Bio Products Opportunity

We are all quite proud of my daughter, Jess, who works in advertising in New York City.  She’s 24, broke, and works on the top floor of a Fifth Avenue sky scraper right next to the Empire State Building.

And she does cool work.  Her firm, Green Team, focuses on what they call the “Awakening Consumer,” and they help folks work sustainability into their products and branding.

I’ve written about Jess’s energy footprint before, but her relationship to local food is another matter all together.  On her trip home she passes the legendary farmer’s market at Union Square, and more hip, excellent, foodie-focused  establishments than we have in our entire region.

But she has the problem of no money.  We spent some time together in Chicago and Toronto over the holidays, and I was shocked to learn that she totes a peanut butter sandwich to work every day for lunch.

So for her birthday last week I decided to make her some peanut butter.  I went by the garage on Thompson Street where Farmer Doug had stashed a ton of peanuts-still on the vine-and I shoved them in the Jetta and took them to the plant.

A hatchback load of biomass was reduced to a bucket of peanuts, which I then shelled by hand.  A bucket full became a bowl.  Which I then roasted on a cookie sheet.  I was called away just as the peanuts were coming out of the oven, when Carol stopped by.  Carol and I have been working on strengthening our foodshed recently, and have been writing about it over at Sustainable Grub.

None of us had ever made peanut butter before, and the technical aspects of doing so were swirling about the plant kitchen.  My theory was that you throw the nuts in the blender and you call it a day.  Doug and Greg felt that a blender was incapable of releasing the oil from the cell walls of the nut and that another machine would be required.

Carol had a “Vitamix” at her place-which is apparently some sort of juicer.  Mightier than a blender perhaps?

By then I was out of the conversation.  I simply tried to bring the focus back to Jess, who, to my horror, is living on commodity peanut butter for lunch.

Carol took the peanuts home and transformed her kitchen into a food lab.  The blender made a thick oil-less meal, to which she added a shot of canola oil, and the Vitamix turned it into a wonderful soft swirling goo.  One batch was too runny.  One batch was too thick.  She blended them together and came out with an offering for Jess that was just right.

Apparently she went through some other hoops too.  She skinned some the nuts, and re-roasted, and basically played for hours on perfecting peanut butter.

I filled a small Tupperware dish with hand made peanut butter and sent it to Jess, and another one circulated around Piedmont Biofuels.  Whenever we have a new food breakthrough I tend to walk about with a spoon, or a fork, or a knife, distributing tastes to everyone I bump into.  Some might recall our “Banana Communion,” in which many people received a single slice of a locally grown banana.

Homemade peanut butter transported Tami back to her childhood.  Her father used to make it for her in Raleigh.  So she went to work making a batch.  In our most recent violation of child labor laws, she deployed kids in the harvesting of the raw nuts.

And she went the “crunchy” route, using peanut oil and honey to increase lubricity.

Her honey infused crunchy peanut butter is like the food of the gods.  Not as spreadable, but exquisite off the spoon.  She took a large container to her Dad to celebrate his birthday.

Apparently Jess passed samples around Green Team, and apparently our home grown, hand made peanut butter is now the rage on the top floor of a Fifth Avenue advertising firm.  There has long been a suspicion amongst her colleagues that her father is a nutjob.

I try not to worry about that.  Rather, I like to speculate on the next logical step.  Clearly we need to drive toward “peanut butter self sufficiency.”  Naturally Doug has selected the best seeds and set them aside to preserve favorable genetics.

I’m currently thinking of where I can deploy a large enough rabbit-free area to take off a decent peanut crop  next year…

Original post by Lyle

Over on the other side of Moncure, Dee Reid has been quietly publishing a fantastic blog about our foodshed.

I’m new to it, and I am eating it up.

The other day it dawned on me that we have a bunch of bloggers around here who dabble in like-minded foodshed issues.  Whether it is Tess with her “foodshed geeking” over at true food, or Carol’s flight through local foods at her kiln opening in From the Pottery Kitchen, or my own speculations here at Energy Blog, it would be sweet if they could be collected as multiple voices in one place.

And I think Sustainable Grub would be an excellent start.

So I pinged Dee.  And she’s up for it.

Now I just need to get Camille and Bob to consider contributing.  I just took delivery of some Happy Pig from Trace.  Perhaps he will toss in some insights from Cricket Bread.

