A friend and I were discussing the farm's fuel consumption last weekend. With the cost of fuel so low at the moment, he recommended that I fill our on-farm diesel tank now. We primarily run two tractors throughout the season, both diesels, in order to prep soil, pull our planting wagon, cultivate, and pull our harvest wagons. Sometimes I feel like I'm always on a tractor, but in reality we don't use them that much. (Sometimes I feel like I'm always on my hands and knees pulling weeds too, but that's not really true either. I'm a live-in-the-moment sort of person, which just means I am dramatic when using the term always!)
I told my friend that I had already gotten our yearly fuel delivery a few weeks back, when our local oil company delivered the usual 150 gallons to our bulk tank. I said I didn't want to fill the tank any further because I didn't think it was a good idea to store fuel for much more than a year.
150 gallons a year? That's all you use?! My friend asked. We were on a bike ride at the time, and the surprise slowed his pace a bit. I was behind as always, huffing and puffing and wishing I had a diesel motor on my bicycle. So I was glad of a chance to catch up and discuss this a bit more. I had thought it seemed like a lot of fuel, because I'm very conscious of the farm's ecological footprint (and because I feel like I'm always filling the tractor with fuel!), but when I thought it through more I realized that's actually pretty low for the scale of production here at Old Plank Farm. After all, we grow weekly veggies for 250 farm members each year. So that's less than a gallon of diesel per member per year. Home garden rototillers use more fuel than that, my friend said! Rototilling is fuel intensive (because it is slow and requires quite a bit of power), on top of being destructive to soil tilth and microbiology. We'd probably use 50% more fuel if we rototilled regularly on our farm, but we manage to prep nearly all of our veggie beds without tilling. Additionally, our main tractor is a 1970s Deutz, which is a very fuel efficient tractor. Plus, it runs on Christmas spirit.
Rudolph the Deutz, dressed to the nines for Plymouth’s Christmas parade a few year’s back.
So what else fuels the farm, besides a bit of diesel and Christmas spirit? Some other fossil fuels of course, including gas for delivery vehicles and propane for spring heat in the seedling greenhouse. But the largest sources of fuel for a farm like ours is the many hands, hearts and minds putting in time and effort to tend the land. So what fuels us? Our vegetables, of course, among other things. And like Rudolph the tractor, spirit helps fuel us. Spirit from a love of our land, our health and the people we serve. As this virus mess continues to linger in our lives, I hope the offering of fresh vegetables in a little over a month can be one small part of what helps keep your spirits up these days. It certainly does for me.