It was a busy week on Facebook, about a month ago.
The folks at Serenity Solidarity pointed out to me that they had just become able to support a project they really wanted to support.
This did pretty well on Facebook, with ten loves (including one from Serenity Solidarity), one comment, two shares, and one hundred and twenty-seven views.
Meanwhile, Living Energy Farm announced that they are offering a training for solar installation.
Since this is a photo off of Facebook, you can’t click on the link but here’s the application form.
This did pretty good as well, with seven likes, three loves (including Serenity Solidarity), one comment, and a hundred and forty-two views.
There’s a band made up of folks from Acorn Community called Megafauna and Acorn made a very trippy video of them.
It’s a really interesting video but it didn’t do that well. It got one like and just fifty-seven views.
East Wind Nut Butters is East Wind Community’s business and they wanted to honor Earth Day.
A lovely message but it didn’t do great on our Facebook feed. While it got three loves (including one from East Wind Nut Butters), two likes, and a care, it only got eighty-eight views.
I’ve often said, that if I want to rack up the Facebook views, all I need to do is ask a controversial question. “Controversial” is the key word here. This time I asked something simple.
Even though I thought it was an interesting question, very few other folks apparently did. This bombed on Facebook. Not only did it get no responses, it got no likes, and only fifty-nine views (just slightly better than Megafauna, which at least got a like).
Now Accepting Applications for our 2024 DC Solar Immersion/Training at Living Energy Farm!
Since 2022, LEF has been collaborating with El Departamento de la Comida (a Puerto Rican nonprofit) to offer annual DC Solar Immersion /Training(s) at Living Energy Farm. Our goal with this program has been to educate Puerto Ricans in designing and building DC Microgrids (the training), while also allowing participants to experience life powered by the DC Microgrid at LEF (the immersion). Thanks to these and other promotional events organized by El Depa, there are now many DC Microgrids across Puerto Rico and Jamaica. (Check out the “Guide to DC Microgrids in the Caribbean” on our website!) In order to lower costs and make the program more accessible, going forward, El Depa will be hosting the trainings they organize in Puerto Rico.
Building a batch collector at our 2023 training.
But these programs have been so much fun that this year, in addition to the program in Puerto Rico, we will be offering one at LEF as well! This training is not just open to Puerto Ricans, but to anyone with a sincere interest in incorporating this technology into their lives. If you are interested, visit this link to apply.
Marielisa learning to wire a DC breaker box at the 2023 immersion.
The LEF program will take place on July 26 – 29, 2024. The first two days of the program will be dedicated to lecture and workshops, and will happen at Living Energy Farm. The second two days will be onsite training at a DC Microgrid installation site, Little Flower Catholic Worker house, which is 8 miles from LEF. The program is free and includes meals and accommodations (might be camping). In exchange for the training, we are asking that participants volunteer for 30 hours on a future installation on a project that has some social value to the public or a population in need. (It could be a project you find or choose.) Spaces are limited, and priority will be given to applicants who have an active project that will be applying DC Microgrid technology.
Want to learn more about DC Microgrids in the Caribbean? Check out the “Guide to DC Microgrids in the Caribbean” recently added to our website. (https://livingenergyfarm.org/guide-to-dc-microgrids-in-the-caribbean/) This page includes maps of Puerto Rico and Jamaica, with DC Microgrid sites labeled on each map. Scroll down and click on the names of the sites to learn more about each project. We’ll keep this site updated as more systems are built. It’s exciting to watch the movement grow!
A map of Puerto Rico with DC Microgrid installation sites.
Devastating Fire at Twin Oaks Tragedy struck our friends at Twin Oaks Community (a 57 year old intentional community 10 miles from LEF) a few weeks ago. A brush fire was started by a neighbor on an extremely dry, windy day. It quickly grew to a 200 acre wildfire that threatened several houses in the neighborhood (including a few of Twin Oaks’ residential buildings), as well as Twin Oaks’ warehouse complex. As the local fire department concentrated on saving residences, the entire warehouse complex burned. For Twin Oaks, the loss is massive: several million dollars worth of uninsured equipment and inventory that was built up over decades. Twin Oaks probably can’t afford to replace the equipment and will likely have to stop making hammocks and hanging chairs. They also lost a lot of machinery for rope making, a sawmill, and a lot of very valuable woodworking equipment. Seed processing and drying equipment was also lost in the warehouse fire. It’s a loss for Living Energy Farm as well. Twin Oaks had been very generous about letting us use the warehouse for the storage and shipping needs of our solar equipment business. Luckily, we didn’t have any inventory in storage at the warehouse at the time of the fire. It was a close call, as our big annual shipment to Puerto Rico had gone out about a month before. We’re doing what we can to support our friends in this difficult time. One thing we can do is help them set up better firefighting equipment. Alexis, an ex-fire fighter and ex-Twin Oaker who is very familiar with their water system, has been working with Twin Oaks to help them improve their internal firefighting capacity. In this emerging age of climate chaos, the scary reality is that even in the east we are going to need to be prepared to fight wildfires. The fire at Twin Oaks was much bigger and moved much faster than anything that is normal for this area, driven by unusually windy and dry conditions. As farmers, we are seeing more weather extremes every year.
LEF Fire Truck
Back home at LEF, we’ve been motivated by the fire at Twin Oaks to improve our own fire fighting setup. We’ve known for years that we’re particularly vulnerable to brush fires at LEF, since we live in the middle of a recovering clearcut, and our road is not accessible in very wet weather. Years ago we set up our own modest fire fighting equipment. But we let it languish and re-purposed the storage tank for biogas. One reason our system was not kept up is because gasoline pumps are hard to maintain over time. The gas goes stale quickly. Last week, motivated by the Twin Oaks fire, we installed water tanks (that we already had acquired for that purpose), and set up our own “fire truck”- a hand wagon with a propane-powered pump and fire hose, ready to be pulled out and attached to the tanks at a moment’s notice. Propane is stable indefinitely, so hopefully this pump will be easier to maintain than a gasoline one. Fire fighting is one use of fossil fuels that we can approve of. Recordbreaking Fruit Year? In happier news, between our maturing orchard and mild spring temperatures, we seem on track to have the best fruit year so far at LEF. If you have been thinking for a while about coming out for a visit, this summer and fall might be the time to come! Our list of fruits include (roughly in order of maturity): strawberries, guomi berries, juneberries, mulberries, blackberries, blueberries, peaches, muskmelons, watermelons, pears, apples, muscadines, jujubes, persimmons, jujubes, and probably more I’m forgetting. Please support us if you can.
