Further growth at Farm Power

Last year around this time, we still had yet to fill our first digester's tank with manure; how things have changed. Now--besides all the operating experience from running Farm Power Rexville near Mount Vernon--our second digester is under construction, our third project has been financed and is in permitting, and we just received a $1 million grant from the Oregon Department of Energy for a Tillamook installation! The Tillamook region features dozens of medium-sized farms that pasture extensively in a temperature environment. It's an ideal location for one of our multi-farm community digesters. We've been talking to area farmers for over a year and are happy to be able to move forward; some locals have been happy to hear about us as well and we quickly received good coverage in the Tillamook Headlight-Herald.

To help us fund this rapid expansion, we are going back out to our supporters to raise more equity--by selling ownership units in Farm Power. For angel investors, we've been posting information on AngelSoft and we can take money from accredited investors anywhere in the United States. However, we are most excited about our ability to accept investment from a broad swathe of Washington State residents through a small public offering; an info sheet on the offering can be found at our company homepage. Anyone interested in further information can request our offering circular by contacting us or writing to invest@farmpower.com. One of the best ways to understand what we do is to attend one of our upcoming tours, currently scheduled for 10am on Saturday July 24th and 2pm on Tuesday July 27th--we update the schedule regularly at http://www.farmpower.com. We have gotten great support from our current members, and we look forward to expanding the Farm Power membership.

A digester in action

As Farm Power grows, we keep meeting more and more people who have heard of what we do but have never seen a manure digester; we'd like to start changing that.

First, we recently posted a YouTube video hoping that our maintenance work could get on the legendary Discover Channel show "Dirty Jobs". Mike Rowe has already done a show involving a manure digester, but we're sure working at ours would be more fun!

Back in March, a local television station did a five-minute segment giving a the best video overview to date of the Rexville project; they also took some footage at the Lynden site, but only a greenhouse was visible at that point so we'll have to wait for another segment to cover our second project.

Finally, for those who want to see manure-to-energy in person, we've scheduled a tour for Wednesday July 14th. We'll be meeting at 2pm by the picnic shelter next to the Rexville Grocery, giving a little overview, and then proceeding to the digester. Since the actual experience can be a bit smelly, don't hit the tour on the way to an important social event, but we do encourage anyone interested to come. Give us a call or send us an E-mail if you have any questions.