Tennessee

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Implementing Open Source Ecology in The Village on Sewanee Creek

Open Source Ecology, which aims to provide the blueprints and instructions to build the 50 most essential machines for civilization, promises to be one of the great industrial shifts in the coming decade. The promise of industrial manufacturing in garage and tool-shed not only permits low-cost solutions, but independence and security in the event of disaster.

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The 19th century industrial revolution eliminated the cottage industry through the development of assembly lines and division of labor. In the globalized economy, Western consumers have become dependent on imports to sustain our consumer lifestyle. Many products are no longer manufactured within the United States and other developed nations. While not an intrinsically bad system, the era of self-sustainability has gone by the wayside. Gone is the simple life, replaced by global supply chains and logistics solutions to get your toothbrush from the other side of the world.

The first taste of a return to the good life is exemplified by the excitement over the 3D printing revolution. For example, a company which aims to provide the next generation of manufacturing, 3D Systems, has had its stock price double due to investor expectations. The same excitement that surrounds the ability to manufacture your own custom plastics with 3D printers is magnified by Open Source Ecology, which provides the DIY designs to build everything from your own tractor to making construction bricks from compressed earth. The ability to have a plasma cutter, bioplastic extruder, and dimensional sawmill at your disposal offers the prospect of a rebirth of cottage industries. Manufacturing will only be limited by your imagination, not for the lack of tools or material. Your open source induction furnace will largely eliminate material constraints.

Sawmill
The open source movement is expanding into the physical realm but like the online sector, open source is only as strong as its community of contributors. The movement not only relies on its network of designers and prototypers, but communes and clubs to build and test the machines. One such community is the Village on Sewanee Creek, a sustainable community on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee.  The property development has weekly projects where villagers come together as a group to build chicken coops and biochar gasifiers to support a self sustaining community. Groups like these are part of the development and the success of Open Source Ecology

For example, the Village on Sewanee Creek recently ran into a hitch when their tractor began to malfunction.  Open Source Ecology now provides the designs and instructions to allow the village to build a tractor of their own. One that they can fix on site should problems arise and made from materials locally available. The village not only brings together likeminded people interested in tinkering, fabricating, and sustainability, but roots its community weekly projects such as building an open source tractor.  Open Source Ecology will succeed best in a permanent setting where the community is already project oriented and dedicated to self-sufficiency.

Find out more about the Village on Sewanee Creek here.

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Rainwater Catchment: Better than a Well in a Drought

Many people have asked me if wells are feasible here at the Village on Sewanee Creek.  My response is always “yes, you can, but I wouldn’t and didn’t”.  This guy explains why better than I can.  Where wells are drying up in drought-plagued Texas, rainwater collection still works.  That’s the 1st reason.  But after that, pure, soft, quality water is an even bigger reason.

Four of six families in the Village now have significant rainwater collection and storage systems.  So, I guess you could say we’re another “Tank Town” with a nicer sounding name.  During the drought that even hit Tennessee for about 6 weeks this summer, we used ours to water the greenhouse and our large garden, switching temporarily to city water for our household needs.  That saved us hundreds of dollars and our garden when chlorinated city water would have been too expensive for gardening on our scale.

One of the benefits of living in the Village is that your neighbors prepare and share as much as you do.   My brother, George, and I both have large systems with a combined 15,500 gallons of storage capacity.  George has a larger roof than I do, so his system is more robust than mine.  By linking and sharing systems, we can increase balance, capacity and resiliency even further.  We recently installed another 500 gallon tank that takes the overflow from George’s tanks when they are full.  It is positioned just above the orchard.  Through a gravity feed drip system, the orchard is now insulated from droughts too, with pure, unchlorinated rainwater that would have been lost.

Rainwater harvesting is the first critical step in becoming self-sufficient.  I’m so convinced of this that I offer a 10% rebate on the purchase of land in the Village to cover the cost of implementing a great system.  We have built several systems.   George is a chemist and water expert, having run the water quality lab for many years at the Coachella Vally Water System (Palm Springs/Palm Desert).  So, we help Villagers with water quality expertise as well.  If you would like to see pictures of our systems or more information about what we have done in the Village to become inter-dependently self-sufficient for water, food and other stuff, contact me here for access to our “members only” online database.