Peach blossoms in front of Eartheart.
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 an 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
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.
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/
Alexis from Living Energy Farm talks more about how electricity works in off-grid situations, including his community. A continuation from Part 1 last week.
January – February 2024 Newsletter DC Microgrids Continue to Spread in the Caribbean John and Debbie just returned home from three weeks in Puerto Rico. The trip was a whirlwind of installations, events, checkins with previous installations, and continuing to deepen our relationship with people and movements on the island. We started our visit staying at Otra Cosa, a queer-friendly farm and homestead in San Salvador, home to Tara Rodriguez Besosa and Millo Huertas, two friends and organizers. Otra Cosa is off the grid and transitioning to a DC system. Tara is the cofounder of food sovereignty non-profit El Departamento de la Comida (the food department, or El Depa), which has its headquarters right down the hill from Otra Cosa, and has been our biggest organizational supporter on the island. We installed DC equipment at El Depa a year ago, but the battery system was being underused, as the building was wired for AC florescent lighting. We could have switched out the fixtures, but the existing wiring in the walls was deemed to be unsafe for use with low voltage DC. (12VDC can build up more heat in the connections than high voltage AC, therefore weak connections can be hazardous. Badly made electrical connections, like wires twisted together with no wire nut, are disturbingly common in PR.) Depa wanted to be able to run their lights off of their battery, so the first project of the trip consisted of building a parallel 12VDC lighting system in their Agroteca (agricultural resource center) and community kitchen. El Depa organized the DC solar training at LEF last summer, and offered the training free of charge to participants, but required that trainees volunteer for 30 hours on an installation project. Most of our trainees did their hours during this trip.
Nathania, who attended our training in the summer of 2023, wires the new lights at El Depa.
It was great fun for us to reconnect with the folks we hosted at LEF last summer, and work on projects together. Nathania, Marielisa, Tara, Ricardo and Millo all helped with the Depa lighting system. At our next installation at Huerto Feliz, Anacaona lent her construction skills (building a roof for the water pump), Avia took the lead with glueing PVC, and Erid, the Huerto Feliz garden manager, organized volunteers and did organizational support.
A water pump for Huerto Feliz, with Anacaona’s roof.
Huerto Feliz is a community garden managed by Urbe Apie, a nonprofit that occupies and revitalizes abandoned spaces in downtown Caguas for housing, food production, and community enrichment. The water system we built uses rainwater collected from surrounding buildings, and will be essential for watering the garden and providing services for the community during an emergency. We also installed a direct drive fridge, and a lighting/charging system for the plaza next to the garden. As an occupied space, Huerto Feliz does not have access to grid power or city water in any reliable fashion.
Erid, Sunflower, John and Debbie celebrate a job well done at Huerto Feliz.
Our work helped create a welcoming and comfortable space for people in the community to be able to enjoy the garden, charge their phones, get water, and store food. Extra thanks to Sunflower, a Twin Oaks member who traveled with us and was a huge help with the installation. In addition to the new installations at El Depa and Huerto Feliz, we were able to check in with a few of the installations from last year. We made some upgrades to the system at Miguel and Dinorah’s, the elder coconut farmers in Arroyo. We added a vacuum breaker to improve the performance of their pump, and added a bathroom light to their 12V battery system. We visited Finca la Lluvia, a farm in Maricao that is home to writer and activist Aurora Levins Morales. We installed a direct drive fridge last year, and this year we added a 100AH battery kit to the system, to power a CPAP machine. One of the goals of the trip was to set up an equipment distribution site so our trainees on the island could continue to do installations after we left. We bought a storage container, and parked it at the farm of Ricardo Martinez, who owns and operates a solar company, Energiza PR. Going forward, Ricardo will be distributing and installing for Living Energy Lights, along with Millo Huertas, Eva Campbell and our other trainees.
John, Sunflower, Debbie, Ricardo, and Ricardo’s wife Karla at LEL’s storage container in Caguas.
Our next visit to Puerto Rico is tentatively scheduled for this November, when we’ll do our third annual DC solar training/immersion. This year, instead of hosting the training at LEF, the training will be held at El Departamento de la Comida. The goal is to make the training more accessible for Puerto Ricans who are not able to take two weeks off from work to be able to attend a program in the US. Now that Depa has a very developed DC Microgrid, we believe that the “immersion” part of training (allowing participants to spend time surrounded by and using the DC equipment) can be done as effectively in PR as in Virginia. It’s exciting progress. The recognition of the effectiveness of direct drive is growing in Puerto Rico. For individual users, it’s simply a cheaper, more durable form of solar. If we can get the use of direct drive to grow to a larger scale, then there would be no need for coal, natural gas, nuclear, or industrial “renewable” energy systems to support grid power.
Simple Harvester Prototype 3 of the Simple Harvester is complete. We put prototype 2 in the field last year and achieved “proof of concept.” That said, prototype 3 is a huge improvement. It is a combine harvester that can harvest many different kinds of grain. It has one belt and eight turning shafts. It could probably be mass produced for around $1,000 USD. It’s very simple to operate and maintain. There is a dire need for the Simple Harvester all over the world. And our machine works. It’s not just a theory or an idea. Small farmers in the U.S. can use old harvesters. But that’s not a solution for small farmers in Latin America, Africa, or Asia. BCS is an Italian company that makes two wheeled tractor tractors that are used by many small farmers. Their harvesting setup is $32,000 retail in the U.S. The Chinese make small combines, but they are complex and expensive. They are around $10,000 USD by the time you deal with import fees and what not. We have a contract with the University of Missouri and the Soybean Innovation Lab to help small shops start producing Simple Harvesters in Africa. We are moving forward with that. We have no interest in squeezing money out of African farmers. But if someone in the U.S. or Europe is going to make Simple Harvesters, or mass producers are going to make them, we want a share of the proceeds so we can fund the expansion of the conservationist design we have developed at LEF. Right now that means struggling with a pile of petty legalisms surrounding the patent. Wish us luck.