Those of us who blog know that blogs need to be fed, and perhaps multiple writers feeding Sustainable Grub will create a vibrant home for multiple voices.  I think I might send one in on the latest abomination from Estill Family Food Labs.

Hope to see you there.

Original post by Lyle

It seems I write a lot these days.  And it seems I never get around to Energy Blog.  So I thought I would “re-publish” a recent column in the Chapel Hill News.

There was a time when Evan would bring hard copies of the Chapel Hill News to the plant.  They would lie around the kitchen, and occasionally make it into our media archives, and be forgotten.  After Evan left, I kept writing columns, but everyone stopped getting copies so they assumed they had ended.

Here’s my latest column, which was sort of inspired by Rick, who is one of our design-build guys.

Piedmont Biofuels site is a busy place.  It’s loaded with press releases and party announcements and new restaurant partners and all sorts of stuff.  In an effort to clarify my writing stuff, I created a new site, where all of my columns, and book reviews are archived.

I wanted to make it easier to discuss writing projects with editors and publishers and such.

And while that worked nicely (our company library gets a bunch of “review” copies of books these days), Energy Blog took the hit.

Next semester we have a “media intern” coming on board.  Perhaps he will offer a hand at unifying all of this…

Original post by Lyle

I’m in D.C. this week, running around from giant office building to giant office building, meeting with politicians and lobbyists and the like, working on a bunch of stuff.

All the buzz in the biodiesel community is whether or not “that pesky dollar” will live or die by the end of the month.  Registered producers like Piedmont claim a 1.00 per gallon production credit for every gallon of fuel we produce.

It’s pretty simple.  Make a million gallons of fuel, and Uncle Sam mails us checks that add up to a million dollars.  And today that is all at risk.

The National Biodiesel Board had called for a “fly in” for Thursday, asking everyone who cared to fly to D.C. to pound the pavement with their agenda.  They cancelled it when they realized that by Thursday night there will either be a party, because the industry lives, or a wake because the industry will die.

It’s really just a housekeeping issue.  No one is arguing about the value of the dollar.  It’s nothing compared to the subsidies petroleum receives.  Everyone gets that.  It doesn’t even compete with ethanol.  That’s not the issue.  The issue is that everyone is immersed in health care reform and climate change and no one has bothered to extend our dollar.

If it goes away a whole bunch of biodiesel plants will close.  Either that or add a dollar per gallon—which I think might curtail sales a bit.  I’m guessing Piedmont could weather the blow, since making fuel is only one of the things we do.

The dollar extension still might pass–wrapped up in a Department of Defense bill.  Go figure.

I started my day down on Pennsylvania Avenue, at the Washington office of the National Biodiesel Board.  I have to say I was impressed.  Not with the real estate—it’s like something out of “Being John Malkovich,” but with the staffers who really knew their stuff.  We talked about the dollar, and who could influence whom, and we talked about the labeling efforts currently underway with the Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels.

The good news is that North Carolina’s Senator Kay Hagan is important in this matter.  I’ll be meeting with her later this afternoon.  Since she is in the majority party, she has a pipeline to Senator Reid, and it is Senator Reid who will help decide if the production tax credit rides along with the DOD legislation.  Senator Hagan is a friend of our project.  She’s toured once with Senator Dorgman, her son spoke at one of our events when she was on the campaign trail, and she once invited me and a bunch of renewable energy folks over to her office to get the lay of the land prior to moving to Washington.

Fingers crossed.

Piedmont has other business in Washington.  We have a ton of “stimulus” money that has been “awarded,” but has yet to arrive.  After a year of meeting about stimulus money, competing for stimulus money, applying for stimulus money, we have yet to see a penny.  I thought perhaps Bob Etheridge could help.  He’s on the house side, and the house has already extended biodiesel’s production credit, yet he has been a long-standing friend of our project and we are big fans of his.

Interesting to bump into Pricey Harrison and Verla Insko, both progressive North Carolina legislators, making the rounds on climate change.

This trip D.C. is cold and dreary.  I had a wonderful evening out with Frankie and Jessica of biodieselSMARTER fame.  They invited me to Founding Farmers, which is one of eight Leed Gold certified restaurants in the land.  It was remarkable.  I’m still downing their homemade potato chips.

More meetings await…

Original post by Lyle

This year Piedmont Biofarm had a bumper harvest of peanuts.

I first wrote about this in May in an entry called “Working for Peanuts,” in which a box of green peanut seeds arrived at the plant from a fellow in the mountains who had been seed saving for years.

