LEF November-December 2024 Newsletter

from Living Energy Farm

Living Without Fossil Fuels on Agrarian Futures Podcast with Alexis Zeigler
A new podcast is out about Living Energy Farm. Here is the promotional text from Agrarian Futures:
“It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of climate change. But where can we find models for living in harmony with the planet—before it’s too late? Alexis and the community at Living Energy Farm are doing just that: building a self-sustaining, non-extractive way of life that is energy independent and sharing their knowledge with others.”
“Alexis brings a unique blend of practical, technical expertise and a deep philosophical vision for restoring our spiritual connection to nature—and to one another. These themes are at the heart of this show. If you’re seeking grounded hope and a climate-resilient model for living, we think you’ll find this conversation inspiring.”
Living Without Fossil Fuels on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Direct Drive DC Microgrids in the Caribbean
Debbie and John are preparing to return to Puerto Rico in the second half of January, where they will be doing two new installations, checking up on installations from previous years, and doing a few events and workshops. In March, John and Lucy (our solar installer friend who has been distributing small solar kits from LEF in flood ravaged areas of North Carolina) will be traveling to Trinidad to install DC equipment at Wa Samaki permaculture center. Debbie is currently in communication with the Wa Samaki team to design their DC Microgrid and can get equipment to Trinidad in time for John and Lucy’s trip. On the Trinidad end, the work is being coordinated by Rodjé Malcom, a friend of ours from Jamaica who has helped with work there as well. The Wa Samaki projects will probably be a low voltage system for a tiny home, and a solar water pump to supply the permaculture center with water for irrigation and fire suppression.

Biogas
For 13 years, firewood was the fallback fuel for cooking at LEF. Starting a rocket stove every cold winter morning, or burning lots of wood in an inefficient indoor wood stove, is not fun. We do what we can with Insulated Solar Electric Cookers (ISECs), but the ISECs can’t cook breakfast, and they can’t cook in heavily cloudy weather. We cook three meals a day for 8 – 12 people, year round. We have been upgrading our biogas for years. We have never made it all the way through winter on biogas. This year, we are going to make it. We have had heavy clouds for much of December, and temperatures at night as low as 10 F, with many days in the 40s F. That’s challenging for houses and biogas digesters heated with solar heat. But we have not lit a fire to warm our house. The digester needs to stay about 85 F ideally, though 80 F is tolerable. We are past the winter solstice, and the lowest tank temperature we have seen is about 78 F. The modern focus on solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity is a monumental mistake. Solar hot water collectors are four times more efficient per square foot than PV panels. We could not keep our house, or our biogas system, warm with PV panels. But with thermal panels, we can.
We have had some trouble with fibrous material clogging up our input pump (a homemade invention of ours), but we have that worked out now. Otto is very diligent in taking care of Seymour (that’s the digester), and now as we head toward New Years, we are actually gaining gas in our storage. Hooray!!!! Nothing in our 14 years of working on LEF has felt like such a positive change as being able to cook whatever we want whenever we want on biogas. We are continuing to work on the biogas tractor, though no big developments there recently.
Thank you Otto, thank you Seymour!

Deb standing next to our biogas storage bag. It’s solstice and we still have lots of biogas. We are very happy about that!

Otto has taken diligent care of Seymour, our biogas digester, with good results. The green
device in the foreground is a silage chopper we brought in from China. It is very helpful
in preparing organic materials for Seymour.

Easy Reapers and DC Microgrids in Ghana?
We mentioned in our last newsletter that our Easy Reaper went to the Borlaug Dialog at the World Food Prize in Iowa. (That’s our simplified combine harvester for harvesting small grains.) We talked to a lot of folks there, including a lot of African business people. There are lots of people who think the project is a good idea. We did not find anyone in particular who owns a production facility who wants to make them in the U.S. We had hoped an American company would make them and we could make a fair return on the process. That is not going to happen at this time. There are several very small African companies, primarily in Ethiopia and Ghana, who are interested in producing them. Those will be produced under license with LEF, but not at any substantialprofit to us.
As far as our DC Microgrid is concerned, it is clear that people who do not have ready access to grid power and propane/ natural gas like our renewable energy systems more so than wealthier consumers. If we could facilitate the spread of the DC Microgrid, we could make coal, nuclear, natural gas, and industrial “renewable” energy obsolete. Tropical regions — where thermal demands are reduced — would seem to be the “low hanging fruit.” Add all that up, and Sub Saharan Africa would be the largest region on Earth for which circumstances are favorable for the spread of DC Microgrids.
It appears that the first Easy Reaper built outside of LEF is going to be built in Ghana. We are currently trying to figure out if we can plant a solar energy project there, something like what we have accomplished in Puerto Rico. It would certainly be convenient to work on both projects in the same locale. But Ghana is far away.
Would DC Microgrids serve unmet needs in Ghana for communities that do not have good access to energy? Could our conservationist model spread there, and to other parts of Africa? Everyone we talk to, Americans and Africans alike, has told us that it would be favorable environment. But we don’t really know how quickly the technology might spread, and how much we are able to to put into a project in Africa at this point. If we do pursue that project, the first step would be a mission to talk to solar companies in the area. That could be a combined trip in which we also consult with the folks wanting to build Easy Reapers.
Kerry Clark (who has been supporting the Easy Reaper project from the University of Missouri) has been quite successful working with African businesses to enhance their ability to produce threshers and other farm equipment. Another person who has done that kind of thing is Katerine Putz, a German woman who has built an organization around helping small African businesses set up distribution for biogas systems (and not just give them away, which only undercuts local businesses). We would like to do the same thing with the DC Microgrid — set up local solar companies to distribute the technology and the equipment.
Currently we are trying to figure out a realistic game plan for the coming months. We continue to consult with folks in Baltimore, as well as organizations local to where we live, about building Energy Independent Cooperative Housing. (Modestly priced housing built using LEF’s technologies, see prior newsletters.) We continue to work on our various technology development projects (a direct drive washing machine, the Easy Reaper, and other direct drive appliances). We live at somewhere around 2% as much energy as the average American. We have a powerful set of technologies that could have global impacts. How we get more people to notice and support what we are doing, and help our technologies to spread, is not entirely clear. The total donations we get is usually around $20,000 per year. That pays for materials mostly. Thank you very much to the folks who support us.
If you have any thoughts, resources, friends, or a willingness to work in Ghana or West Africa, let us know. We would love to see LEF grow to a larger organization with higher levels of funding. If you have any connections or means to help us make that happen, let us know.
Please support us if you can.