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It’s not what you make. It’s what you keep that counts.

“Sustainability“

It’s the buzzword of the decade.  Wrapped up in that word are other buzzwords like “green” and “eco-friendly“.  But these words represent passing fads.  The bedrock reality underlying sustainability is a much more prosaic, boring, yet little understood word, “Economics”.   It’s a terrifying word.  It suggests complex supply / demand curves and the inscrutable workings of inscrutable institutions like the Federal Reserve, the IMF and the World Bank.  People are increasingly frustrated and angry with the “banksters”, politicians and other manipulators of “the economy”.

Take a deep breath.  It’s actually quite simple at our level.  Make more than you spend.  That’s it.  Take charge of your life.  Live frugally.  Be industrious.  Build and create.

That’s not to say that one need not be aware of the many external factors that weigh in on the spending side of the equation.  America’s favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, is next week. 

The Washington Post informs us Thanksgiving Dinner this year will cost 13% more than last year.  Yup, inflation is accelerating.  It’s about to get a lot worse.  Thankfully, I’ll be keeping more of what most people will be spending on a Thanksgiving feast this year.  We raise our own vegetables and poultry!

We’ll be enjoying some non-traditional, but delicious green tomato pie, remnants of our summer garden after a hard freeze last week.  Interesting how that word “Sustainability” is increasingly associated with another buzzword, “self-sufficiency“.  Keeping more of your output is inseparably connected with controlling both your income and outgo.  And that’s what self-sufficiency is all about – personal independence and control.

The good life is about more than financial economics.  Peace of mind is an even bigger part.  That’s why self-sufficiency, the sense that I’m in control of my destiny is so closely connected with sustainability and economics, which are all about achieving an abundant life.  Abundance can be in things, but has a lot more to do with state of mind.  It’s hard to have one without the other.

It’s not easy to be self-sufficient and independent.  It takes forethought, planning, intelligence and work, all values that were common to the early American ethic that seem to have become lost in the generations of excess.  Thankfully, those values are coming back into fashion.

One of the obvious elements to consider in the outgo part of the equation is the general cost of living.  We selected rural Tennessee as the place to buy land and put down our homestead.  Tennessee offers the lowest overall cost of living in the U.S.  For thinking people who want an abundant life, keeping more for themselves of what they produce, it’s an obvious choice.

For thinking people, there are many ways to cut costs beyond the current coupon fad.  Coupons only tie people to existing products and systems that reduce your control of your life.   Coupons might be put to better use as band-aids with a little stick-em.   That’s all they are anyway; short-term relief for a chronic disease.  Band-aids can be useful, but not for long.  In the Village on Sewanee Creek, an intelligent “Intentional Community“, people work together.  Cooperative effort on gardens, homes and other projects increases productivity and reduces costs.  We try to standardize on equipment and vehicles.  That way, it’s easier to repair things (increased productivity) and maintain extra parts (reduced, shared costs on a few critical items).   This kind of coöperation takes extra thought, extra preparation, extra commitment.  That’s why most people don’t do it.  That’s why most people don’t keep a lot of what they make.

At the end of the day, economics is pretty simple at our level.  Keep more than you spend.  Spend only on things of lasting value.  Work with your neighbors.  It’s all natural law.  We call it … “in harmony with people and nature”.  It’s our motto and it’s working to create a more sustainable, abundant life for people in the Village.

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Inspiring Action


Watch this thought-provoking video.  Then scan through almost five years of my blog posts and see if you can answer this:

Why am I building this unique community in Tennessee?
Like Apple products mentioned in the video, it’s the reason people continue to buy land here at higher prices despite a terrible economy and a worse Real Estate Market.
Hint:  It’s not about the land.
See if you can boil my why down to a few words.  Then post it in a comment.

If  your why matches mine it could be worth cash towards your entry into the Village.