I tried to grow them at my place.  Mine were eaten by rabbits.  I gave some to Bob, and he reported crop failure.  I’m not sure what happened to the ones we sent to UNC.  But both Jason and Doug took off giant peanut crops this year.

Doug will be taking some seed stock up to Black Mountain this year to the 24th Annual CFSA Conference, where seed gets traded amongst growers and plant breeders.

Here we are with greenhouses and garages packed with peanuts still on the vine, and along comes Carol Hewitt, who is staging a kiln opening next weekend.  Her life long interest in local economy was rekindled in part by seeing Michael Shuman speak over at STARworks.

The Hewitt’s openings are an institution in these parts.  People come from miles away, and line up early to buy Mark’s pots.

Before I knew it I was  committed to delivering locally grown peanuts to their preview party.  Pounds of them.  And there is only one trick:  they need to be shelled and roasted first.

Which is what I did on Sunday.  I set up a shelling and roasting operation at the plant kitchen, and tons of people passed through.  I would like to say they helped, but they mostly watched and chatted.  Carol came by and helped out, and as we toured the plant she also had a chance to sample some of Doug home grown popcorn.  Surely she left with the notion that at Piedmont we are snack food independent.

Years ago Oneas and Roey rigged up a concrete peanut sheller over at White.  It was part of the Full Belly Project in which they were attempting to deploy appropriate technology in Africa.

I need to find that rig, if it is still around, so that we can begin shelling peanuts in earnest.  As always, if you want to help the developing world, it is best to start right here at home.

And in the meantime, anyone looking for some amazingly delicious locally grown peanuts should simply head to the Hewitt’s for their show.

Original post by Lyle

Today I delivered half a loaf of “multi-grain” bread to Benjamin Vineyards.  One of its ingredients was flour made from their grape seeds.

I have been running out there a lot lately.  Learning about grapes.

Grape seeds appear to be an annoying co-product of the grape harvest.  While they represent only 1-2% of the grape, they attract pests to the compost, which bring on larger predators, which makes them simply aggravating.

In my jerry-rigged crush plant in the hallway of building 3 we figured out how to crush grape seeds.  Exquisite oil.  And meal that looks like purple cigars.

I roasted some pumpkin seeds in the oil.  It was marvelous.  And I ran some oil back to Benjamin Vineyards.

Last weekend I pulverized the grape meal under a towel with a sledge hammer at Summer Shop, and fed the remains into a flour mill I borrowed from Farmer Doug.

I ended up with seven cups of “flour.”  More like corn meal, or perhaps sand.  And I distributed them around the neighborhood.

Arlo was the first to use it.  He cut 1 cup of grape seed flour into 3 cups of all purpose flour for a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  They were great.  May be not his best batch.  Since they had sort of a sand finish.

Camille took a run at it with Focaccia.  Better.  But still a tough sandy component.

Then Lynette stepped in.  You could say that’s not fair, since she is trained as a baker.  But she dropped off a multi-grain bread using grape seed flour that was to die for.  Unbelievable.  I had to run some out to the vineyard right away.

So where are we on the grape?

Most of it is pressed for juice.  We have figured out how to crush the seeds for oil and how to turn the meal into flour for high end human consumption.

Now all that remains are the skins.

One of the things we have learned to do at Piedmont Biofuels is account for every ounce.  There was a time when we would buy a pound of fat, spin it into fuel, and throw twenty percent away.  These days we have our bio-refinery spinning such that we are able to bring in a pound of fat, spin it into fuel, and recover cash for every left over ounce of product.

Just as we need to profit from every ounce, it would seem the wine industry should do the same.  I’m not sure how much of the grape is lost to the skin, but the trick is to convert all of that into useable product.

And I believe that might be what sustainability looks like.  Using every bit of waste.  Or having no waste whatsoever.

Piedmont is still finding its way.  We are on the ropes, but still in the fight.  For me to be out dipsy doodling with grapes might appear to some as Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

But it is much more than that.

Crushing begets feedstock.  Imagine a biodiesel plant running out of feedstock (fat) while America is in the midst of an obesity epidemic.  Too bad we can’t pay our faithful employees with irony.

I don’t think Piedmont is out of tricks.  And when I sink my teeth into some of Lynette’s multi-grain bread made with locally milled grape seed flour, I am inspired to push on…

Original post by Lyle

We’ve rigged up a crushing plant in the hallway of Building 3, and we are in the process of crushing tons of sun flower seeds.

