MOO JUICE
	Through the GrapeVine
	Editorial
	Wisconsin Favorites Downsville Delights

Moo Juice
Multi-tasking herd makes dairy products and electricity

   Something is missing at the Five Star Dairy farm near Elk Mound. In fact, several things are. Despite the presence of almost a thousand large animals on a hot day late in June, the country perfume brewed up by that combination is hard to detect. Flies are few and far between. Watching one’s step is of little concern.

   And noise from the methane-fueled electric generating machinery? There isn’t so much. Visitors who expect something resembling the howl of a jet engine find instead it sounds more like an idling diesel locomotive. They converse without noticeably raising their voices, while 50 feet away, the spinning turbine churns out enough power to run about 600 typical households.

   Nearby, others examine what’s happened to the basic feedstock of the renewable energy production going on here 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Induced to yield large quantities of methane by bacteria working in an oxygen-free environment, then passed through a dryer, the manure from the farm’s 900 cattle is converted into a fluffy, crumbly, fibrous material that’s sterile, usable for animal bedding or compost, and smells pretty much like hay.

Bovines On-line

   Getting all this from the idea stage to actual power production took a little time. In March 2003, La Crosse-based Dairyland Power Cooperative signed a letter of intent forming a strategic alliance with Environmental Power Corporation of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and its subsidiary, Microgy Cogeneration Systems, to deploy anaerobic digestion and distributed generation technology on dairy and swine farms.

   At that point, no specific sites had been identified in Dairyland’s 62-county service territory (encompassing parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois). Over the next several months, enough prospective locations were found to get the project moving, and between December 2003 and February 2004, Microgy concluded agreements with five large dairy farms, Five Star among them.

   Site preparation began in the spring of 2004 and construction was completed by Easter of 2005. After a period of testing and adjustment, the generator began feeding electricity into the grid on June 15.

   Microgy holds the exclusive North American license for technologies that have been operating in Europe for more than 17 years and are now producing power at 28 sites across the continent. With several similar projects in the queue, the objective is to obtain as much as 25 megawatts of electricity for Dairyland customers from animal waste-to-energy systems.

   Twenty-five megawatts is a modest figure compared with the output of a base-load fossil-fueled generating plant. Nevertheless, it’s enough power to run about 20,000 typical homes, from material that would otherwise be a burden requiring containment and disposal by less beneficial means.

   The Five Star operation isn’t the first anaerobic digester in the United States, but it is the first in this country to apply Microgy’s highly efficient Danish technology, said to yield about five times as much gas as other systems.

   Three separate entities are involved in making it all work. Microgy designed and built the digester equipment and, having sold it to farmer Lee Jensen, will continue to be responsible for its operation and maintenance. As the digester’s owner, Jensen also owns the methane that comes out of it. He sells the gas to Dairyland, which owns and operates the generator and delivers the power into the grid.

The Brewery

   The Five Star digester complex stands on a square plot of ground not much more than 100 feet on a side and enclosed by a shallow berm. Animal wastes are piped from the barn, slightly uphill, into the digester, a cylindrical tank that stands about 50 feet high. Another cylindrical tank, roughly half that height, holds 20,000 gallons of used cooking oil and animal fats to supplement the mix in the digester.

   This “substrate” gives the bacteria more to work with, boosting the methane potential, according to Jesse Singerhouse, communications and marketing manager for Dunn Energy Cooperative, the Dairyland-affiliated local distribution co-op that supplies the farm’s electricity. Under conditions agreed to by state regulatory authorities, Singerhouse explains, the Five Star operation is allowed to use 10-percent substrate. In Denmark, where experience with the technology is more substantial, as much as 20- to 30-percent substrate is used.

   As with other aspects of the project, there’s an environmental incentive for this: The likeliest alternative for the substrate would be disposal in landfills. To supply Five Star, two semi-tankers run each week between Elk Mound and Milwaukee—the most practical in-state source of suitable material, conveniently available in the required quantities.

   Blended in the big tank and kept at 120 degrees by a million-BTU boiler fueled by the methane it helps to produce, the material ferments, cycling through the digester in about three weeks. As it gives up its methane and moves out of the digester, the residue passes through a dryer, also heated by the facility’s own gas.

   Inquiring about the curious sight of a satellite dish attached to the top of the substrate tank, a guest learns that it’s used by Microgy personnel in Colorado, New Hampshire, and Denmark for simultaneous real-time monitoring of what’s going on in the digester complex.

