News from Mother

AT LAST ! MOTHER HAS AN EXPERIMENTAL FARM (OF SORTS)!

Well folks, it's only taken seven years . . . but MOTHER finally has an experimental farm (of sorts) on which to conduct windplant, solar energy, methane, low-cost construction, sprouting, and other selfsufficiency, low-environmental-impact experiments.

Now granted it ain't really much of a "farm" (it's just a 25-acre mountain patch, more than half of which is too steep to he usable). And granted that MOTHER still doesn't have the excess bucks to buy even this small a chunk of land on her own (John and Jane Shuttleworth mortgaged the next ten years of their lives to purchase the place). But it is large enough and far enough beyond all city limits to allow us the privacy and elbow room we need for most of our experiments. And it is made freely available to MOTHER'S staff experimenters at all times so that our work with alternative energy sources, wholistic gardening concepts, etc., can now proceed as fast as time, talent, and embarrassingly small budgets will allow.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, this is the very ,same little mountain farm that was recentlyand erroneouslycalled a horse "ranch" by another magazine. (And please, real farm people, don't laugh. That pieceobviously a hatchet jobwas just as obviously written 6y a city dweller echo even mare obviously doesn't know the difference between a "shirttail patch"; a "farm"; a "ranch"; and a "spread" the way we country folks do.)

Actually, the Shuttleworths were originally offered this particular mountain patch almost three years ago. But they turned it down because they didn't like the modern all-electric house that had been built on it. (Jane still dreams of restoring a run-down 150-year-old farmhouse and John wants to build his own from the natural stone and timber right on the piece of land that he finally settles on.)

But then they got to thinking about what an impact it could have on Joe Suburb if they were to take that all-electric house (Joe suburb's ideal of the ultimate in blissful living) . . . and convert it . . . . entirely to the so-called "alternate" sources of energy!

And that's exactly what they're doing right now. MOTHER's methane maker and some big tanks of methane brewed up from cow manure have already been moved down from Dick Shuttleworth's farm in Indiana. And a 2-kw Dunlite windplant (which is temporary until we can get around to rebuilding a really nifty, but ancient, 5-kw Jacobs that we have on hand) is already wired up to 95% of the lights and 60% of the outlets in the main building. (The 2-kw plant isn't ready big enough to run everything on the place, but it'll do until the bigger windplant is ready to go.)