They were grown by the City of Raleigh, irrigated with waste water, truly grown as an “energy crop.”  These days we are tending the crusher around the clock, adding bags of seed, unclogging the machine when it binds on chaff, and learning about the relationship between orifice size and speed and heat and oil and meal.

In other words, we are paying more tuition as we break into a field of endeavor that is new to us.  Again.

Todd and I discuss crushing possibilities next to our setup.

In typical Piedmont fashion, our crush plant is a rather janky affair.  Pallets full of bagged seed line the hallway.  A small staicase leads to a landing with a hopper.  Atop the hopper is a sawed-off fifty five gallon drum which takes a few steps up a ladder to reach.

Once everything is spinning like a top, the process is simple:  weigh bags of seeds, open carefully (so Doug can re-use the empty bag), take stairs to landing, up ladder, and dump seeds in drum.

Meal falls into a sawed off tote.  Oil flows to a tote to the side.

Repeat.

Twenty four hours a day.  We are writing a paper on our experience, and when we have the data ready we will push it out for all to see.

I’ve been pulling a lot of night shifts, and everyone has gathered around to help.  Holden has been pre-weighing bags and sweeping the hallway. Chris and I have been keeping the press spinning, and Gary from next door has been checking in on things when he starts his shift at 5:00 a.m.

Tonight I did a 2:30 a.m. run to the plant to check on things, and I added three bags of seed to the hopper.  Enough to get us to morning.

As I sped down the Moncure Road a Rolling Stones song came on the radio which lit up the car like a match from the Little Match Girl.  My brother Mark joined me in the car for my late night run, and he was jazzed by the crush plant.

For an instant I felt his pride, not for the economics of it-since it is not clear to anyone how crushing is a path to riches-but for the mere fact that we were doing it.  He marveled at the “physical layer” accomplishment-like he always did.  Mark didn’t inhabit the world of equipment, or tools, or chemistry.  He did it vicariously through me.  Which meant he was easily impressed.  I could astonish Mark by skidding a downed tree with a tractor, or by using a forklift to toss a tank in the back of the Dodge.

By the time I hit the courthouse, Mark was gone, again.  The warmth of the song reverted back to a cold dark night, and the joy that I felt in his presence dissolved into just another night time run to the plant to check on a lonesome crushing machine.

I’m glad we are crushing.  I’m glad we are still standing.  And I am glad Mark can still join me for a ride once in awhile…

Original post by Lyle

I have to say that I have been eating a lot of bananas lately.  But before the “Hundred Mile Diet” folks freak out about my dietary deviation, I should say they came out of the yard.

I’ve been trying to grow local bananas for years.  And this year I harvested a crop.  About ten pounds of fruit from two trees.

It’s not really fair to say “I” grew these bananas, since their production has been a group effort.  Over the years Pamela and Doug and Camille and Kim and Michael and a host of others have humored my quest for a locally grown banana.

And these days they are being eaten around project.

Last night I went to a send-off party for Caleb and Mary Beth.  There were twenty people at a potluck.  I showed up with two bananas, and some fabulous peanuts that came from Piedmont Biofarm, and some sweet potatoes, and some London Broil from Snow Camp.

And my serving of the bananas was the same as it has been all week.

Everyone gets a slice.

After years of trying to grow fruit I finally cut down a bunch of bananas.  I cut into a green one to see what I would find.  It would not peel, so I used a knife to separate the peel from the fruit.  And the fruit tasted like cardboard.  I sliced it thin and fried it in butter and salt, and when it came out of the frying pan it tasted like butter and salt.

My second banana was mostly yellow and somewhat green.  When I cracked into it, it peeled fine and provided a nice fruit.  Which was astringent when eaten.  It wasn’t persimmon astringent, but it was nasty.  Astringency, as Kirsten says, “Makes your teeth curl.”

My third banana was perfect.  It was yellow and peeled easily and was sweet and ripe and it hit the spot entirely.  And I have been eating bananas ever since.

Sandi at Eco Organics flipped out.  She downed a sweet slice of banana that was grown  ten feet from her office window and it made her both ecstatic and sad.

Generally when I crack a banana there is a group of people around.  Which means that everyone gets a bite or two.  At potluck I felt like a priest, cutting a thin slice of banana and laying it on the tongue of everyone present.  It was like communion.  Very little to go around.  Not designed to satiate, but symbolic of something larger.

