Tuesday, September 27, 2005
One tank full of Wesson Premium Please.
John Grogan (who vexes me often) at the Philly Inquirer cranks out this quality piece of momentary significance. Really, it is quite timely ... as it always is whenever the price of energy jump more than a few cents within a month. Here are the two highlights that I enjoyed ... until the sticker shock:
- When gasoline prices topped $3 a gallon recently, Samuel Yoder couldn't help smiling.
Instead of paying dearly at the pump, he did what he's been doing for the last two years. He pulled his 1985 Mercedes-Benz sedan up to his barn in Berks County and filled it from a 55-gallon drum of used cooking oil. Total cost of fill-up: zero.
<...>
Yoder believes America's thirst for foreign oil will be its downfall, and he is walking the talk. He bought the used diesel Mercedes for $2,000 two years ago in Philadelphia and paid $1,000 more for a German-made converter kit that allows the car to burn any combination of diesel fuel and vegetable cooking oil. Except in the cold winter months, he burns vegetable oil nearly exclusively.
- Yoder and his wife, Annemarie, make their living as veterinarians in Kutztown, but it is on their 88-acre Berks County farm, which they share with their twin 5-year-old daughters, that their passion lies. It's the farm Yoder grew up on and where his Pennsylvania German father instilled lessons of frugality and self-sufficiency.
Now the couple are working to become fully self-sufficient.
- Near the house is an organic garden, where the family grows most of the vegetables it will eat all year, and a sun-powered dryer for preserving them. The garden is fertilized with the manure from the farm's animals.
Inside, the house is outfitted with high-efficiency appliances and heated with wood.
But the most obvious sign that this is no ordinary farm are the giant banks of solar-collection cells, some mounted on poles, some on the barn roof, that greet you as you pull into the driveway. Even on overcast days, the collectors are able to convert the sun's energy into electricity for the house and farm.
<...>
The photovoltaic system cost the couple a whopping $40,000, but it has no moving parts and they expect it to give them reliable, free electricity for the rest of their lives.
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