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Living Energy Farm |
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Living Energy Farm is a project to build an environmental education center in Louisa County Virginia. Employing both very old and new technologies, LEF will be a zero fossil fuel school and community. It will demonstrate that it is possible to live a healthy joyful life without the use of any fossil fuel. LEF will be a self-sufficient farm that will host youth interns in an educational program covering diverse areas of modern sustainable living, including organic gardening and orcharding, the use of draft animals, green building with low-tech and local materials, solar water and space heating, solar electricity, woodgas, biogas, composting toilets, greywater systems, bicycle repair, and other subjects. Most importantly, LEF will teach youth about the importance of sustainable technology in context, about when and where such technologies are effective and when they are not. We will foster a lively community culture that will be an eye-opener for many modern youth. Though we will use some modern machines (such as solar electricity for pumping water), we will not have a general accessibility to electric power. We will pro-actively build a homemade positive social culture without electronic escapism. How Will We Do It? LEF will be constructed of locally available materials. Buildings will be constructed of strawbale, cob, or other organic infill materials, and super-insulated. Buildings will be simple but elegant, incorporating both active and passive solar features. Based on local and reclaimed materials but eliminating much of the detail normally incorporated in modern houses, such buildings will be inexpensive to build. LEF will be agriculturally based. The farm will produce organic gardens, field crops, livestock, and orchards for the community's consumption and as a source of income. To this end we will employ both draft animals and small woodgas tractors. (Woodgas is an old technology that allows gasoline engines to run off of wood chips.) While the modern biofuels movement has focused on biodiesel and ethanol, woodgas is much better suited as a sustainable fuel. Our intent is to not employ woodgas as an over-the-road fuel. We will employ a combination of solar cookers, woodgas "rocket" stoves, and biogas for cooking. Biogas (methane) can be generated from almost any organic material, and is heavily used in China and India. We will use a combination of solar and wood for space heating. Our goal is incorporate the best of old and new technologies in a community setting that demonstrates that real sustainability is not only possible, but desirable. We have strong support and involvement from members of existing communities in the central Virginia area, and will continue to network with these groups. We will employ a "bridge," a location where we have access to modern media and the internet. This bridge will allow us to make ourselves known to the larger world. The LEF newsletter will have semi-regular updates about what's happening. If you want to stay informed about the project, add your contact info below and we will put you on the mail/email list.
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