I used Bob’s pocketknife, and I went tongue to tongue to tongue. I was the Bishop of Bananas.

I’m currently ripening the next harvest in the plant kitchen.  I cut up an apple and toss it into a bag with the bananas.  Ripening bananas (and decomposing apples) give off ethylene gas which aids in the ripening process. Apparently supermarket bananas come in green and are shot with ethylene prior to making it to the showroom floor.

In the absence of an ethylene gas unit, I throw an apple slice into a paper bag and fold the top over.

Clearly I need my apple trees to fruit if I am to keep this process local…

Original post by Lyle

Wind energy gets all the breaks when it comes to interfacing with farmers.  After all, farmers can get lease payments from turbines on their land, while raising contented cows on the fields below.

Piedmont Biofarm surrounds our project with food production.

This “double cropping” relationship is in the wind industry’s favor.  Solar is not so lucky.  Solar farms typically displace valuable farmland.  Which is why there are some jurisdictions, like Ontario, where legislation is appearing to ban the use of solar on class “a” and class “b” farmland.

Step one:  put in place a valuable feed in tariff so that renewable energy is economically attractive.  The market will respond with thousands of acres of solar panels-possibly wiping out wine country-because the energy policy dictates that electricity is now more valuable than wine.

Step two:  ban solar farms on farmland in order to protect wine country.

If it were up to me, I would wipe the chalkboard clean and rethink.

How do we grow food beneath solar arrays?  From my limited understanding of food production, I think there are lots of ways:

As our agricultural zone changes (we are moving from zone 7 to zone 8 ) we see heat pressure on some of our crops.  Little things, like lettuce and arugula.  Climate change dictates that some crops will vacate North Carolina in the years to come.  We are already seeing some benefits from a little shade.  Which means we ought to be able to leverage some solar shade to continue to produce crops.

Protecting plants from water on their leaves is a good way to stave off disease.  Those growers with the finest (and longest lasting) tomatoes tend to shelter their plants from water.  That is, they create a desert environment and deliver water only to the roots of the plants.  Call it season extension in the land of the diseased.  Why not shelter the plants with solar cells?

Lots of plants need structures to thrive.  At Piedmont Biofarm all of the peppers are trellised.  Unlike the peppers in my garden, which fall over and get eaten by critters.  Surely we could leverage off the structures needed for solar panels to reduce our investment in pepper trellises.

These days giant solar arrays make great investments for those with tax liabilities.  Having lost my fortune in biodiesel, I don’t have any of those, but just because I don’t owe the taxman, doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t benefit from investing in a solar double cropping play.

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile now.  And today the phone rang with an excited investor who wants to see the grand experiment move forward.  Today we received a commitment for a 100Kw array at the plant.

Yesterday's solar installation in the field in front of my house.

That’s big.  I have a 2Kw array in my yard.  Sometimes it generates as much electricity as my family consumes.  This project will be 50 times the size.  It will be grid tied.  And it will be designed and built with the notion of generating power above, and enhancing food production below.

Which just makes sense.  As we charge headlong into a low carbon future we are going to need more energy, and more food.  Rather than positioning one against the other, we need to integrate the two.

And today everyone on project is jazzed about our opportunity to design and build both.  Standby for an acre or two of blue panels popping up at the plant…

Original post by Lyle

Awhile back I moved my book reviews out of Energy Blog and over to my own website.  That’s because biofuels.coop is an exceedingly busy space.

I thought that collecting all of my book reviews at a nice, quiet, bookish site, would be a good thing to do, and it appears to be working.  Chelsea Green has started sending me “review copies of their books.”

New to the library this week are:  Donella Meadows, Limits to Growth, Naomi Wolf’s, The End of America and Matthew Stein’s, When Technology Fails.  Other new arrivals include Richard Freudenberger’s Alcohol Fuel for which I wrote a blurb.

Also just in is the Fall 2009 issue of biodieselSMARTER, which is informative as always and snappier than ever.

I just posted a review of Less is More, and was sadly reminded that bloggers are now required to comply with new Federal Trade Commission guidelines.  So I wrote the FTC a note as well.

Original post by Lyle

It's been a couple of days since Apple has pulled out of the Chamber of Commerce.  I've been busy, but I can't wait to blog about it.

