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.