Simple Harvester, Prototype 3. With only one belt, it is by far the simplest combine harvester ever built as far as we know.
Simple Washer David has been hard at work for a few months designing and building a control system for our Simple Washer. And now it’s working! We have used a cement mixer for years to wash clothes. It is not a lot of fun to use and not popular. The Simple Washer uses a rotating drum (like a cement mixer), but has a circuit that controls rotation. It drains through an Archimedes Screw. The Simple Washer is DC, direct drive powered. It does have a small rechargeable battery to run the electronic timing circuit. It’s not fully automated. You have to add the water from a hose. But beyond that, it runs through its wash cycle, and then drains. Then you can refill and run it again, and then it’s done. It’s a very simple, elegant machine. It needs a bit of tweaking, but we have started using it to wash clothes, and it is certainly an improvement over the cement mixer. While there are many washing machines in the world, the DC models made in China are not very durable (as far as we know). The AC models are not easily converted, and many of those are not durable or repairable. The Simple Washer so far is a homestead model, something you would use outdoors probably. But it’s great to be making progress. We have an excellent crew at LEF these days. We are pleased David has made this work!
David designed and built a control circuit, and has made the new Simple Washer work. It’s an improvement for us! It runs off the solar panels right behind it (which also power an ISEC cooker).
Biogas We do most of our cooking at LEF with Insulated Solar Electric Cookers (ISECs). While simple solar thermal cookers (like Sun Ovens) seem like a good idea, they are very limited. The ISECs work great, and biogas is an excellent compliment to ISECs. We cook breakfast every morning with biogas. Two years ago we put a large, 2000 gallon digester into operation. We couldn’t keep it warm enough, so we added more solar thermal panels. Then last winter (over a year ago) rats got into the straw and messed up some pipes. We put the digester back on its feet. Then last summer we overheated it. We put in a thermal sink and got it going again. Then this winter we realized we had a leak in our solar heating system. We used stainless heat exchange coils inside the digester. It is an acidic environment in there. Copper coils would not hold up. One of the compression fittings we used on the stainless failed. So we tunneled under the straw and put in expensive “swagelok” fittings, and restarted yet again. With each one of these restarts, the archae culture in the tank dies back. At best it takes weeks to get it back to a healthy state. Cooking year round in a temperate climate with 100% renewable energy is challenging. Rocket stoves are efficient, but annoying to start. And they smoke and leave soot all over everything. Before ISECS, we did maybe 5% of our cooking solar on a year-round basis. Now its over 70% with the ISECs. We are hoping that we can cover the other 30% with biogas and not use rocket stoves any more. But temperate climate biogas is no small project. In the future, industrial output is going to decline. That is as inevitable as gravity. Based on our lessons at LEF, if you don’t want to cook over a smoky fire, future generations are going to have to manage cooking fuel on a community scale. Even at LEF, after years of trying to find a not-smoky way to cook, we are still working on it. The digester is — hopefully — in a state where we can manage it, keep it warm enough but not too warm, year round. But we do not as yet have a year-round feed supply for it. That is going to involve taking leaves, straw, or whatever we can get our hands on, and pre-digesting it in compost piles to a half digested state, and then feeding it into the digester. It’s coming along, but cooking with clean, renewable energy has proven challenging.
Farming We are preparing for farming season this year. We got a large pile of leaves from a local landscaper over the winter, so we will be doing some sheet mulch gardening. We will be growing a familiar variety of seed and food crops. Otto is managing the kitchen gardens. (He also takes care of Seymour, the biogas digester.) So far this year the late winter/ spring weather has been closer to “normal,” a word which has largely lost its meaning in the age of climate change. We will see how the spring progresses. The kids have been getting a bit more involved in farm, shop, and kitchen work, though as with all kids they like their electronic (solar powered) gizmos. We do a shop class with the kids once a week. They have been reviving a woodgas system for use on a small tractor. Our hope is to be able to start a tractor on biogas, and then run it on woodgas. We may start trying to integrate that into our farming this season as time allows. Currently, we are fully energy independent apart from a modest amount of fossil fuel (about 30 gallons) that we use for a season of farming. We are hoping that in the next couple of years we can be done using fossil fuel for the tractors as well as firewood for cooking. We remain amused the extent to which others seem to see our life as some kind of deprivation, or something they could never do, or something they do not know how to start doing. We have a good life, and we feel like our model is a huge improvement over spending huge amounts of money bulldozing forests to build industrial solar fields. 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 an 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
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.
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/
Living Energy Farm November – December 2023 Newsletter DC Microgrids in the Caribbean As we head to press, a crew from El Departamento de la Comida, including our trainees Millo, Ricardo, Eva, and Marielisa, are in Jamaica building a DC Microgrid at Solidarity Yaad Farm. The system includes a direct drive pump, fridge, and a few 12V battery kits. Electrically, everything went smoothly, and is working great. The plumbing side of things has been more of a challenge for the crew, but they are getting close to finished with the water system as well. Back at LEF, we’ve been hard at work building nickel iron battery boxes and making preparations for another trip to Puerto Rico. Debbie and John will be heading down there in mid-February. In addition to continuing our promotional and educational work with El Depa and Fundación Bucarabon, we’re excited to start a collaboration with Ricardo Martinez and his solar distribution company, Energiza PR. We’ve set up a storage container at Ricardo’s farm, and now that we have a trained crew of installers on the island, we’ll be able to ship and install DC equipment in Puerto Rico at any time. We even have a Spanish website and catalog, which you can check out here: https://livingenergylights.com/living-energy-lights-en-puerto-rico/
Ricardo, Millo, and Marielisa from Puerto Rico helping out installing direct drive solar DC equipment in Jamaica.
Eva and the Jamaican crew installing the solar pump we sent.
