We were about to turn our rent in to a mortgage which would involve withdrawing ten thousand dollars from savings and doubling our monthly housing payment.  We’d been a one-car family for nearly five years, embracing the many benefits of this arrangement.  Shelling out $2,300 for a second used car seemed like folly.

But I agreed to ride up to Bynum so Andy and Jill could take a look.  Jill and Andy agreed with Bob that the 1987 Mercedes TD300 was a good, solid car for a price we couldn’t pass up.  Although there were nearly 300,000 miles on the odometer, she still ran as smooth as a youngster, purring along on the road with hardly a bump.  I was outnumbered.

She had seating for seven which included a third seat for two that faced backwards and folded down for to make a flat bed.  Ditto with the back seats.  This car was capable of acting like a pick up truck when she wasn’t serving as a party car!

We all considered Bob lucky for spying her in Diaz’s lot before anyone else had.  Andy said if we didn’t buy her, he would.  That’s when I started thinking about names for our new car.  Lilly was the first name that came to mind.  As in “Lilly White.”  It seemed like a good tongue-in-cheek Southern name.

After nearly two years of running alongside the biodiesel crowd in Christine, our 1995 gas powered Ford Escort, we’d be driving a car many of our friends spent their days making fuel for.  We would finally be able to put our Piedmont Biodiesel Coop membership to good use.

On the internets, we found that the 1987 Mercedes Touring Diesel 300 sold for $40,000 when new.  We loved the write up about this 300TD on a blog titled Hoopty Rides in which the author said:

With absolute conviction, I can say, the 1987 Mercedes 300TD is one of the very best automobiles ever made. Though I don’t have 7 friends, should I acquire a few more, I will be able to bring them with me in absolute comfort. It is a 6 cylinder turbo charged diesel and it was only available in 1987. The W124 body cars (the 80s E-classes) were the last true Mercedes that felt like they were machined from a single block of steel.

That writer also quoted the Mercedes Illustrated Buyer’s Guide:

The modest 300E hides its capabilities… The 300E is among the world’s best cars for the driver. Precise steering and comfortable ride make them particularly good long-distance cars… Discussing the handling of these cars is academic. Anything that you can do to break them loose on the public road is not only irresponsible and illegal, but also unlikely.

At this point, Lilly seemed like too frivolous a name for our new Mercedes.  Her real name revealed itself to me while I was washing my hair.  Head full of white suds, “Blanche!” suddenly popped into my head.  As in Blanche DuBois from “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the southern belle who always relied on the kindness of strangers.  As in a woman from an earlier generation when women were made of sturdier stuff.  As in my initial reaction to Bob’s suggestion that this might be our next car.

…”Hayseed”.

There I said it.

Many of us “Oilseeders”  have been musing lately about the past (and future) of Oilseed Community. The original order with the cosmic waiter, as I understand it, was for our small community of three houses to demonstrate the feasibility of growing an oilseed crop as an accoutrement to country living rather than another golf course.

And so a crop was planted near the pink cinder-block house, over on the other side of the 83 acres. Matt, Lyle, and Kim (among others I’m sure), planted an acre of canola after tilling the pasture grasses under. Unfortunately, this trial helped support the notion that a single tilling of pasture grasses won’t keep the aggressive ones from coming back and choking out your canola. And so it was….

Then, without really knowing how it might relate to the initial goal set forth, that of coaxing an energy crop out of the red North Carolina clay, Greg contracts with a local hay farmer to come and bale about 75 acres of pasture grass, because as we learned above, that’s what grows well here. Oilseed has a hay crop taken off, dozens of 950 pound bales that provides part of the biomass required to produce beef and milk here in Chatham.

And a year passes by. And another hay crop comes ready for baling, and again Oilseed provides biofuel for Chatham cows and goats.  And this is why I’ve been thinking lately that Oilseed should change its name to Haybale. Clearly, growing hay has been a winner for our community – very little work on our part – and tons of hay roll off the line every year.

But now, a newcomer is emerging on the Oilseed scene, pushing its way up in the red clay, liberally amended with Amanda’s worm castings. This year I followed my first wheat crop with a crop of soybeans in two varieties.

So with an oilseed crop coming along this summer, that  puts the current iteration of our community’s name at Hayseed. And I for one, think it fits.

“Is this for real?” I wondered when I first saw the contract for the bus tour. The contractor was Das Frachtgut which seemed like an odd name for a tour company but what really caught my eye was the vomit clause. We owed them $500 for the two hour bus tour but it would cost us an additional $300 if anyone threw up on the bus.

A week later, Bob and I were in San Francisco for the annual Sustainable Biodiesel Summit and were getting ready to board a Biodiesel powered bus labeled “Teacher With the Bus.” I couldn’t help wondering what kind of outfit this was and whether or not our group of biodiesel enthusiasts would come out clean.

The tour turned out to be one of a few highlights of our trip. First off, we soon realized that the seating arrangement was very conducive to friendly networking. As soon as we began moving everyone began talking.

German-born Jens-Peter Jungclaussen, the sandy-haired driver and owner was quite proud of the seating design. No matter where you sit, you have your choice of six people to yak with. And if none of those options suit you, you can just get up and move.

As Peter explained it: “Say you’re sitting up here beside the not so pretty girl and you really want to be sitting by the pretty girl further down the bus. How easy is it to get up and change your seating in any other bus? But the way we have our seats laid out, all you have to do is stand up, wander down the aisle and plop down beside whoever you want to talk with!”

Peter seemed very comfortable talking about his company, so I asked him about the name on the contract. It didn’t match the name on the bus, for one thing. Apparently, the bus used to have Das Frachtgut on it but that was too confusing to the American Public. So they searched for a name that would be easier to understand without flagging them a party bus.

Which brought us to the vomit clause. Peter was happy to fill me in. He said they didn’t start out with that clause on their contract but after three or four incidents, they decided to encourage people to treat the bus with more respect.

Peter pointed out that other party bus companies have the same clause in their contract. And then he confided in me that some of those companies encourage their clients to vomit by keeping the bus windows closed and turning up the heat.

At the end of the day, we all had a great time and didn’t have to pay an extra $300 clean up fee.

The post DON’T THROW UP ON THE BUS first appeared on Plastic Farm Animals.]]> https://troutsfarm.com/2009/02/03/dont-throw-up-on-the-bus/feed/ 0 113 https://troutsfarm.com/2007/11/19/biodiesel-shooters/ https://troutsfarm.com/2007/11/19/biodiesel-shooters/#respond Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:58:58 +0000 http://troutsfarm.com/?p=1178 Here’s what kind of fun we were up to this weekend: watching Frankie Abralind making Biodiesel Shooters at the Atomic Ranch House in Olympia Washington. Who but a Mad Genius, indeed!