From left to right, Jefferey and Theo from Sayetech, a small Ghanaian company that makes small farm equipment, and Kerry, from the University of Missouri. They came to LEF to study the Easy Reaper.

Living Energy Farm is a project to build a demonstration farm, community, and education center in Louisa County that uses no fossil fuels. For more information see our website
http://www.livingenergyfarm.org, or contact us at livingenergyfarm@gmail.com or Living Energy Farm, 1022 Bibb Store Rd, Louisa VA, 23093. Donations to the Living Energy Farm Institute are tax deductible. Click here to make a tax deductible donation. Make sure to designate your donation for Living Energy Institute.

Podcasts about LEF:
Living Without Fossil Fuels on Agrarian Futures Podcast with Alexis Zeigler
“Alexis brings a unique blend of practical, technical expertise and a deep philosophical vision for restoring our spiritual connection to nature—and to one another. These themes are at the heart of this show. If you’re seeking grounded hope and a climate-resilient model for living, we think you’ll find this conversation inspiring.”
On Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Socialist News and Views Special Interview: Integrated Activism And New Simple Harvester
In this special we speak with Alexis Zeigler, a Founder of Living Energy Farm and Writer who published the book Integrated Activism – Applying the Hidden Connections Between Ecology, Economics, Politics, and Social Progress. Zeigler says he is a firm believer in individual and community self-sufficiency and self-determination.

Articles about LEF:
Living Energy Farm: A Community Free of Fossil Fuels?
By Guénolé Conrad, originally published by Low-tech Lab

Direct Solar Power: Off-Grid Without Batteries.
A lengthy, well-researched article by Low-Tech Magazine, based in France. The article talks a lot about optimal utilization, AKA “community is the magic bullet that makes renewable energy work.”

Power Shift, Award-winning Living Energy Farm Makes Living Off-grid Sustainable. This is one of the best brief summaries of LEF we have ever seen, by Matt Dhillon at Cville Weekly.

Decolonizing Puerto Rico Through Solar Power. By Megan McGee, published by Truthdig. An excellent review of our work in Puerto Rico.

YouTube videos about LEF:
Cooking and Heating With Direct Solar Power (No Batteries)
Lithium batteries can be the most expensive and extractive part of a solar system — costing $8,000 ormore. What if we could cook, heat, and refrigerate food, without them? This video by @sambutlerUS shows how we can start making transitions in our communities today.

Solar Power Systems That Last Forever, focused on our solar powered kitchen.
How to Never Pay an Electric Bill. This video is a walk-through of our energy systems at Living Energy Farm. It is a concise summary of how these systems work, and why they are not in common use already.
How to Live Without Fossil Fuel (Introductory Video)
Powering a Community with Solar Electricity
The Best Way to Store Off-Grid Energy
Batteries that Last (almost) Forever

A Community Outside Fossil Fuels

Low Tech Lab (a French organization devoted to useful, accessible, and durable technologies) interviews Alex Ziegler of Living Energy Farm.

Louisa Communities Tidbits

by Raven

Louisa County, Virginia is home to perhaps a dozen intentional communities.  (And it’s not a very large county!) I’m not sure of the exact number because I’m not down in Virginia.  I heard of another one recently, the Bay Branch, mentioned in the October newsletter from Living Energy Farm.  I’m also very aware that communities fall apart or are discontinued and I often don’t hear about it until long after the fact.

