I love this man. Not only did he predict the current crisis of american agriculture in the above quoted book but his writing has untangled the frustrated rat’s nest of thought and feeling I walk around with. In this book he details our current crisis in terms of culture, character and ecology. So far the main take aways are; return to small farms because they are better for the economy, ecology and culture of america, they build stronger people and more resilient communities and they produce higher quality and more sustainable food. I’m so happy to have found a good writer like this.

Think of it this way. A large corn monoculture grows only corn, by definition. It also relies on heavy equipment driving up and down the rows, planting, cultivating, irrigating, spraying, etc. This highly specialized operation leaves no room for any other plant to be grown alongside or between the corn stands. Those 2 or 3-foot wide bare tracks for the tractor wheels are wasted land and wasted opportunity. Beans grow very well underneath corn stalks, using the stalks as a vine climbs a fence. But giant combines can’t harvest beans and corn together. Small farms, on the other hand, can grow multiple crops in the same space, which helps naturally to fight weeds and pests while enriching the soil.

Applying this complex and diverse farm to livestock; while it takes 2.5 acres of grass to support one 100% grass-fed cow and calf pair, that same space can support an additional 5 sheep and 400 chickens. The same 2.5 acres planted in grain at (9000 lbs feed grain per acre) and fed directly to cows would produce 2250 pounds of beef (10:1 feed conversion (p. 16)). The grass-fed calf, 5 sheep and 400 chickens will produce 2500 pounds of meat (600 lbs beef, 300 lbs lamb, 1600 pounds chicken). This would cost 400 pounds of grain to feed only the chickens which equals an additional 0.35 acres of grain growing. Net result, 2.5 acres of grain produces 2250 pounds of low-quality beef and 2.5 acres of grass plus .35 acres of grain produces 2500 pounds of high-quality, Omega-3 and CLA laden beef, lamb and chicken.

Finally, let’s consider the energy used to bring those pounds of meat to the table. Industrial food systems typically require 7 to 10 calories of energy to bring 1 calorie to the table (p. 120). That includes fertilizer, machinery, processing, hauling and refrigeration. That means 2250 pounds of grain-fed beef equals 1,800,000 calories of food which requires 15,300,000 calories to get to your home. That’s the equivalent of 486 gallons of gasoline. On my old livestock farm we used 500-1000 gallons of fuel per year to bring to market 150 cows, 400 pigs, 100 turkeys and produce 4000 eggs. This is why small farms are more efficient.

Buy local, cook at home, use less refrigeration, start a garden and get to know your neighbors. These are habits that will not only help us avert the worst impacts of climate change but also deal with what’s coming.

Billy had a mysterious background. Like our rooster, we don’t know where Billy was born or how he found us. A farm hand in NC found him in our 4×4 one day and he was friendlier than any kitten I’d ever known. He was obviously trained by some mama cat somewhere because he was an excellent hunter, hider and snuggler. I never worried about him getting eaten, he was a very careful cat. He never came out during the day and only seemed to have energy at sunset and sunrise. He was dark and barely visible. No coyote could ever touch him. He loved Rudy and slept against his belly. He slept next to me every night for the last year. First on the window sill next to our bed in North Carolina. Then on my legs at the River, on Cape Cod and finally in Western Mass. He came when I called him and loved raw liver. He spoke to us in some cat language we understood and he seemed to understand us. I never had to yell at him or put him in a cage. He let us carry him down a busy Boylston st. in Boston trusting completely that we would keep him safe. He never tolerated a cage or a leash, so we just had to hold him in our arms every where we went. He took the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard and rode on my lap in the Subaru. He was the greatest cat I’ve ever known and I miss him so much.

He’s buried under an old apple tree in Western Mass at 1400 feet. He didn’t look like Billy when I dug his grave but he felt like him when I put him in it. I don’t want to forget him.

Before it got so hot Kate and I planned to make moves North by August this year. The cow, 2 pigs, 21 chickens, 2 cats, 1 dog and a hive of bees made the trek last week on our micro-Noah’s Ark. The greasetruck pulled this small two-horse trailer from the late ’70′s 700 miles from here to our worthington, MA (I stockpiled 100 gallons of grease for the trip). Cow on one side, pigs on the other, chickens in the loft and bees in the tack compartment. Rudy and the cats rode in the truck and we drove through the night to keep things cool.

Our next home is in Western Massachusetts, a farm called Sawyer Farm. It’s run by a young couple who embrace low expense, low input farming. They run a “full-diet CSA” which will provide a small group of people their entire year’s worth of food. Their customers come to the farm once a week to take as much food as they want. There are no limits on what they grab, which fosters a real sense of community and support. The farm produces everything; grain and bread, milk and butter, eggs and beef and more. It’s like a community homestead.

It basically made me feel like I need to step things up. So here I am, sans smoker or any protection collecting honey from my hive. Turns out all those brood cells I saw in the early spring turn into honey cells later in the season. Just before leaving North Carolina I took 7 pints out of one super and am very happy with the flavor. Go bees!