In other news, Alexis did an interview with an online publication Socialist News and Views. The interview is about the Simple Harvester and his book Integrated Activism. It can be heard here
Technology Development at LEF When we conceived of LEF in the beginning, we were clear that we were not going to be a technology development project. That takes too much time and money, so we thought. But that was before the Direct Drive DC Microgrid, before the Simple Harvester, before the realization that we could not obtain a lot of what we needed for a food and energy self sufficient community. At this point, we are very much a technology development project. And we are trying, with such resources as are at our disposal, to make simple, durable technologies available so working class people can use them. Of course, our big inventions are the Direct Drive DC Microgrid and the Simple Harvester. But the list of smaller inventions includes:
Direct drive, DC washing machine. Simple and effective.
A) Simple Washer David, with support from John and Alexis, has taken over the development of the Simple Washer — a solar, direct drive washing machine. The machine uses a single tilted drum, a heavy DC gearmotor (normally used for intermediate electric vehicles like rickshaws, low speed cargo trucks or trikes). The Simple Washer uses an Archimedes screw to drain. It’s a very repairable and durable machine compared to other washers. We like it that way. The current prototype is a more of an outdoor, homesteader model. We will make an indoor model next. We are using our current prototype to wash clothes. The mechanical side is working well. David is still working on figuring out the best timer setup for sequencing rotation. It’s a bit tricky with floating, high voltage DC to do that, and keep it cheap and durable, but he is making great progress. See photo.
Food dehydrator converted to direct drive DC.
B) Direct Drive Dehydrator The ability to dehydrate food is a critical energy need for anyone interested in food security. At LEF, we have a large solar hot air collector on the roof of our kitchen. In the winter, we blow the heated air under the floor for space heating; in the summer, we blow the heated air into a closet to dehydrate food. It works great for us, but it’s expensive and complicated to build, especially in the tropics where space heating is not needed. Looking for a more affordable, mass marketable solution, Debbie has been working on converting small, fully electric food dehydrators to 90V direct drive DC. The dehydrators have a heating element. That can run 90V DC no problem. They have a thermostat to prevent overheating. We have found that we can use snubbers (capacitors) on AC thermostats to prevent arcing when using DC. For now at least, that seems to be working great. The dehydrators also need a fan. Small, high voltage DC fans are not so easy to find. Low voltage DC fans are widely available for electronics cooling, and the availability of buck circuits to drop DC voltage has greatly increased, so Debbie is using a buck circuit to power a low voltage fan. Electrically, it all works. Debbie is still testing to see how effectively it dehydrates food.
Load diverter (showing red numbers) and kettle for providing on-demand hot beverages.
C) Electronic Load Diverter Mostly we use all the watts our solar panels generate. But not quite! To provide us with convenient hot water for tea and coffee on sunny days, John set up a diversion circuit from our battery charging solar PV panel that first charges the batteries to a particular level and then diverts energy into a 24V electric thermos. It works well. D) Solar Cookers and Hot Plates We continue to develop our Insulated Solar Electric Cookers (which are highly efficient). We have also realized that by putting snubbers on the thermostat of a regular hot plate, we can create a simple conversion of ordinary hot plates to DC (not super efficient, but cheap and easy).
The little purple thing with wires sticking out is a capacitor. With that installed inside this angle grinder, we can run straight off of PV power, no external switching needed.
E) Shop Tools with Snubbers We have also realized we can put snubbers inside shop tools. Any tool or appliance that you can carry around probably has a universal motor, and 90% of those will run daylight drive. We had been using heavy external switches, but the snubbers are small enough we can put them right in the tool and use them straight DC. Very cool.
Homemade, hand cranked slurry grinder for biogas.
F) Grinder for Biogas This one we built a year or two ago. It’s a homemade, hand powered grinder for crushing material to feed the biogas. Very simple and effective.
Biogas slurry pump, Piston sleeve and piston move independently.
G) Biogas Slurry Pump Our biogas slurry pump is unique so far as we know. It’s a piston pump in which both the piston and the sleeve around the piston move independently to create a pumping action for heavy, fibrous material being pumped into the biogas digester. Instead of trying to suck material through an intake valve (as would happen on any other piston pump), the cylinder around the piston lifts up and then chops into the material in the holding tank. Then the piston pushes the material out. It will handle coarse, fibrous material in a way that no other pump will (that we know of…). H) Squash Guillotine So maybe this one is only of interest to seed growers, but cutting up lots of winter squash using a kitchen knife is dangerous. This is a simple device using a brush ax that allows us to cut lots of squash quickly and safely.
Squash guillotine. Long live the great seeds revolution! Death to the bourgeois squash…. or something like that…
I) Battery Waterer We like nickel iron batteries because they can last a lifetime. But you do have to put distilled water in them about once a month. We have had a problem with the battery kits we have been distributing in that the water level needs to be just right — about an inch from the top of the battery. How do you pour water into a battery and make it stop at just the right level, especially when the battery is in a battery box and you cannotsee the side of the battery to see the water level? Sometimes people would over-fill their batteries and spill electrolyte, which is messy. We invented a solution. We took a juice bottle, and drilled two holes in the cap. A long straw and a short straw are pushed through the holes and sealed with hot glue. Both straws protrude from the bottle top exactly one inch — the right level for watering the batteries when the bottle is inverted and the straws are inserted into the top of a nickel iron battery. The short straw goes through the lid of the bottle and stops. Water flows through this straw. The long straw goes down (up when the bottle is inverted) to the bottom of the bottle. Air flows up this straw. When the water level inside the battery reaches the level of both straws, the air flow is stopped. The bottle is “air locked.” Exactly the right level of water delivery is achieved. The battery waterer works well and costs very little to build.
Battery waterer made from a juice bottle and some tubing. Works great!
J) Woodgas Realizing how difficult it is going to be to make enough biogas to run our tractors, we have returned to working on woodgas. The shop class each week for the kids has been working to revive the woodgas reactor we put together some years ago. We have mixed feelings about woodgas. It’s smoky (on the startup) and encourages people to cut down trees. But running a machine through a field is not easy. The current thinking is to start a tractor on biogas and then run it on woodgas. (Starting a cold engine on woodgas is not easy.) We will see how it all works out.