But working with the communities that I knew of, at least a while ago, I created another Match Game, with eleven of the communities in the county.  The clues were tricky and unless you were in one of the communities or were paying very close attention to what we’ve been publishing on Commune Life, it would be hard to get them all correct.  So I thought that, beyond publishing the answers, I’d write a post explaining them–and putting out a little more (and sometimes obscure) information about these communities.

So, here, again, are the clues and the communities and where this information came from and a little more about some of them.

A loose association of ex-Oakers and other former communards: Bakers Branch.  Bakers Branch is a road about halfway between Twin Oaks and Acorn where, as it says, a lot of former folks from Twin Oaks and other communities live.  It’s not really a community but they do view themselves as somewhat connected.

A monastic community of song and prayer: Community of Peace.  On their website they describe themselves as “a monastic Christian community” and they mention that they hold “Sung Prayer” three times a day.

Community of Peace (from their website)

Heritage and heirloom seeds are now their largest source of income: Twin Oaks.  This was one of the tricky ones.  People who know a little about the Virginia communes hear “seeds” and think Acorn, but when Twin Oaks published about creating a new office for their Seed Racks business they specifically said that.  The clues are in the words “now” and “largest”–seeds have been Acorn’s only business for a long while.

Twin Oaks new Seed Racks office

It was founded by an anarchist from Richmond: Cuckoo Compound.  Mo Karnage, an anarchist who had been part of the Wingnut anarchist house in Richmond founded this and owns the property.

the Cuckoo Compound (from their website)

Living sustainably in downtown Louisa: Magnolia Collective.  A spinoff from Living Energy Farm, they try to demonstrate that you can live ecologically and they are located “just a few short blocks from Main Street.”

Making a building sustainable at the Magnolia Collective

Perhaps the newest community in the county, they want to be “weird in the woods”: Bramble Collective.  That’s how they open their website: “Let’s be weird in the woods together.”  And, given what I wrote about the Bay Branch, it seems like they are no longer the newest community in Louisa County.  It’s tough to keep up.

A building(?) from the Bramble Collective webpage

Their main members are an artist and an ex-priest: Little Flower.  Little Flower is a Catholic Worker Community run by a couple. Sue is very artistic and has decorated their community.  Bill is an ex-priest and they are both long-time peace activists.

Art on a building at Little Flower

They have a very visible boat that doesn’t float: Cambia.  Cambia went looking for a boat that didn’t float figuring that it would make a cheap and interesting place for housing.  The boat is in their front yard and very visible from the street.

The boat at Cambia

They only have one community business but they are the most prosperous community in the county: Acorn–of course.  Southern Exposure Seed Exchange had been doing incredibly well before the pandemic but it really took off when people were isolating and started thinking about buying seeds.  It’s still doing very well and Acorn has been generous in employing folks from the other local communities and involving the other communities in their business.  As it says above, the wholesale part of the business has become Twin Oaks’ biggest money maker, a case of a very successful offspring now supporting the parent.

The Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog

They’d rather do Easy Reaper than Easy Rider: Living Energy Farm.  LEF (which I’ve heard them pronounce as ‘leaf’) has developed a simple combine that they call ‘Easy Reaper’.  (I will bet it’s a play on Easy Rider.)  It was recently displayed at a conference in Iowa.

Living Energy Farm’s Easy Reaper

Working to build a BIPOC focused community in Louisa County: Moonseed Collective. With Serenity Solidarity having moved to New York State, Moonseed is the primary community in Louisa County focused on “the needs of Black Americans”.

A picture from the Moonseed Collective’s Facebook page

Again, this is not completely up to date.  I’m not there so I’m not certain about the current situation.  Some of these communities may no longer exist or have changed and, as in the case of Bay Branch, new communities may have emerged in the county.  It certainly makes Louisa County an interesting place to live.

Land Day, PR, Pumpkins, Brownies, and a Kibbutzim Question

by Raven

We’re still looking a couple of months back on Facebook and this week we have everything from pumpkins and brownies to a provocative question about the kibbutzim.

But let’s start off with Living Energy Farm. They’ve had their place for fourteen years.

This post did okay, just sliding in with six likes and a hundred views.

Twin Oaks was happy to get a bit of local publicity.

Unfortunately, this did do very well on Facebook, with three likes, a love, and a mere fifty-seven views.

SESE wrote about pumpkins.

I thought it was interesting but apparently not many folks did. It got no likes or loves and only thirty-nine views. This was our worst performer of the week.

And East Wind Nutbutters posted a recipe.

Okay, lots of pictures and a recipe for a sweet treat. Yes, it did well, although not as well as I would have expected, with only three likes and a respectible hundred and fourteen views.

Finally, I thought it was time for another Facebook question and I wanted something controversial and having mixed thoughts about the Kibbutzim (plural of the Kibbutz) these days, I decided to put out a provocative question.

I wanted comments but I only got a couple. (Some good thoughts, though.)

