I’ve been asked a number of times about the progress on the CEB press. The best answer is that we’re in a fertile birthing period.
If you went through the presentation in yesterday’s blog – you know that we decided to build our own tractor with loader and rototiller for powering up the CEB press and for soil preparation. That is exciting – real life Erector Set construction in action. Here is a picture of the metal as it starts to constitute the frame:
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I just scored a 55 hp Deutz diesel engine for the tractor at $550 – new ones cost $7k. The set of 4 hydraulic motors 
, $250 each at Surplus Center, just came in the mail, and I got 4 truck wheels for the tractor.
In about a month, we’ll be starting to build – now with reliable equipment. We’re still aiming for production of CEB presses in October, after getting up the computer controlled torch cutting table for rapid fabrication in our off-grid facility.
By the way, goat Nacha also had a fertile birthing period. She just produced two babies. Check out how she’s cleaning them right after they popped out:
Excellent!! Fertile indeed. Factor E is quite a breeding ground for new ideas, models and frameworks. When i visited i really felt like i was a part of something newly sown that is budding from the soil. Some care, help and a little humanure will do a lot to speed up the process. Everyone I tell about factor-e is excited, now that the great ethanol scam has been made obvious, the general public is scrambling for something better and more feasible and more human. These convoluted machinations of our global economy are beginning to reveal themselves, and people are aghast and afraid. What you are offering up has so many solutions to so many of these problems. We just have to set up the institutional infrastructure to sustain more research and design and resources. We need open design foundations, open design institutes, permafacture institutes, etc. This is a great opportunity to take new approaches to our culture and offer completely new and much more sustainable lifeways. And then we can work on resilience!
I sometimes dream of the GVCS on the back of an F350 biodiesel making stops in some of the villages i’ve been in in mexico, and then the farmers make some bricks and some hand tools and build a wind turbine and a new tractor. So many possibilities await. We just only have to realize them!
(p.s. give my regards to Nacha and her kids!! see you soon!)