Simplified Combine Harvester The Simple Harvester has been Alexis’ primary focus for the last couple of months. It’s coming along. The current iteration is much sturdier, much more precise than the last one. The University of Missouri is supporting us, which is great. The expenses related to the international patent have proven larger than anticipated. It’s not clear at this time what course we will take in the long run. We have a contract with the Soybean Innovation Lab to help farmers in Africa build Simple Harvesters. Beyond that, we just don’t know. At this point, the next iteration should be operational in a couple of months. We have intentionally left some cover crop and weeds un-mowed from last summer so we can take the Simple Harvester through it to test cutting and material flow. We have two years from the date of the international patent to file for national and regional patents. We may or may not take that route. For now we just want to make the machine field ready. We are very excited about the current iteration of the machine. It has one belt and about a dozen bearings. It could be build in small fabrication shops all over the world. It could be a big help to small farmers. Farming We are just finishing up the last of the 2023’s fresh persimmons. The Rosseyankas last through much of the winter. We keep them outdoors, on the porch. The biggest issue is keeping the rodents out of them. We are swapping around farm equipment to be able to run our farm on small tractor(s) using some form of renewable energy. The historic Farmall Cub tractor has an excellent, fuel efficient engine, but the original models were too top heavy. We found a Cub 154 which is much more sure-footed (lower to the ground) with a three point hitch for pulling modern implements. We have rebuilt the drive shaft to stand up to pulling discs and plows. The plan is to use one small tractor for tillage and a second tractor for cultivating. This should be a highly fuel efficient approach to running our small farm.
We’re starting to plan for next year’s seed crops, which will include watermelon (of course), squash, muskmelons, okra and tomatoes. We have invested in some modest peanut processing equipment. Peanuts are great for being a high calorie, oil and protein rich self sufficiency crop (and good money for seeds). Birds eat sunflowers, but with peanuts we can fence out the deer and make a good crop. We found a very cheap little peanut stripper for a whopping $22 that can make picking the peanuts much faster (item 134802737045 on ebay). We also picked up a very cheap peanut digger from China that someone had purchased and never used.
Interest in our project continues to grow. There are many projects in many locales with which we are consulting about building durable renewable energy systems. 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 an 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
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.
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/
Living Energy Farm September – October 2023 Newsletter Living Energy Farm Celebrates its 13th Anniversary, Come Celebrate With Us! We’re celebrating our 13th Land Day on November 18, 2-9pm. All are welcome! There will be tours of LEF at 2 and 5pm, a slideshow presentation on our projects in the Caribbean at 3pm, and an open mic at 4pm. For those who want to stay after dark, there will be a dinner, bonfire and DC dance party. Beware there is a half mile walk to get to LEF. Come on out and join us!
Simple Harvester LEF’s Simple Harvester was officially made public on October 13, 2023. We sent out a press release. The press didn’t respond, but we got lots of responses from farmers and other interested parties. We are currently working with a couple of entities that will help African farmers produce and use Simple Harvesters. The Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) is a large organization based in the U.S. They haveprograms to help support African farmers to grow and harvest soybeans. SIL has a “thresher project” in which they are teaching Africans metal working skills and setting them up with equipment (welders, sheet metal rollers, etc) so they can fabricate threshers in various African countries. SIL is supported by a few different universities. Going forward, we are working with the University of Missouri and SIL to complete the next stage prototype of the Simple Harvester. We will provide SIL and the University of Missouri with information so they can set up small shops (the same shops making threshers) in Africa to make Simple Harvesters.
Simple Harvester, Prototype 2. We are now working on the next model.
The prototype we have built at LEF of the Simple Harvester has proven the concept, but it is not “field ready” just yet. Our first prototype harvester was built years ago, and was a mechanical disaster. The working prototype we have now is prototype two. It works, but it has been cut apart and stuck back together for years now. It’s a bit messy. The third prototype is under construction, and is being built from the ground up based on all we have learned from prototype two. It has a three foot intake width, and has some modest improvements that will help a lot with harvesting efficiency. After prototype three, we plan to build prototype four that will be ground driven (powered by its own wheels) so it can be pulled by draft animals, a small tractor, or tiller. We have a Chinese manufactured micro combine with a three foot intake. It has a nine horsepower engine that has to work pretty hard to make the machine run. The Simple Harvester (prototype two) has a five horsepower engine that can operate the machine at less than half throttle even though it is the same width as the Chinese made machine. The Simple Harvester needs a lot less energy to function than other harvesters. It’s the only combine harvester that we know of that can be ground driven. Further prototypes could make the Simple Harvester wider (perhaps six feet or so), and self propelled. We have a friend who has an old, pull type International (that’s a brand name, like John Deere) combine with a six foot intake. It’s an impressive machine. It has hundreds of bearings, dozens of belts, gear boxes, and drive chains. Prototype three of the Simple Harvester will have one drive belt and a dozen bearings. It’s a radically simpler machine that will, for the most part, do the same work. We are excited to be continuing with the project.
DC Microgrids in Puerto Rico and Jamaica Several exciting projects are coming out of connections we made in last summer’s DC solar training/immersion, organized by El Departamento de la Comida (El Depa), and hosted at Living Energy Farm.
The first is a partnership to distribute DC systems in Puerto Rico through EnergizaPR, a solar company owned and operated by Ricardo Martinez, who attended the training. Ricardo started his company because he believes in getting working class people out from under Luma (the corrupt, privately owned Puerto Rican electrical utility), and in control of their energy supply. At the same time, he has seen first hand how the battery/inverter systems recommended by most solar companies are financially disastrous for many Puerto Ricans, who often go into debt for battery systems that don’t work well or last very long. Because of this, Ricardo used to discourage his customers from investing in batteries, instead suggesting grid-tie systems. But grid tie systems don’t help his customers get through power outages.
Afia Walking Tree (second from left) from Jamaica, with John, Debbie, and Alexis.