While I was hoping a controversial, provocative question would attract a lot of views, I had also been warned that Facebook was limiting the views of “political” stuff. And that seemed to be true, at least at first. There were only two comments and only two likes and after the first day there were less than a hundred views, and so I thought that was that. But something happened that I had never seen before. I’m not sure why (it didn’t seem to have gotten any shares) but it started gathering more views over the next couple of days and while a hundred and eighty-six views is not much for a controversial question, it’s a lot more that I thought we were going to get. I’m not sure what happened but this post did well after all.

Intercommunal Support, Season Extension, Green Eggs, Denver, and Alliums

by Raven

Unfortunately, this week last month, was the beginning of a slide in Facebook ratings for us. I’m not sure what is going on but we didn’t get a lot of viewers on Facebook, not even reaching my one hundred mark once this week.

I thought the posts were interesting, though. The first was a clear case of the Louisa communities relying on each other.

While this post didn’t do great on Facebook (it didn’t even nearly reach the hundred mark), it did the best of any of our reposts of this particular week, with three likes, a love, and eighty-eight views.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange wrote what I thought was an interesting article of ways of extending the growing season.

Here’s a link to the full article.

As I said, I thought it was interesting. Apparently Facebook didn’t. It got no likes, loves, or comments and only a dreadful twenty-nine views, making it the worst performer in a bad week.

We haven’t posted anything about the Baltimore Free Farm in a while and I noted that they have had some changes. The article is from April but it does reflect some of what’s going on there.

(I guess by “Olive-Egger” they meant a hen that lays olive colored eggs.)

For such a low viewing week, this didn’t do too, too badly, with two likes and eighty-three views.

East Wind’s nutbutter business travels to trade shows around the country, and this post was about them going to Colorado.

While this post didn’t do well by any means, it landed in the middle of a bad week for viewers with four likes and fifty-nine viewers.

And last, but not quite least, I reposted another piece from Southern Exposure about their allium shipments, an important part of their season.

And this wound up with just two likes and fifty-two views.

I would like to tell you that things went uphill on Facebook from here, and they did, but not incredibly well, for the most part. More about this next year.

Communes in the Age of Trump

by Raven

I imagine that most Commune Life readers are not happy with the election of our former president.  (If you are, I wonder what you expect.)

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Trump has been elected. In January of 2017, the Atlantic magazine published an article entitled “Seeking an Escape from Trump’s America”.  It featured a bunch of folks who talked about joining or being in an intentional community as a way of being protected from the chaos of the new administration.  One of the communities profiled was Living Energy Farm.

Picture from the Atlantic article

When Trump was elected in 2016 I was living in the Ganas community in New York City.  It’s not an income-sharing community per se (although the core group shares not only income, but assets) and it is not an egalitarian community (and they will tell you that) but it could be a very caring community and the morning after the election (when few folks had expected Trump and the Republican party to be swept into office) we had a regularly scheduled planning meeting.  We threw out the agenda and we were just there for each other.  I wondered how people outside of community were able to deal with this.  I was so glad to be a part of a community where we could support each other when something like this happened.

This time around I’m living in a very small income sharing community and, honestly, we have barely talked about the election.  Of course it wasn’t the surprise that his first election was.  But the community that I’m in focuses on interdependence and mutual aid, and I think that those are some of the most important things that we will need during the trying times ahead.

Community, as I pointed out above, means you don’t have to be alone with the trying times ahead.  Communities like Living Energy Farm (and ecovillages like Dancing Rabbit and Earthaven, not income-sharing but committed to ecological living) are developing the tools that we will need to live in the age of climate change, even as the Trump administration will probably slash most of the “Clean Energy” development funds.  Small communities like the Possibility Alliance, the Baltimore Free Farm, and Cambia are showing that living simply is not just possible but can be fun.  As MAGA Republicans attack immigrants, queer folks, trans folks, and folks of color, communities such as Serenity Solidarity and  the Tennessee queer communities offer places of refuge for those affected.  And larger communities, such as Twin Oaks, East Wind, and Acorn are often looking for members.  The Foundation for Intentional Communities maintains a directory of intentional communities of all kinds.

Beyond the general benefits of community living, income-sharing in particular offers collective shelter from the economic winds ahead. In income-sharing communities, we are not only there for each other emotionally but provide a financial buffer for many folks who would otherwise be struggling.  

Perhaps people will begin to realize the need for community as the chaos spreads in 2025.  Maybe interest in communities and communes will rise. Hopefully we will be able to rise to the occasion and take folks in and create many more communities of all kinds to meet people’s needs.

I think communities and communes are very important anyway, for a number of reasons, but I think that they are especially important now.

LEF October 2024

Living Energy Farm
October 2024 Newsletter

Land Day 2024
We’re celebrating our 14th Land Day on November 16, 2024 and you’re invited! Festivities start at 2pm. There will be tours, performances, dinner, a corn pit for the kids, a bonfire (weather permitting) and more. See our website for the full schedule and more details. If you haven’t been to LEF before, be aware that it’s a half mile walk from the parking lot to our house. Come prepared for the weather, and bring a flashlight if you plan to stay until dark.

