323 – The Ant Village Explained Part 1

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It’s official, at wheaton laboratories there’s going to be a free PDC for ants, their gappers and deep roots people. So if someone wants to come an attend the PDC that can show up as gappers and follow the fourteen day PDC, with PRI teacher Howard Story. There’s a whole thread on this on Wheaton labs forum here. The PDC will have visiting heavyweight teachers! There is an email for the PDC goantvillage@gmail.com

Paul passes to the big section of this podcast: adjusting Wheaton labs design, that as we have listened in podcasts 317,318 and 319 has had some problems. Paul admits he has passed the last months complaining about the problems. After having analyzed the problem now it’s time for the solution. How do we get long term people at Wheaton labs that can work well, and not be discouraged. The idea was to have people that have experience in building and growing but they don’t have access to the land.

In the past twenty months people came just to try and see how it could be, mostly gappers had little experience and that made the projects at Wheaton labs grow slower. Brian Brown was here for four days and he accomplished stuff that would have taken three months before the way gappers were organized. Ant village is the solution with which Paul has come up. Ants aren’t paid or feeded, Ants are free to work on their site. An ant pays 800 buck’s for now through to December 2016 for an acre of land. So if you pay now it’s 800 bucks for twenty months of land and ants receive 3000 bucks worth of candy, so it really is wonderland!

Paul explains what is in the candy ants receive, and that is worth more than just 3000 bucks. Every ant receives 16 hours of excavator with driver and fuel, or can trade 1 hour of excavator hours for 4 hours of tractor usage with a 1 ton loader. The ants that sign up early get extra candy, extra tractor hours, etc. . Evan, the first ant, got 8 hours as extra candy, and the second will get 7, and so on.

The current candy list is one piece of candy equals 2 hours of excavator and driver, one day with the sawmill, or one day in the tipi, three days with electric chainsaw, etc. . The complete list is at the ant village thread here.

Ants can work in some projects for Paul, and that work gets paid, and ants could pay other ants for work. Paul has a list of things he wants done and he pays for. Evan “the ant” has cashed in on that. And it all starts and ends with a definite goal.Ants can team up to use more land if they want to have cows, etc. The point is that many things at ant village can be arranged, if you’re serious about it, serious about your projects, at Wheaton labs you can get access to land.

Wofati 0.7 will community kitchen and book and tool library for ant village and gappers. Gappers are still welcomed but things are different, ants have to accept to feed the gappers, deciding what they want in exchange. Jocelyn sums it up well: It’s a very different focus when people work on their own project and own land, its different when people work without personal investment. Ants have a personal goal.

Paul and Jocelyn speak about Evan the first, and only ant, for now. They speak of how ant village should function, sharing some insight on what Evan is doing. One thing they say is how much he has received from permies.com community, care packages, cash and permies that buy materials for specific projects. Evan has been posting a lot of photos and has his thread. Of course Evan’s point on sharing what he achieves is the reason why people are so keen on his project.

The reasons it’s called ant village comes from the story: the ant and the grasshopper. Paul and Jocelyn tell the story not exactly in the bedtime version. The idea is that if you’re an ant the first year, then you can be a grasshopper the rest of your life. Ant village will have a first deadline on September 10th 2016, when the ant village challenge will have a winner. One ant will be awarded a deep roots package that’s worth 21.000 dollars or 10.000 cash. Paul explains how other ants will have different prizes.

The scoring is basically based on how resilient your food system is up to September and how your shelter is. Paul explains what happens after September and how ant village will evolve. Paul has so many ideas on the future of ant village.

Good luck comes from hard work, this is Wheaton labs!

Relevant Threads

Potato Village, Peanut Village, and Aunt Village
Podcast 322 – Transition into Ant Village Part 2
Podcast 321 – Transition into Ant Village Part 1

Credit: Lorenzo Costa

You can discuss this podcast on this thread at Permies.

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