After seeing our DC systems at work, Ricardo is convinced that they are a better solution. He says that most people just want the basics: lights, fans, electronic devices and refrigeration. We can supply a kit that can do all that for$3,000, less than half that of a comparable AC system, and our systems last for decades. Ricardo is excited to offer DC kits through his website, starting soon. Last year we shipped 14 solar direct drive refrigerators to Puerto Rico. We have shipped another 14 recently. We’re working on getting 12VDC battery kits to Ricardo as well. He is interested in offering payment plans to his customers, to make the technology more accessible to working class people. We will do that as funding allows. Another exciting partnership is with Solidarity Yaad Farm in Jamaica. Solidarity Yaad is a climate justice advocacy organization that prioritizes teaching BIPOC gender expansive women, girls and LGBTQI+ folks. The project’s founder, Afia Walking Tree, is a permaculture instructor who attended our last training. Afia and Debbie are working on shipping a pallet of equipment to Jamaica, including solar kits, a Roxy oven, direct drive fridge and water pump. Afia’s goal is to have the equipment set up in time for a Permaculture Design Course happening at the farm in January. Tara and Millo from El Depa will be traveling to Jamaica in January to help with the design course, and install the equipment. Some combination of Debbie, John, and/or Alexis will be returning to Puerto Rico in February and March of 2024 to continue training, and support with more installations. Likely our biggest project will be through Urbe Apie. Urbe Apie is a nonprofit that reclaims and revitalizes abandoned spaces in downtown Caguas. They just received a grant to renovate one of their reclaimed buildings with a DC Microgrid system. Erid Roman Rosario, who attended our training, is coordinating the renovation. This ambitious project will include both private apartments and community spaces in the installation. We’re working with El Depa to put together a crew of installers, including several folks who trained with us last summer.
Urbe Apie, urban reclamation project in Caguas Puerto Rico, and a future site for LEF’s DC Microgrid technology.
Growing Food on Trees At LEF, we grow as much food as we can on trees. Our biggest producers are persimmons, with blight resistant pears and jujubes also making a substantial contribution. We continue to learn about how to grow food on trees. Here is some of what we feel like we have learned in the last few years.
A) Persimmons In China, Japan, and Korea, persimmons are very much a part of the culture. The Asian persimmons have been bred into dozens of varieties. They are fantastic, but most are not cold hardy for zones 6 or colder, especially as climate change bites with increased variation of weather. The American-Asian crosses are delightful in that they get more cold hardiness from the American side of the family and have a wonderful sweet flavor and larger size gained from the Asian side of the family. The Rosseyanka was the first Asian/American cross. The Nikita’s Gift was the second. They are both amazing fruits, and our most important treeborne foods. We named our kids Rosa and Nika after the Rosseyanka and Nikita’s Gift Persimmons. This year our Nikita’s Gift crop is reduced because of the crazy spring weather we had. The Rosseyankas look good. We have a lot of trees, so even a bad year is a good year. We dry lots of Nikita’s Gifts and store the Rosseyankas on trays on our porch. They can be eaten through most of the winter with no processing at all. Very nice!
In the past few years, we have acquired several more Asian-American cross persimmons, those being Kassandra, Zima Khurma, and Mikkusu. Now all three of those varieties have fruited, we can comment on their quality. The last several years have seen very cool spring weather, this year being quite severe. That means it’s a little hard to say what a “normal” harvest season would be for these fruits. That said, here’s what we know. The Kassanda is quite early, late August and September probably in a normal year (October this year). They are modest in size, very sweet, and fairly juicy. A delightful fruit, though probably not a major contributor to our food self sufficiency regimen at LEF. They are too early for us to dry in our dryer. We really scramble to harvest all that we have in late August and early September.
The Mikkussu and Zima Khurma are both very similar to the Nikita’s Gift. They both appear to ripen in October (again, hard to guess what “normal” might be). Both are about the size of a medium orange or apple, larger in size than Kassandra or Rosseyanka. The Mikkusu sets very heavily. Branches may need to be propped up. It is best if allowed to get very ripe. The Zhima Khurma is really fantastic. It is more dense, less juicy, and has a very rich, sweet flavor, perhaps being even more dense than the Nikita’s Gift. We will likely expand our production of Zhima Khurma. All in all, these three persimmons are excellent additions to our ability to grow fruit on trees. We grow some American persimmons, Proc being the best. Most of our other American persimmons do not get harvested because they are inferior to the Asian/ American crosses.
B) Jujubes Our relationship with jujubes has been evolving. In China, jujubes are very popular. They are very easy to grow. Jujubes have historically been bred along two different lines. One line of jujubes is sweet and juicy right off the tree, truly delightful to eat fresh. The second line of jujubes are a bit drier, not as good fresh, but they dry quite reliably, and thus can be stored long term. Jujubes are sometimes referred to as “Chinese dates” in their dried form. Many nurseries sell Li and Lang jujube varieties. Jujubes are naturally a desert plant, though they seem happy enough in the humid southeast, with one caveat. That caveat being that the fruit of the Li will rot on the treefaster than you can pick it if you have persistent rain in the fall. The Li is a prolific producer, but the tendency of the fruit to rot is a problem. Overall, its fine as a drying jujube, but not the best really. The Lang, at least in Virginia, is fairly worthless. It doesn’t taste like much you would want to eat fresh off the tree. We do not grow them at all at this point. For fresh eating jujubes, our favorite is Sugar Cane. It is truly a delightful, sweet, juicy, magnificent little fruit. It’s a favorite of many people who eat it, and a very reliable producer. Honey Jar in similar in flavor, but not as reliable production wise. For drying jujubes, Tigertooth (Silverhill) is good. It’s quite late, which gives us more time to harvest and process them. It is will not rot with heavy rains. Sherwood is a bit similar to Li, and has a lovely malty flavor. It is also does not rot as easily as Li. There are many other varieties that we have not tried. Those are our favorites. All in all, jujubes are an excellent addition to food self sufficiency. They thrive on neglect, and produce a lot of food for us.