New Video explains Solar Heating, Cooking and Refrigeration Without Battery Storage
More and more, activists and observers are raising concerns about climate mitigation strategies predicated upon utility scale lithium battery storage. Lithium mines, and other extraction projects related to battery production, are already creating devastating human rights and environmental impacts around the world. At LEF, non-electric storage is a critical part of our microgrid. For years we’ve been teaching people that batteries are the most expensive and resource-intensive way to store energy. There are much cheaper, lower impact, and more effective ways to store renewable energy, which include thermal mass, insulation, pressurized water, and biogas.
Sam Butler is an organizer and media-maker from the DC area who has been helping us adapt our message to the broader climate movement. He produced this video, which is being released today. It’s about using non-electric storage for heating, cooking, refrigeration, and other loads. It includes footage from the DC Microgrids at LEF and Magnolia Collective. Check it out! Please share it with yournetworks, and watch it through till the end. Watching the video till the end will help it trend on YouTube, which means the video will reach more people.

Feel free to get in touch if you’d be interested in getting involved with media projects or using these appliances/systems. You can contact us at info@livingenergylights, or contact Sam at homes@sambutler.us and (202) 738-1041 for both LEF and media related work.

The Easy Reaper at the World Food Prize Conference in Iowa
As we go to press, the Easy Reaper is on display at the Borlaug International Dialogue in Des Moines Iowa, an event organized by the World Food Prize. This gathering includes heads of state, CEO’s, academics, and other leaders in agriculture, international development, and resource management. The University of Missouri’s Soybean Innovation Lab is sponsoring our presence at the conference, which aims to “integrate past wisdom, current innovations and the pressing needs of tomorrow, by
leveraging agricultural technology to address contemporary challenges.” It’s a perfect venue for making connections with organizations and government programs that have the resources needed to get the Easy Reaper produced at scale.

Alexis and Kerry Clarke from the Soybean Innovation Lab with the Easy Reaper at the Borlaug Dialog.

Comings and Goings at LEF
We’re excited to have a family- Chrissy, Jenny and Harvey- joining us as new members of Living Energy Farm. They’re from east Texas, where Chrissy has been homesteading off-the-grid on her family’s land. After visiting us last summer, she decided that community was a better fit for her family than homesteading on their own. We’re grateful for the new infusion of energy, enthusiasm, and dinosaur knowledge that they bring to LEF.

Jenny, Chrissy and Harvey. Nika is SO excited to have kids to play with!

We’re a little sad but also excited that John Milner, who has lived with us for three years, is transitioning to the Bay Branch. The Bay Branch is a forming community in Louisa, co-founded by Carrie (Debbie’s sister and ex-LEFer). Their goal is to be off-the-grid with a DC Microgrid, and with John as a co-founder, it’s probably going to happen! We’re looking forward to helping this exciting new project come to fruition in the coming years. Thankfully, John is going to stay involved with Living Energy Lights by continuing to help us with technology development, educational programs, and installations in the Caribbean.

Distributing DC Lighting and Charging Kits in North Carolina
Thanks so much to everyone who donated to our crowdfunder supporting the distribution of DC lighting and charging kits to victims of hurricane Helene. Veronica, who delivered the kits, sent back the following report:
I first visited Lucy (friend of LEF who is a solar installer) at Celo, who took 20 kits to distribute. Holding you in my heart as you and Celo work to recover. After, I went up the mountain to my dear friend Jim’s place— he is the founder of Southern Seed Legacy, and lost his barn/seed storage, and I worked the day with him to save what seeds we could- seeds that he’s worked with Cherokee and other mountain folk to collect over the last 40 years, some of which now only exist with Jim. On my out of Burnsville, some leftover debris from road work gave me a flat tire, and I stopped at Fox Country Store, where I met a rescue volunteer–Russ, who is friends with Mel in Celo; Russ’s family is in Buladean (which is particularly hard hit) and he was headed there for emergency relief and was able to take 5 kits for that community.

Lucy receiving our kits at Celo Community.

The next day I headed to a mutual aid hub in Haywood County, near a site of particular devastation near Clyde. The Pigeon Community Center, which is in normal times a Black-led youth center, is a central operating facility that’s getting aid to the very remote and impassable hollers of the area. Chelsea, who is from this area and a social worker and social justice organizer, had reached out to me asking for any ideas or support for the rural folks out this way. I was able to drop 9 kits directly with her.
Finally, I took supplies and hot meals from the center out to remote areas that were particularly hit. There was a community of mostly Latinx folks in a trailer park by the river that were being supported by the Clyde Christian Fellowship– their homes were entirely destroyed (some broken apart and still hanging in trees). They were living in tents on the land near where their homes had been. They were in tears with the hope of lights, and conveyed that even in normal times power is not consistent here. They took the remaining 8 kits for the 15 families there, and Chelsea will be following up with them to check in on the kits and their ongoing need/use.