I've been in business in America since 1990.  A short time, really.  And throughout that time I have been solicited to join the Chamber of Commerce.  Often it was a hopeless telemarketer, but sometimes it was a face to face sales call.

On each occasion I would take the opportunity to explain how the Chamber of Commerce has fought every forward movement this country has ever made.  They fought social security, they fought Medicaid, they fought minimum wage, they fought parental leave, and now they are fighting legislation to combat climate change.

Whenever I would suggest that the Chamber of Commerce represents the polar opposite of everything I believe in, most of the junior minions sent to land me as a member would be stunned and amazed.

Spanking the Chamber of Commerce has been a hobby of mine for 20 years.

When I was the CEO of Blast Internet I had a new sales rep named Laura.  She argued vehemently that we needed to join the Chamber of Commerce to get leads.  I suggested that I was not interested in taking out a membership in an organization of status quo, right winged, homophobic, non environmental pukes, and she countered that the Chapel Hill Carrboro Chamber was different indeed.

I let her join.

Just as when I was President of EMJ America and I had a policy of not selling technology to the military.  Steve convinced me that in America sales reps had the right to sell to whoever they chose.  And I went with that.  When Litton Systems called for a circuit board for their guided missile project, I told them we did not sell to war mongering engineering firms and politely hung up.  Steve went on to land the Naval Weapons Research Lab as his account.

I have a rich history of letting employees find their own way, even if it is not a way I believe in.

Once the Chatham County Chamber of Commerce hired our firm to do a website for them.  We did that.  But when they got the bill, the newly appointed chair of the board decided he could make better websites himself, so he fired the executive director who hired us and never paid the bill.

All of which is to say I have been pitched by the Chamber of Commerce, I've been hired by the Chamber of Commerce, I've been stiffed by the Chamber of Commerce, I've been fired by the Chamber of Commerce, and I have long hurled abuse at the Chamber of Commerce.

As a representative of the "whiny voice of business," the Chamber of Commerce is the worst thing that has ever happened to the business community in America.

Which means that Apple's public defection from the Chamber is just fine with me.  I use Apple products.  And I admire them as a company.

What I find stunning is not so much the fact that they are tearing up their membership over disagreement with the Chamber's stance on climate change, but that they ever joined the Chamber of Commerce in the first place.

It appears Apple is about to join the war against climate change.  Glad to have them come to the fight.  The Chamber of Commerce can go on whining.  And perhaps when the war on climate change is won we will be able to find the time to go back and charge the Chamber of Commerce with treason.  Or desertion. Or draft dodging.  

Or something...Thank you Apple.  It's time to get busy...

Original post by Lyle

Today I went to  T.S. Design’s remarkable Green Gala.  They invited me to speak on local economy, and I sort of did that.

I no longer write or read my speeches.  There was a day when what I published on Energy Blog was almost verbatim what I said.  Now I simply roll without notes.

T.S. Designs packed the place.  It was standing room only.  And this is a rough approximation of what I said:

“I probably should begin by attempting to define my relationship to T.S. Designs.  I work for Piedmont Biofuels, and I think the best description of our relationship is that of fierce competitors for the sustainability limelight.

Sometimes we go first.  We pioneer something, or we make something happen, and we grab some headlines, and T.S. Designs calls and asks if we can help them do that too.  At which point we pat them on the head, treat them like a little brother, yawn, and give them a hand.

And sometimes they go first.  On those occasions we study the subject, figure out how to replicate their efforts, or do it better, and bring it into the world without giving them any credit whatsoever.

And often they just win.  When they do, we ask for guidance in order to copy their endeavors, and whenever that happens they are always forthcoming and generous, but they like to add a smidgen of “Wow, the mighty Piedmont needs our help, sure we will help, usually we are following you.”

Whenever I am a “sustainability supplicant” to T.S Designs, I can see the sarcasm drip from Eric Henry’s text messages.

But I am not supposed to be talking about T.S. Designs.  I am supposed to be talking about local economy.  And for that I have a favorite T.S. Designs story to tell.

Once a local Pittsboro merchant came out with a “Buy Local” t-shirt.  On the front was a pro-Pittsboro message, and on the back was a list of local businesses from which people could procure products and services.  I believe Piedmont Biofuels was on the list.  I don’t think we paid to be there, but we were on the shirt just the same.  This t-shirt was not my project.

I first encountered it at Chatham Marketplace, where the shirt’s creator approached me with pride to show me the new “Buy Local” t-shirt in town.  I don’t actually wear t-shirts, but I read his with interest.