C) Pears Persimmons, jujubes and pears are the “big three” in terms of food we grow on trees. We grow lots of other fruits, and some nuts. The nuts in theory are great, including both filberts (hazelnuts) and pecans. The limitation is you have to be willing to kill dozens of squirrels to harvest nuts. Ethical issues aside, that’s time consuming. Pears are easier than nuts that way, if less calorie dense. We eat pears fresh, dry them, and make pear sauce. Our best summer pears are Ayers and Seckle. They are both small and super sweet. They are both reliably blight resistant. Our best fall pear is one we found. We call it Wintersweet. It’s probably a Keifer seedling. We found it growing on the farm of a friend of ours. It’s an unusual pear. It’s firm, crunchy, a bit tart, and quite sweet. We eat them through October and November. The fruit without insect damage will store quite a while. We have a variety called Harvest Queen that does well. It gets significant blight damage, but grows well enough to keep producing. It’s a Bartlett cross that has that delightful Bartlett flavor. It’s later than Seckle or Ayers, coming ripe through August. We have a lot of other varieties planted. Potomac, Shenandoah, and Harrow Sweet have made good pears, but really get beat up by blight. We have friends who grow Magness, though ours have been unproductive because of blight damage. We do not grow any Asian varieties because if you put them on a table with the Wintersweets, no one will eat the Asian pears. They just don’t taste like much compared to the Wintersweets. We have other varieties planted, but have not had enough experience with them to comment.
Farm and Community at LEF Between working on supporting the growth of DC Microgrids in Puerto Rico, working on the combine, raising food, earning money, and taking care of adults and children, we have a lot on our plates. We have harvested our seeds crops. Otto has joined us full time. Brenda, Carrie, and Otto are heading up seed processing (shelling dry okra pods, cutting winter squash, shelling sunflower heads). We may cut back further on seed production next year if we can make the finances work. John has been fixing broken things, which never seem to be in short supply on a farm. David has joined us full time, and is quite diligent in his efforts. He is helping with upgrading the insulation the biogas system for winter. Deb is heading up the completion of taking Magnolia (the house in the town of Louisa) off grid. The kids are helping out some with persimmon harvesting, and going to a cooperative home school at Twin Oaks.
We feel like we are doing good work. 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.
Solar Energy in Puerto Rico and Beyond The renewable energy technologies developed at LEF include both solar thermal and solar electric systems. We can live comfortably, with modern conveniences like hot showers, refrigerated food and internet access, without support from coal, nuclear, natural gas, or industrial “renewable” energy. Our house remains habitable through the winter without firewood. We have been trying to encourage other people to adopt our methods. Our largest project to date is in Puerto Rico. There we have several organizations working with us, and a growing base of enthusiastic supporters who want to learn about, adopt, and spread these technologies. Last winter we installed 10 demonstration sites, including several large kits, in community centers in Puerto Rico. The organizations supporting us include Monte Azul and Fundacion Bucarabon in western Puerto Rico. We are hoping to install 5 – 15 solar kits (depending on funding) for low-income families in that region this winter upcoming.
Folks from Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the LEF Crew
Last summer we did a couple of immersives with folks from Puerto Rico (as well as West Africa and India). This summer, Tara Rodriguez Besosa from El Departmento de la Comida in eastern Puerto Rico took the lead in fundraising and organizing to bring 14 Puerto Ricans and one person from Jamaica to LEF to train in the design, installation and use of the Direct Drive DC Microgrids (D3M) we have developed at LEF. We have just finished that training. It was a very full 10 days.
We have a relationship with Sunstar in Indiana (not Sunstar Canada), which is an Amish company making solar refrigerators. They are making very high quality solar fridges with German Secop compressors that run direct drive (and rely on thermal storage instead of batteries to stay cold). Living Energy Lights (.com) is selling this and other equipment at a modest profit on the continental U.S., and selling at cost in Puerto Rico. (There are fridges, nickel iron battery kits, insulated solar electric cookers, brushless DC fans, and other fun stuff at that site.) We have sent a second shipment of the Sunstar refrigerators to Puerto Rico. We will pack another load of equipment shortly, including battery kits, cookers, fans, and sundry useful parts. Some combination of John, Alexis, Debbie, Rosa and Nika will likely go to Puerto Rico in January to continue training and setting up demonstration sites. Debbie, Alexis, Rosa and Nika spent 8 weeks there last winter.
Marielisa wiring a low voltage DC distribution center
For D3M to spread, there are three key ingredients that have to come together. The first is public recognition and acceptance. Energy is a lot a like food. There are many choices in what we do, and those choices are influenced by all manner of habits and perceptions. Gaining acceptance of direct drive solar takes time. The second piece is building skills on the ground for the installation and use of direct drive equipment. On the user end, the tools and appliances we distribute are not as “plug and play” as AC appliances, though we are moving more in that direction. Some direct drive DC tools are little different than AC tools, others are quite different. The cookers, for instance, require different timing as regards when you put food in the cooker. On the installation side, we need skilled installers to make this work. Most DC wiring is the same as AC, but designing and installing effective D3M systems requires training. The third critical ingredient is establishing supply chains. That is costly. We can keep things moving by selling equipment and re-investing in more equipment to a degree. But we need capital up front. We are certainly grateful for the support we have received thus far. We will keep moving forward as we are able.
It definitely feels like we are building momentum at this point. We hear over and over again “this is what people in Puerto Rico need.” Puerto Ricans pay three times as much for electricity as people in the continental U.S., and live with power outages on a regular basis. People struggle to refrigerate medications and prevent food from spoiling. The project in Jamaica is promising as well. (We did some work there a few years ago, but the organization we are working with now is different.)
Millo working on a cigarette lighter plug strip for low voltage charging and appliances.