Flood damage at one of the houses that received our kits

Thanks Veronica and everyone else who supported this project. Lucy will be returning to LEF in one week to help with a production run of Roxy Ovens, with the goal to bring cookers and other solar equipment back with her to Western NC. We’re excited to see how our technology can continue to help communities in the mountains who clearly need better options for energy security.

Living Energy Farm is a project to build a demonstration farm, community, and education center in Louisa County that uses no fossil fuels. For more information see our website http://www.livingenergyfarm.org, or contact us at livingenergyfarm@gmail.com or Living Energy Farm, 1022 Bibb Store Rd, Louisa VA, 23093. Donations to the Living Energy Farm Institute are tax deductible. To make tax deductible donations, do not go to the Virginia Organizing website, go here instead: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/1388125
Make sure to designate your donation for Living Energy Institute.

Corn Dog, Plumbing, Acorn Cats, and Word Search

by Raven

We are still running a month behind, so here’s some Facebook posts from mid-September.

East Wind posted about their corn harvest with a cute little pun about a ‘corn dog’.

This did pretty well on Facebook with four likes, five loves, and a hundred and thirty-four views.

Twin Oaks was happy about their new plumbing manager.

This did really well on Facebook with thirteen likes, five loves, and a hundred and eighty-nine views.

At Acorn, it was all about their cats.

This post did fine–not quite as good as the last two, but quite respectible, with five likes, three loves, two comments, and a hundred and ten views.

I’ve occasionally put puzzles about the communes on here and this time I decided to do a word search about all the communities in Louisa County, VA.

Okay readers. If you want to try your hand at this puzzle, take a moment.

In this case, the answers are below (colored in).

Responses for this post were pretty good, with six likes, one love, five comments, and a very nice two hundred and thirty-eight views. (Warning, I have learned that more people seem to look at the puzzles, than the answers.)

So, here’s the solution to the word search:

Okay, and here’s the solution:

Did you try it?

For some reason, I’ve learned that folks seem more interested in the puzzles than the solutions. This got three likes, one comment, and a hundred and twenty-six views. Respectable surely, but a lot less than the original puzzle.

LEF August/September 2024

Living Energy Farm
August – September 2024 Newsletter

Speaking Tour Postponed — Many Thanks!
A number of people responded to our request to help us set up speaking events in the last newsletter. Thanks! We have realized however that we were moving too quickly. Other projects have been demanding our attention (see below), as has the farm. At this point, the speaking tour is officially postponed until the spring. We are deeply grateful for the folks who are trying to help, and regret we have not been better able to plan our time. Please stay in touch!

Solar Kits to North Carolina
As you probably know, hurricane Helene was a major disaster in western North Carolina. Entire towns have been wiped out, public infrastructure destroyed. Power is expected to be out for weeks in some areas. To help, we sent 43 of our 12AH solar battery kits to western NC with Veronica, a seed grower we know from the Ujamaa network, who is from Asheville and has connections with mutual aid networks in the area. The kits are small, but they can provide a few lights and charge phones, which is a whole lot better than nothing.
Most of the kits are being donated, while others are being sold at or below cost. We are fundraising to cover our costs, so we can replace this equipment and help more people in the future. Please consider donating if you can: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-lel-send-solar-kits-to-western-nc
We have a lot of friends and connections in the greater Asheville area. Western NC is a thriving hub for homesteaders, climate activists, and permaculturalists. Our friend Lucy, who came to our training in July, is a solar installer who works in and around Asheville. She had planned to spend a week with us this fall building Roxy Oven solar cookers to bring back to NC. Her house was flooded in the storm, but she still plans to come to LEF when she can. The need and desire for off-grid systems is greater than ever in Western NC, but it’s also a hard time to be installing any solar system. (The lithium kits we sent down are plug-and-play, but a full DC Microgrid takes time, skill, and a whole lot of parts to install. All these things are harder to come by in NC right now.) We will continue to encourage people pro-actively build resilient, off-grid renewable energy systems, before being forced to by a natural disaster. In the coming months and years we will probably have an eager audience in Asheville, NC.

Veronica (left) and Debbie with solar kits on their way to the mountains of western North Carolina.

The Easy Reaper Project Moving Forward
There have been two developments concerning the Easy Reaper- that’s our simplified combine harvester that we hope can help make small scale grain farming economically viable all over the world. We are getting ready to attend an event organized by the World Food Prize in Des Moines, Iowa at the end of October. We will have a prominent exhibit at a large conference attended by a lot of people–academics, equipment makers, all kinds of folks who are involved with supporting farmers all over the world. This could be an ideal opportunity to connect with people who could fund or manufacture Easy Reapers.
The current version of the Easy Reaper was made with scrap we could get our hands on. The main thresher drum was made with a very heavy oil drum. That was cheap and easy at the time, but also made for a very heavy machine to be transporting across the country. We are rebuilding the main thresher drum to make it lighter and more transportable. We are also improving the grain cleaning apparatus.
In cooperation with the University of Missouri, we are also moving forward with plans to build Easy Reapers in Africa. An African businessman (based in the U.S.) who has a long history of working with U.S. AID is working with us to make the combine drawings into Computer Aided Design (CAD). He will then start making Easy Reapers in Ethiopia. That’s also a big step forward. This machine could have substantial impacts in Africa, so we are working hard to update and improve the drawings and convert them to metric so the CAD can get finished.

