Putting Our Money Where Our Mouth Is: CCNF Slouches Towards Carbon Neutrality

So look, let’s begin with this from the Department of Keeping It Real: I’m not sure that when it comes to the final math, that one can repeatedly haul alpacas long distances with diesel trucks and perhaps more importantly, travel as much as we do both domestically and overseas, and still claim some kind of vindicating badge of altruism, saying that it’s all okay, just because we are also trying to be “carbon neutral” elsewhere in our lives. What I do know though in my bones, both because of my 48 years of lived experience — most of it here in the northeast US — as well as the overwhelming mountain of scientific evidence that exists on a global scale, is that climate change, and in particular climate change which is being rapidly accelerated by humankind, is all too real. To deny what is so obviously in front of our noses would be a Herculean task in and of itself on par with the worst sort of behavior often seen in those struggling with addiction. What we also know as parents and maybe someday, if we are lucky, grandparents – is that this beautiful blue planet does not belong to us: it is at best on loan to us from future generations. We are merely its stewards and quite frankly we feel, as people with the means to do so, that there exists a moral obligation to make choices that can hopefully allow us to hand off an Earth to those future generations that is not irrevocably broken. It’s really not that difficult of a concept to grasp. A wise woman from South Woodstock, VT once told her impressionable but short-tempered teenage son, “don’t sh*t where you eat.” That covers a whole myriad of things. Thanks, Mama.

To that end, we have recently — with the help of Norwich Solar Technologies — festooned the CCNF Arena’s southern roof with enough photovoltaic panels (see the video above, courtesy of Sammy Lutz) to produce the energy needed to power the entirety of Cas-Cad-Nac Farm and it’s supporting infrastructure going forward. That’s 3 barns and 3 houses of differing sizes, if you’re counting. Though Vermont, with it’s super short winter days, is not nearly as ideal of a place to have a PV system as say the Nevada desert, we are off to a running start with the first 60 days of operation having produced approximately 30 megawatts of power. We have calculated that the farm uses an average of 11 megawatts/month, so the plan is to hopefully bank a credit with Green Mountain Power (our system is what is known as net-metered) during the longer days of the year, then draw down from that credit during the shorter ones. Time will tell obviously, and should we fall short of our power production goals, there are always options for additional solar capacity elsewhere on the the property as well. There is a lot of work yet to be done if we are all to make our world more sustainable but we felt it was high time, at a bare minimum, that we take some concrete action and hopefully help to play some small part in addressing this problem. Anyway, we hope it’s a step in the right direction…

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