrastructure base of robust, widely applicable solutions for living and working such that transforming the world is a byproduct. The intent is to produce a replicable business model for a number of successful and optimized enterprises, by which individuals may engage in right livelihood activity as defined in previous sections. This approach has clear value.

2. Practicality. A replicable business model for optimized enterprises is definitely achievable. We simply take existing enterprise models, work to optimize them, and release the knowhow in the open source to make it replicable. If the enterprise model is one that is successfully engaged by others, then it will be even more profitable if optimization adds further value. The key is to adapt progressive, ecological enterprise to the type of profit margins that are quite attractive to individuals, while ensuring that principles of right livelihood are followed. Specifically, the particular enterprises in the small but comprehensive infrastructure base must achieve a high Right Livelihood Selection Score in order to be included in the set of choices that collaborators agree to develop. This score automatically ensures the high potential impact for the transformative nature of enterprise deployment.

3. Understandability" - This is perhaps the most difficult point to prove, because understandability of this endeavor suffers from grave translatability issues due to the social conditioning of the population at large. It is difficult to convince people that an entirely different model of social organization which transcends centralization and top-down control - namely Right Livelihood - can be implemented, if the total force of social conditioning indicates to the contrary. It is required of the few people who are to understand this proposition that they are independent thinkers largely independent of the military industrial state. Some of these people still exist. These people need to be sufficiently connected to the land and nature in order to comprehend that right livelihood is a prerequisite for a harmonious, truthful way of living. Such individuals are the only ones who place sufficient priority to right livelihood that they would consider engaging in this project.

4. Ego and Angst - Even the people who understand this proposition as in point 3 will not truly understand it unless they conquer any ego and angst that stands in the way. This requires spiritual evolution on the part of the potential collaborator. There are many such individuals on planet Earth.

5. Full Attention - This is a hard requirement, but if people value the proposition sufficiently, the natural consequence is that they engage this proposition with full heart. The transformative potential is clear to such individuals, and they see that their own integrity leads them to promote the effort with their full energy.

What it's like at Factor e Farm

Learn about what it's like at Factor e Farm before you come.

We are on 30 acres in rural Missouri. We aim to meet and transcend the needs of self-sufficient off grid basic survival.

Shelter

• We are totally off grid with solar panels to charge a forklift battery - buildings are wired
• We have wood stoves in all buildings, a chainsaw, and woods nearby for plenty of firewood in the cold months
• Buildings are waterproof, windproof, and some are insulated
• Buildings:
  • Earthbag hut
  • Cordwood hut - Usual visitor area.
  • Hexayurt - uninsulated
  • 2 Solar Cubicles - $380 insulated housing unit built in one day
  • CEB building and greenhouse - thermal mass retains heat
  • Army tent
  • We are building more to accommodate people.

Water

• Hand pumped water well
• Roof rain water catchment system on greenhouse, stored in barrels, manually siphoned out

Food

• 300 tree fruit, nut, and berry orchard
• Some canned food from the previous growing season
• Chickens - eggs, meat
• Goats - milk, meat
• We still have to buy some food
• Agricultural Permaculture tasks, landscaping, taking care of plants
• We try to eat together

Waste

• Humanure bucket with seat - emptied into compost
• Plants need water

Sanitation

• Will have hot water and shower soon with kitchen/workshop CEB building
• We have an indoors sink in the cordwood hut, with water from a container with spout.

Finances

• Finances are handled individually

Governance

• By consensus

Learning

• DSL internet connection
• Wireless router
• We can train others to use tools for production

Build technology for ecology to easily provide the above and replicate it at low cost for others

• The Global Village Construction Set

We are seeking interns for our research and development center to help develop open source self-sufficiency technology. This includes designing and implementing "permanent agriculture," agricultural machines, construction, and metalworking. We don't just make diagrams or theory, we make machines that help people achieve their dreams.

Videos of our work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV_-ZzYmo3A&feature=PlayList&p=E5373DEB6EC556F2&index=0&playnext=1

Ideally we are looking for:

   * Confident and highly dynamic self learners or researchers.
   * People motivated by innovation and change.
   * Able to take a project from concept drawing to real world implementation.
   * Excited by diversity of thought.
   * Comfortable in rural and rustic settings.
   * Willing team members, self starters, and project leaders. 

We are offering individuals short term or long term residencies for development of physical technology for the benefit of all people. Residency at Factor e Farm involves physical work, philosophical work, and community building work. Rustic and unique accommodations are available. Please contact us for more details.

Our research and development interests include but are not limited to:

   * Low Cost Housing built from local materials
   * Permanent Agriculture - food forests, orchards, CSA crops
   * DIY Agricultural tools and implements - tractor, spader, tiller, grain combine, hammer mill, hay baler
   * Low cost off grid energy systems - heat, hot water, lighting,
   * Low cost water systems - water wells, catchment systems
   * Metal work - melting, casting, cutting, forming, computer controlled manufacturing, whatever you desire 

These are elements of the Global Village Construction Set - everything needed to create advanced civilization on a small scale.

What we offer:

A place where you can put philosophy of sustainability into action. We are a physical experiment in building a post industrial global village - a space for all people to learn and grow.

More about volunteering

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