as you all know this project is becoming bigger, more complex and has been a great fun :) mainly because we are now a planetary network and we have so many interesting minds from so many different fields. all committed to build a more sustainable society and seed their own food.
during this last 3 years I’ve learned tons of new things because everyone of you know things that I don’t. that’s why I always tried to get different profiles in the groups and that’s why we have a wiki, a dropbox, regular meetings and everyone needs to write a personal blog. I think this is a do-it-together project not suitable to be made by yourself and here the groups have main paper. each group has his particularities but there are commons guidelines. the group should have a home, a weekly meeting, a place to store the materials gathered, to give workshops, sun and place to have some prototypes. to be able to promote activities, the groups should have some money and some ideas come into the collective mind to keep financing the project. like: “the group should have a pair of big composters so that they can have a regular income of money by selling compost.” we need more ideas. share them with me and we will try to make then a reality.
in order to have a common view about re:farm, what are the guide lines for the local groups and where are we going to evolve I hope that this email will promote the discussion inside our community to be able to have a definitive model about re:farm and how do we place on the planet.
the first time that someone questioned me about this was rocio in argentina with her curious mind :) since then we have a lack of “about this project” and the FAQs and my visit to new york only made this a completely urgent to-do task :p
the financial model for re:farm also rise some urgent questions. a foundation? a cooperative? how do we manage money in different economies? for now is has been more or less easy since I manage more the hours that the developers contribute to the project then the money that comes in.
in development of refarm we have until now 3842 hours, we had receive from institutions 4037€ + some travels expenses and I’ve invested 41.065€ since the begging of the project.
the institutions that gave us support until now are also important. I hope that we continue to work with them and search others with similar profiles. all of them have embraced refarm and all of them, with no exemption, received us so well on their cities.
here is the list :
medialab_prado, madrid,
hangar.org – bracelona,
intermediae – madrid,
straddle3 – barcelona,
architecture university of donostia – donostia,
el forn de la calç – calders,
cceba - buenos aires,
mal au pixel – paris,
eyebeam.org – new york,
andes sprout society – andes,
new york city resistor – brooklyn,
farm city – brooklyn and
llull – barcelona
there is also some issues that we should discuss related to our cc license.
we have
this licen
se where you are free to share and to adapt the work under the following conditions:
you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author. you may not use this work for commercial purposes. and if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same license. jon with his company stem2gether raised this questions and we are working together so that we can have a model where everyone can win.
I’ve setup 1 google docs in where we should type our thoughts over this questions. please, add your contribution. together we will build a strong community that we all can identify with.
to have some control over the project (i don’t have to have my email box bombed with: ” this don’t work man!! ” I’ve restrict the access to the community for the people who participates in the workshops and people that I invite because their precious skills.
we build open-prototypes and sharing skills and knowledge is what this is all about.
talking about groups, sharing, and their evolution process we have created a new blog with some new amazing possibilities.
-now each person has his own blog where she can see what is the critical information to know at any time. the personal blogs are your posts about your personal projects and side bars that display critical information. this side bars are: local climate profile, local weather conditions and data that comes from the farm.
the groups will also have a dedicated page for themselves like this one from ny group
and side bars with pertinent information about their location. the home page will also change
and we will have a quick world refarm browser so that the user can surf though the re:farmers projects
-we also build a store
mainly to serve the groups and their activities and it also be the place to receive donations. you can donate money that is directly connected to human hours or you can donate a farm to one institution chosen by you or by a list that we have.
-the groups will now be able to make DIT prototypes and document their process
ok guys, that all for now :)
happy vegetables, looking forward to eat with you all at the same table :D
in ny I meet people very committed with finding a sustainable path and I’ve found a city were organic is trendy :) but also great work was done in this project. check out the posts of 