Greasing Up

Between these conversions I lived in a warehouse in san Francisco that was also home to a company called Got Grease. My buddy Toby ran their operation and collected used veggie oil from all over the city to sell to a biodiesel company nearby. He was a wealth of knowledge on how to collect and filter. In addition a good friend from college, Nathaniel, gave me the low down on biodiesel and veggie oil after having started a biodiesel company years back. For some reason used vegetable oil has always been around me. I guess it’s fate.

Collecting Veggie oil.
The conversion is the end game. Before touching your vehicle consider the impacts of collecting veggie oil. It’s sticky, attracts flies and is a super bitch to clean up. You will, at least once, cover yourself in oil. If you’re careful, you can anticipate spilling and maintain a clean work space.

I am going with a super low-tech, long-time collection and processing system. I visited a handful of restaurants in my area, asked them each if I could have their oil and got lucky with one. They put their used oil in 35 pound jugs by their dumpster. I pick up once a week. I leave these jugs in the sun for a number of days to let the particulates settle to the bottom. Then I pour them through a sock filter and into a 55-gallon drum. I use a 5-micron filter if the oil is pretty clean and filter in stages if it’s really dirty. I compost the little bit left in the bottom of the jug instead of clogging my filter for a few ounces of oil. I leave the oil in the 55-gallon drum for a few more days to continue settle and then I have a small electric pump pull oil from 6 inches off the bottom of the drum and push it through a goldenrod fuel-filter mounted on the wall on it’s way into my veggie tank on the truck. The oil in the tank is clean and clear. No water, no sediment. If you don’t pre-filter, you’ll end up changing your car’s fuel filter frequently and usually on the side of the highway in the rain or snow.

The conversion.
Diesel engines were originally designed (by Rudolph Diesel) to run on peanut oil. Diesel fuel came later. The only necessary change to make to your diesel engine to run vegetable oil through it is the addition of heat to the vegetable oil. Veggie oil is too viscous to burn directly in the engine and needs to be pre-heated to lower its viscosity and thus burn cleanly. Luckily the engine produces enough heat to pre-heat your veggie, so all you have to do is start and stop on diesel (or biodiesel) and reroute some coolant to pre-heat your vegetable oil. In addition to heat, it’s a good idea to filter the veggie separately in the engine compartment. The most basic parts of a conversion include an additional fuel tank with a heater element for veggie oil, a second fuel filter (also with heater element), switches to go between biodiesel and veggie and some plumbing. So far the truck runs quieter and smoother on veggie.

Biodiesel.
I highly suggest converting a vehicle to run on veggie oil instead of making biodiesel. The greasecar kit was easy and straightforward to install and processing used veggie is not that bad if you have a little space. I buy biodiesel from Piedmont Biofuels and they do a great job making it. The unfortunate truth about biodiesel is that you have to employ some pretty awful chemicals to make it. Methanol is not only toxic, odorless and invisible, but it’s also extremely combustible. Backyard brewing can be dangerous. However running on veggie doesn’t completely free you from the diesel/biodiesel world, it does let you rely on it much less and leave biodiesel production to professionals. You won’t mind paying more for biodiesel when 90% of the miles you drive are free.

Environmental Benefits.
At the end of the day running vegetable oil through a diesel engine is still combustion and thus still produces some environmental toxins like you would get from a wood fire. These toxins cause acid rain and smog. They are not cool. But! Veggie oil is a carbon-neutral fuel. The soybeans pull carbon dioxide from the air and convert it to plant material which then gets pressed into oil, burned in my truck and released back to the atmosphere to be sucked up again by another soybean. Running on veggie doesn’t make driving good for the planet, but it does make it much better than running on diesel. You could do even better by growing your own beans and pressing your own oil to avoid the agro-industry soybean racket. But that’s a toughie.

At the end of the day, if I can manage to fill the veggie tank 10 times, this was totally worth the work if only for the feeling of driving on free fuel. It feels so good to kick that switch over to veggie and watch the price of diesel keep going up.

The bees have been busy lately. I harvested two and a half pints of honey a couple weeks ago and it’s delicious.

A few days later my bees swarmed up into the tallest tree in our yard. A few days after that, they swarmed again into the lowest branch on the same tree and we caught them and popped them into a new hive previously abandoned by our last exercise in swarm-catching. They seem to be staying and are busy building fresh new comb inside their spanking new hive.

The chickens are trucking on. They survived the winter well; we lost two to cold/sickness, ate 6 roosters and are left with 12 layers. One of the original mama hens daughters hatched 5 little chicks on her own and is raising them.

We incubated one of those five chicks and snuck her in under mama when she hatched. She has a big bowl of food in her hut, but she takes her chicks on walks every day to teach them how to scratch and peck like a pro. She sleeps on them at night and screams and snaps at the dogs if they get too close.

This duck thinks I can’t see her and is sitting on a huge nest in our woodshed. She could have 20 eggs under her. We’ll see how many hatch.

The Chicken Ark overwintered well. No rot and I’ve got little patches of really dark green grass where it was last fall.

My latest building project is this fancy new pig house for Rose. I scavenged the tin and siding from a fallen down barn, cut the fence post legs out of the yard (they were holding up stone decorations, very classy) and bought 2 2×4′s and a box of screws. It also has scavenged board insulation under the tin to keep things comfy. Rocco the cat seems to enjoy it.