On a farm in Missouri, a radical experiment in self-sufficiency (2013)

Re:On a farm in Missouri, a radical experiment in self-suffi... by DanBC on Wednesday October 01, 2014 @04:45AM (#8393394)

This article is unsatisfying.

It describes him as having a laser focus, but as other commenters have said many projects are not finished and they are not self sufficient for food.

If you want to make open source sustainable tech you ret a warehouse and buy parts and do it. If you want to live sustainably off the land you buy John Seymour's "Self Sufficiency" book and buy a cow and some chickens amd plant crops.

The article talks about making things "from scratch" - but doesn't really define what that means. They're not smelting steel or winding their own motors. So, some things can be bought. The article doesn't mention what is bought. The tractor is a grwat example - farming is dangerous partly because of the machinery. A tractor is a tool and people tend to want their tools to be reliable and efficient. Learning how to repair older tractors is probably more useful than building a dangerous bad tractor.

The article doesn't explain whether he's learning from other people's experience.

Even the bit about living off rabits and chemical slop - he has to have the gloop-food because you can't live off rabbit (although they are tasty) but I'm not sure from the article whether he knows this.

Having said all that I freaking like the idea he has and I do wish him well. My criticism is mostly of the article than him.

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Re:On a farm in Missouri, a radical experiment in self-suffi... by azernik on Wednesday October 01, 2014 @04:56AM (#8393419)

I think your criticism of the article is really about the subject - this man has an ideological commitment to self-sufficiency, but the article is making a point that he has had to compromise that conceptual purity in order to get things done. Time and time again, the article points out Mr. Jabukowski's conflicted relationship with his farm's dependency on the outside world. For example:

  The HabLab had been connected to the local water system
  after a well ran dry, and in May it was hooked up to the 
  electrical grid. “It was an emotional trauma,” Jakubowski 
  said, and, he insisted, a temporary measure. “When we have 
  windmills and solar power up and running, that will end.”

He's building a dangerous bad tractor rather than learning to repair older tractors because he sees the former as morally and ideologically superior. He's using his homemade brick compactor rather than the commercial alternative (which the mentioned DC contractor switches to) because, in his view, the means are the ends. Unfortunately, because the means are so completely nuts, this collective has a hard time maintaining that level of ideological purity on the day-to-day level.

I wish them good luck in the future. I think the influx of veterans, who seem to have a more task-oriented approach, may save the GVCS as a practical project, but that will be by throwing out the insistence that it will be created by a society that practices the ideals of the GVCS project from the get-go.

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