Washing Machine
Our third prototype, simplified DC washing machine is operational. Thank you David! It uses a simple, upright stainless steel drum, and a commercial washing machine “impeller” at the bottom of the drum to wash the clothes. David put quite a bit of work putting the machine together, setting up the electronics to control the motor, as well as fill and drain valves.
We like this design. It’s very simple, very rugged, very well adapted to direct drive. It’s much better than our earlier, front loader style prototype in that it has a much smaller footprint, and it can be used indoors or outdoors, because it doesn’t splash water our like our previous model. This prototype does not in its current configuration have a spin cycle. Hanging drippy clothes is fine for a clothesline, though you would not want to do that with a tumble drier. The next step is to add belt guards, and standardize the electronics and production methods such that they are easier to make.

David and the new direct drive washing machine. David has put a lot of work into it, and we are pleased with the design.

Spreading Direct Drive DC Microgrids
We continue to support solar direct drive projects in Puerto Rico with plans to do another education and installation trip in early 2025. Additionally, friend of ours who was involved in our first project at The Source Farm in Jamaica is now working with Wa Samaki permaculture center in Trinidad, and wants to incorporate DC Microgrids into their renewable energy and natural building curriculum. We are working to consult and support their work, and may visit their site in Trinidad to teach a workshop during their permaculture training next February. More on these projects as they move forward this winter.
We are also in the early stages of a potential housing project in Baltimore. There are a lot of abandoned row houses in Baltimore, and funding is available to revitalize that housing. The Waterbottle Co-op is a worker owned cooperative that has been re-habilitating abandoned row houses and renting them at modest rates. They already build to high insulation standards, and are very interested in energy independent housing. They are connected to a substantial network of organizations who train disadvantaged youth, provide low income housing, and work on climate change mitigation. Our vision for a collaboration with Waterbottle is to purchase several contiguous row houses, wrap them in a thermal shell and retrofit them with a full direct drive DC Microgrid, including solar thermal features and biogas production. For now we’re mostly working on identifying organizations that may be able to support and bring resources to the project. We are organizing a symposium of interested parties to be held in Baltimore in the middle of November.
We are also talking with nonprofits and organizers in our area (Louisa County) about doing energy independent, low income housing here. We will keep you posted.

Biogas
Our relationship with biogas continues to improve. September for us was relentless clouds and rain, almost not sun at all. Needless to say, that provides some challenges for our largely solar economy at LEF. Mostly, we are fine in such periods, though we do have to adjust — be more careful with water, turn off the internet router at night, etc. For cooking, we sailed right through with no trouble at all using biogas. Biogas has had a big impact on our quality of life. Being able to cook without any wood fires, especially first thing in the morning, is very nice. Our large biogas bag is making a big difference. We have lots of storage and the pressure is stable, regardless of weather or usage.
We have been talking to an organization called the Northeast Biogas Initiative. They are experimenting with using wood chips for insulation and a compost-based heating systems for their biogas digesters. We are looking at grants to document what we are doing, and to compare the short and long terms costs of different approaches (solar heat vs woodchips, etc). Then we will be better able to provide instruction for other people who want to use biogas for cooking or powering small tractors.
Our biogas tractor is also coming along. We built a filter that removes moisture and hydrogen sulphide (H2S). One pass through the filter and there was no measurable H2S in the gas at all. We are using a commercial product — pelletized iron oxide — to absorb the H2S. We have set up a small compressor and regulators to pressurize and de-pressurize the gas for use on the tractor. Finding natural gas carburetors for old, small engines is not easy. But we recently found a company that has developed a different approach. They sell a “snorkel” that slips in between the carburetor and the intake manifold so you don’t have to replace your carburetor at all to run biogas (see https://www.uscarburetion.com/).
Looks like a very smart idea. We will let you know how that works.

Our new, very large biogas storage bag is very helpful. All the gas we want, and stable pressure. Seymour (the digester) is nestled in the straw bales on the right.

The Farm
The farm, and our farmers, are mostly doing well. We have finished harvesting most of our crops. The relentless rain has caused the loss of some fruit, but otherwise the farm did well this year. We planted our peanuts and sweet potatoes on beds this year, which helped them get through the wet weather. This week we brought in our finest sweet potato harvest yet. Our watermelon crop did not do as well as previous years. The Nikita persimmons did not make much, but the Rosseyankas will have a large harvest. Squash, okra, tomatoes, peppers and corn (all seeds crops) did well. We will almost certainly be running a biogas tractor next summer. We may or may not try to take the farm fully off of fossil fuel at that time, or that might have to wait another year. It will be exciting when we do.
Please support us if you can.