And I looked at the label.  Made in Honduras.

I handed the shirt back to him and suggested that there is a sustainable t-shirt maker just across the county line in Burlington called T.S. Designs.

And he immediately balked.  “Too expensive, ” was his claim.

I shrugged.  I didn’t buy his “Buy Local” t-shirt from Honduras, and he eventually vanished from our local economy.

My next tale of cluelessness came from “Wake Up Wednesday,” which is a remarkable monthly local business event that occurs in Pittsboro.

Wake Up Wednesday was created in part by Lesley Landis, and it was inspired in part by Becky Anderson, the creator of Handmade in America.

I love Lesley.  I love Becky.  I love “Wake up Wednesday.”

But the last time I was there I paid my entry fee with a PLENTY.  That’s our local currency.  I said, “I’m assuming you take PLENTYs?”

And the woman at the door, who apparently runs our downtown merchant association replied, “I will take it, but I will have to cash it in right away.”

By that she meant she would need to convert it into federal reserve notes at our local branch of Capital Bank.

To which I replied, “Why don’t you spend it locally on something you need?”

To which she replied, “I need a banner, that I am going to get at “Banners.com.””

To which I replied, “Why don’t you get it from our new sign shop, they make banners, and they would probably appreciate the business.”

To which she replied, “I’m sure they are more expensive.”

Like the fellow who created the “Buy Local t-shirt” made in Honduras, it was yet another “buy local” organizer who failed to even grasp the concept she was promoting.

Think about it.  Wake Up Wednesday buys a banner from the new banner maker, new banner maker contributes to Wake Up Wednesday.  It’s kinda simple.

I buy from you.  You buy from me.  We trade amongst ourselves.  We keep the dollars inside our community. And voila.  The whole community is enriched.

Local economy is easy.  Buy your food from your local farmer.  Buy your honey from the beekeeper down the street.  Buy your t-shirts from your local t-shirt maker, and your banners from your local sign shop, and your books from your local bookstore and on and on and on.  And by all means, don’t forget to buy your fuel from your local fuel maker.

Buying local is easy.  It reduces energy consumption.  And that impacts climate change.

I wasn’t invited here today to talk about global climate change, but since it is a local economy issue I feel it is warranted.

I’m 47.  I have a daughter who is 23.  Let’s pretend that by some cosmic fluke I make it 47 more years.  That means I could see a great granddaughter on my lap.

Imagine if you will, a great granddaughter climbing into my lap in 2056.

On our current path our water reservoirs will be empty, and if they have water it will not be fit to drink.  Our aquifer will be depleted and our wells will be dry.  By the time my great granddaughter comes along we will be parched.

On our current trajectory our air will not be suitable for breathing.  We will wear respirators and we will stay indoors, filtering our air.  Today it is unusual to see a pedestrian wearing a particulate filter, or a SARS mask in an airport.  If we do nothing to stop climate change, both will be standard equipment for all of us.

Climate change is the moral imperative of my generation.  It is our World War Two.  You might say we haven’t started fighting yet, but it is time to start.  And increasing our participation in our local economy is one way to reduce our carbon footprint.  They can be connected.

When my great grand daughter asks me about the war against climate change, what am I supposed to say?  We were going to fight it but it was too expensive?  Or am I supposed to say we did nothing?

That’s not actually what I am going to say.  What I will tell her is that we tried things that failed, and we tried again to discover things that worked.  I want to tell her that I fought in the war with everything I had.  All my passion, my time, and my money went into the war effort, and battles were won.

I want to tell her about how we won the war against climate change.  I want to tell her about how my father served in World War Two.  That was his generation’s fight.

My generation’s fight is with climate change, and I am ready to serve”

My speech went something like that.  I failed to give credit to Chris Turner, the author The Geography of Hope which has inspired me to get back on my war footing.  And when we progressed into questions and answers, we got around to the subtitle of Jared Diamond’s Collapse which reads “How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.”

I suggested to the audience that we start the war now, and that we choose to succeed…

Original post by Lyle

Around Piedmont Biofuels, we really are powered by one motivation.  And that is to keep up with Kumar and company out in California.

In terms of sustainable biodiesel producers in America, we sort of feel like bookends.  Yokayo Biofuels holds up their end of the country in Ukiah, California, and we try to hold up our end on the east coast.  Once we get past the little stuff, like who is better looking, and whose blog is more influential, we move into more serious competition.  Like trucks and tankage and gallons produced.