A Simplified Combine Harvester We have been working on a simplified combine harvester that can harvest wheat, rice, and other small grains for years. We have a functional prototype. We have been working with an attorney and have put the machine under an international patent. The Simple Harvester can be manufactured at a much lower cost than any other combine harvester on the market. If we can bring some attention to the project, we are hoping we can use that to leverage funding either from manufacturers who want to produce the machine or from charitable organizations who want to see the Simple Harvester developed for humanitarian reasons. The Simple Harvester could help make grain farming economically viable for small farmers who are currently locked out of the market by industrial farming methods. The large combines that dominate American agriculture at this point are over a half million dollars each. Even the smallest Chinese made micro-combines currently on the market are $5,000 dollars or more. The Simple Harvester can likely be mass produced for under $1,000. That could be a game changer for small farmers on a global scale. Speaking as someone who has farmed all of his life, farmers all over the world are struggling with increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather. Small farming is more adaptable to local conditions. The Simple Harvester may help some with securing a more reliable future supply of critical food supplies. If we can succeed in getting funding from the development of the Simple Harvester, that could radically accelerate the spread of D3M. Some of our readers have suggested we pursue an “open” patent of some sort or other to assure the Simple Harvester is not controlled by some big corporation in the future (who might decide to suppress rather than develop the technology, or control it strictly for their own profit). We have not pursued that avenue because such agreements have little legal weight. We are not going to sell the patent to any one corporation (if any are interested). If we are fortunate, the Simple Harvester will be marketable simply because it is “a better mouse trap.” Spreading D3M is far more complicated. D3M does not match the consumerists desires of middle class or wealthy consumers. D3M is spreading as a grassroots movement, but grassroots activists don’t tend to have a lot of money. The difference of an influx of capital into our efforts to spread D3M could make the difference of whether a global spread of D3M takes 5 years or 50. Given the pace of climate change and ecological destruction in our time, that is a big, big difference. We are going to do a press conference and “Harvesting Technology Demonstration” in the town of Louisa, VA, in the next month or two (as we figure out logistics). That is going to kick off a campaign to bring media attention to the Simple Harvester. We know a few folks who work in various media outlets. We will send out a press release to the list soon. If you can help us promote that event, or have any media contacts who might be interested, we would appreciate your help.
A workshop with our Puerto Rican friends about how to switch wires so they can handle DC electricity.
Biogas Crash We have put a lot of work over the last few years into building a biogas system, complete with a substantial solar flat plate heating system. Our intent is to produce biogas for both cooking and running small, mobile farm machinery. This spring our biogas system was running well. As summer temperatures climbed, biogas production climbed magnificently.
On paper, the micro-organisms that produce biogas (archaea) can tolerate a huge range of temperatures, even above 150F. That’s hot! But as our digester climbed up toward 120F, it crashed. That was unfortunate. With biogas digesters, it takes 6 weeks or so to build up an archaea population to make gas. For a number of months, you have to feed it very regularly. But once a digester has been in use of 9 months or a year, the archaea colony becomes very robust. At that point, one can be a lot less careful, and the digester still works great. Archaea are divided into three classes depending on their tolerance of differing temperatures. The cryophillic archaea tolerate cooler temperatures, mesophillic like middle range temperatures, and thermophillic archaea can tolerate very high temperatures. Most biogas digesters operate in the mesophillic range, though some commercial systems operate in the thermophillic range. Our observations are that the digester works really well above 85F (internal digester temperature, not air temperature). We had assumed that as temperatures climbed, the thermophillic archaea would become more active. Well, that’s not how it works. Unfortunately, we were conducting an experiment changing two variables at once. We ran short of kitchen scraps mid summer (before the seed harvest began), thus feed rate was reduced at the same time as temperatures climbed. After the crash, we consulted with whoever would talk to us, including one commercial biogas consultant. We are told that thermophillic archaea are quite different from mesophillic archaea and are much more fragile. We also realized that above 110F, the mesophillic archaea die off en mass. Thus we lost the resiliency we had built up over months. Frustrating! We disconnected the solar loop, and now Seymour the biogas digester is getting over his indigestion. Gas production is climbing very nicely again, though we don’t have the resiliency we had a few months ago. We are going to install an external heat sink (just a tank of water with a coil of copper tubing) into which we can dump heat when necessary. In the coming months, we will have more control over both minimum and maximum temperatures in the digester. As we learn more about this, we will hopefully be able to help other people set up effective, community scale biogas systems. Wish us luck.
Debbie working with Eva (who wants to build an off-grid community in North Carolina) and Afia (who is building an off-grid community in Jamaica).
The Farm We are in the full swing of harvest now. If you are in our area and you are willing to come out and help, drop us a line at livingenergyfarm at gmail. We are a bit short handed this year. This is the time of year when we try as best we can to preserve as much food as we can, though some invariably rots. We have a good watermelon crop this year. The seed crops are doing well overall. We grew a large(ish) patch of sunflowers. The Gold Finches and Cardinals were pleased, though the harvest seems okay. Brenda, Carrie and Otto have been managing the farm this year. Otto has been dealing with many daily tasks of running the farm, while Brenda heads up management and canning operations. Growing most of our food is a lot of work, and managing that along with growing seeds, conducting our renewable energy projects, and raising kids keeps us busy. The kids are playing soccer these days, which they enjoy. Our internet access is good enough to watch both the men’s and women’s World Cup. Nika in particular is really into it. We are getting good use out of a new-ish electric cargo bike we got. A car has over 100 horsepower (hp), a pickup over 250. Our 1 hp ebike is pretty amazing for us, but we struggle with roads and public facilities that are spread all over and designed for cars. The American cosmology essentially ignores the existence of most of humanity. Only 10% of humanity owns a car. Electric cars are not a global solution. We have tried to calculate the amount of solar electric power available for humanity on a global per-capita basis, and came up with 40 watts per person (we are not confident of the accuracy of that number). In any case, it is clear that “renewable” energy resources are being consumed by dominantly by the wealthy, which renders the whole project moot as regards global sustainability. For us, to maintain anything of a social life for our kids, we end up driving more than we want. That is not something we can fix with new innovations on the farm. There are some electric vehicles on the market now in the 10 hp range that function like tiny cars. But we live well below the poverty line, and even those are expensive for us (and availability is limited). And it’s uncertain at best what truly counts as sustainable. Seeing the abuse of solar energy, some environmental activists are turning against solar and wind. Certainly the massive, industrial scale projects are a mistake. But “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” as regards renewable energy isn’t smart either. It feels like an epic tragedy that our decentralized, conservationist oriented approach is not more widely known and understood. We are working as hard as we can to fix that. It seems to us that our methods, if not perfect, could be a pathway to a future that is actually sustainable. 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 an 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.
commune life 