Living Energy Farm is a project to build a demonstration farm, community, and education center in Louisa County that uses no fossil fuels. For more information see our website
http://www.livingenergyfarm.org, or contact us at livingenergyfarm@gmail.com or Living Energy Farm, 1022 Bibb Store Rd, Louisa VA, 23093. Donations to the Living Energy Farm Institute are tax deductible. To make tax deductible donations, do not go to the Virginia Organizing website, go here instead: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/1388125
Make sure to designate your donation for Living Energy Institute.

Articles and videos about LEF:
Low-Tech Magazine (based in France) did a lengthy, well-researched article, largely about LEF, entitled Direct Solar Power: Off-Grid Without Batteries. It’s at https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/08/direct-solar-power-off-grid-without-batteries/
That article talks a lot about optimal utilization, translate “community is the magic bullet that makes renewable energy work.”

Matt Dhillon at Cville Weekly did one of the best brief summaries of LEF we have ever seen. The article is entitled Power Shift, Award-winning Living Energy Farm Makes Living Off-grid Sustainable. It is at https://www.c-ville.com/power-shift

Truthdig did an article on LEF by Megan McGee, an excellent review of our work in Puerto Rico. It is entitled Decolonizing Puerto Rico Through Solar Power. It’s at
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/decolonizing-puerto-rico-through-solar-power/

We continue to post new videos on Youtube. The latest is Solar Power Systems That Last
Forever, focused on our solar powered kitchen. See https://youtu.be/6XiHClx8d2Q

How to Never Pay an Electric Bill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Wk7inoIxI&t=201s
This video is a walk-through of our energy systems at Living Energy Farm. It is a concise summary of how these systems work, and why they are not in common use already.

Solar Installations In The Navajo (Dine’) And Hopi Reservations, March 2020
http://livingenergyfarm.org/solar-installations-2020/
This is a photo essay about our project to bring durable solar energy systems to the Dine’ and Hopi Reservations, where thousands of people live without grid power involuntarily.

Support Living Energy Farm’s Climate Justice Campaign, and Bring DC Microgrids to People
Who Need Them
http://livingenergyfarm.org/support-our-climate-justice-campaign/
This is an updated web page describing our broader social justice ambitions.

How to Live Without Fossil Fuel (Introductory Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri2U6u8p65E

Powering a Community with Solar Electricity (LEF has the only DC powered community that we know of, here’s how it works) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvdExgvHnRI&t=23s

The Best Way to Store Off-Grid Energy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wOxQ3sL9zc
Batteries that Last (almost) Forever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfrgLsyFs0E

Virginia Homegrown created a program at LEF (the LEF part starts at the 29 minute mark in the program)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDGP0C9MIzU

International Permaculture has done 2 articles on LEF. One is in issue #93, Autumn 2017, and the second is in issue #94, Winter 2017. See https://www.permaculture.co.uk/
Article about LEF at the Atlantic Online Magazine
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/anarchism-intentional-communities-trump/513086/
Article about LEF in The Central Virginian
http://www.livingenergyfarm.org/cvarticle.pdf
LEF on CNN
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/09/us/communes-american-story/
Cville weekly in Charlottesville VA
http://www.c-ville.com/off-grid-model-environmentalism-made-easy/#.VcHobF054yo

Supporting Small Communes

by Raven

I recently wrote about the importance of ‘Scrappy Little Communities’.  I also mentioned how “ephemeral” they are–they often quickly come and go.  Although most large communes started off as small communes, the problem is that little communities are very brittle, very easily lost.

What can we do to improve the survival odds of small communes?  I have written about ways of “Creating Communes that Last” and “What We Can Learn from Lasting Communities”.  There are also several books that I would recommend:  Diana Leafe Christian’s Creating a Life Together, Starhawk’s The Empowerment Manual, and, especially, Yana Ludwig’s Building Belonging. 

Having watched many, many small communities fall apart,  I’m convinced that building membership may be the most important thing a community can do to survive, with paying attention to money the second and making sure that you’re bringing in income, the second.  Building relationships is also key.

One thing that seems to have helped a lot with the survival of several communities is being part of a “cluster of communities”.  Louisa County is an amazingly supportive place for communities and it’s not an accident that new ones keep popping up there.  And a lot of smaller communities have lasted quite a while in that nurturant soil: Living Energy Farm, Cambia, Little Flower, etc.  I suspect that some of these smaller communities might not have survived as long elsewhere.  The NEMO (Northeast Missouri) communities of Rutledge and the queer communes of Tennessee are a couple more examples of these kinds of supportive clusters.

Kat Kinkade

When I look at income-sharing communities that have lasted, Twin Oaks, East Wind, and Acorn stand out.  Kat Kinkade helped found all of them.  I often ask myself (and even others) “What did she know?”  

One of the things that I have heard is that she believed in building communities up fast.  A thought that I’ve had recently is that there is something in between small and large communities:  medium, mid-sized communities. Maybe if we could get some of these little communes to medium size, they might have a better chance at survival.  I plan to write more about this in the future.