Unlike Piedmont, Yokayo has made a little money over the course of history.  This is typically evident at the annual National Biodiesel Board conference, where Kumar wears nicer clothes than mine.

Occasionally we are able to transcend our bitter rivalry.  After all, Kumar offered a blurb on the back jacket of Biodiesel Power, which is without a doubt one of the reasons it went on to become a homemade fuel cult classic.  And perhaps more importantly, one time when Kumar was in town conducting some industrial espionage, he reviewed my kitchen knife collection and showed me how to use a toner and a whetstone.

When all is said and done, it becomes clear that Piedmont is late to the oil collection business.  While Kumar was figuring out how to move grease around, we were producing tanker loads of poultry fat derived fuel.  While Moya and Caleb were killing themselves collecting oil out at the Coop, we were buying full loads of fat and spinning them into fuel.

Now that we have joined forces, our attention has shifted to the business of collecting oil.  Like Kumar.  That’s not something we admit in public–generally we limit our comments on Kumar to critiques of his speaking style, but in private we all wish we would have followed his lead sooner.

Oh well.  Kumar sort of considers us as the “talkavists” of the grassroots biodiesel movement, and whenever comparisons between me and him arise, I always try to steer the conversation toward hair.

That said, recently Kumar has been blogging about his new “Christmas Vac Truck,” which is the latest addition to his fleet.  The fact that it is bigger than ours, or that he collects more oil than we do is irrelevant.

We are Piedmont.  We like to look good:

Original post by Lyle

Here is a movie about one of Piedmont’s members.  She drives around on our fuel.

Original post by Lyle

I’d like to say there is a new store in town, but that would be incorrect.  Rather, there is a new place to buy stuff on our bend in the Moncure Road.

When Piedmont Biofuels decided to move out of Moncure, we had some remediation work to do.  Little things mostly, like fix the road entrance that would snatch your oil pan, and replace the dirt in the “wetland,”  get rid of 900 greasy vessels in the yards, and ship a load of toxins off to the hazardous waste folks.

All of this was under way, when Jason announced that he had a farm tour coming up and it sure would be great if the place was spit shined before then.

We swung into action.  Scott and Holden and I transformed the front yard from weed ensconced to manicured.  Scott christened it “Pinehurst” the day we finished.  Holden shipped vessels.  And trash.  We hauled and hauled.

What was once our tchotche shop had been converted into a digester which never got turned on.  We converted it back to a farm stand.

There was a time when volunteers mixed up earth plaster to finish this strawbale masterpiece, and it is what greeted our Sunday tour traffic.

The fact that we were building with cobb, and strawbale gave us an early toe in the water of “green building.”  We didn’t know it at the time, but our early green building adventures were somehow tied to the notion that we would transcend biodiesel and become an escort into North Carolina’s low carbon future.

Say what you like about Piedmont, we can create awesome signs…

The sign that once alerted passersby to our “Research Farm” was repurposed with Jason and Haruka’s new logo.

The entrance to “White” was transformed on time, and dozens of farm visitors were met by a miraculous scene.  The night before Farm Tour, Jason and Haruka placed orders for products to “fill up their store.”  Worm castings, and books, and Deniece’s soaps made from biodiesel glycerin all arrived before the tourist traffic, and were paired with vegetables and sold to the public.

What was abandoned sprung back to life, and it was impossible not to feel the fecundity vibe as you approached.

I dragged a wetland planter out of the woods.  It had been thrown behind the 𐈴 Community Trail station.  And one of its exotic wetland plants had taken over.  I was going to dump it, strip the plastic out, and scrap it, but Jason claimed it, so I dragged it into the yard as a miraculous aquatic plant display.

Devon filled it up with water, and on Sunday morning Jason stopped by with a net.  He was looking for minnows-biological pest control, to eat the mosquito larvae that had been established.  He and Arlo fished some minnows out of our fish pond, and away he went.

The remediation of our former digs is well under way, what was almost destroyed by our quest for sustainable fuel is showing signs of thriving again.  There’s talk of re-creating the reactor room as a shop for doing metal art, with the idea of attracting some sculptors to our bend in the road.

I like it.  I think it was Haruka’s idea.  All we need to do now is steam clean the grease out of the building’s pores…

We are not sure the economy is going to get better. So we are simply eating well.

Original post by Lyle