Time to Celebrate

   A week after the unit came on line and began ramping up to its full rated capacity of 775 kilowatts, officials from Environmental Power, Microgy, Dairyland, Dunn Energy, and a host of interested business, industry, government, and organizational entities gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony and tours of the facility.

   Dan Eastman, a former member of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission and now senior vice president for business development at Environmental Power, said he hoped the project would be “the first of many systems” to provide “home-grown power for the people of Wisconsin.”

   He noted that the regulatory permitting process had been a challenge, but he credited the state’s Department of Natural Resources for its “responsive” work in allowing the project to move ahead.

   William Berg, Dairyland’s president and CEO, noted his generation and transmission cooperative’s commitment to renewable energy. Dairyland likes methane-fueled generation, he said, “because it runs 24/7 unlike wind on peak demand days,” which tend to be hot, muggy, and unhelpfully calm.

   Pointing out the value of experience with a similar facility moving toward completion on the Vernon Electric Cooperative system at La Farge, Berg said, “We’re going to learn a lot from this facility.”

   Environmental Power’s chairman and founder, Joe Cresci, was proud to announce that the Five Star project will produce “more energy per unit of waste input than any other facility built in the United States.”

   Frank Frassetto, Wisconsin director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program, told the crowd that in his job it was a familiar experience to be asked, “Why wasn’t the bureaucracy being more flexible?” In that sense, he said, it was refreshing to work on the Five Star project because it provided “a good opportunity to show that we can partner with people who are visionaries.” The USDA provided an $180,000 grant to assist in financing the project.

More to Come

   Fueling a generator with methane made by anaerobic digestion is more than just a novel method of manure disposal; it’s commercial pragmatism, capitalizing on a resource previously unrecognized and wasted as a result. Like hydropower, digester-based generation has a far higher “capacity factor” than other renewable energy sources. In other words, it can be counted on to deliver its rated output all the time.

   Obtaining that output from smaller herds—and thus making the technology and its benefits accessible to greater numbers of dairy operations—is a hope for the future. Microgy’s standard design is suitable for a herd of about a thousand animals, but as Neil Kennebeck, Dairyland’s director of planning services told Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News early last year, experience will bring flexibility.

   “We’re hoping to get smarter as we go along and begin to address smaller herd sizes. For now, the economy of scale is important,” Kennebeck said.

   Joe Cresci is clearly looking ahead to the broader adaptation of the technology. Five Star Dairy will be “hopefully the first of thousands of locations across the United States” to apply what’s being learned in Dunn County.

   In the meantime, it’s hard to overemphasize all the positives involved in taking a raw material that represents a disposal problem, an odor problem, and a potential groundwater problem and making all those things go away while converting it into clean-burning generation fuel and a range of valuable byproducts. As Kennebeck told us when the project was still just an idea, “It makes you a better neighbor.”—Dave Hoopman

 

Through the GrapeVine
Outreach Project Brings Wellness to Women Across the State

   Women are often viewed as the key to improving the health of entire communities because of their traditional role as care takers and health care decision makers. But in many rural areas—where uninsured rates are high, doctor visits are few and far between, and caring for others always comes first—many women simply do not have the time or resources to care for themselves.

  In 2002, the GrapeVine Project, a Wisconsin Women’s Health Foundation (WWHF) program, was born with the purpose of providing educational outreach to rural women, giving them the knowledge and power to be better advocates for their own health. The GrapeVine Project provides the latest research and health information for numerous “parish nurses” from around the state. This innovative program has garnered national attention because of its design and ability to help the women who are often overlooked by more traditional health programs.

   “You know that by having a program in a hospital there will be a core group of women who like to go to programs and will come. But then there’s that 20 percent of women who are very hard to reach,” said Bobbie Kolehouse, director of the WWHF Rural Women’s Health Programs. “If we can get the best information into the hands of people who are already in place and trained, then we have a real successful tool to get to that hard-to-reach population.”

A Rural Reach

   To accomplish its goal of reaching rural women throughout Wisconsin, the GrapeVine Project utilizes parish nurses, a unique kind of health care provider interested in healing the whole body: mind, body, and spirit. With their roots set firmly in the belief that spiritual and physical health go hand in hand, parish nurses serve the members of their church congregations by acting as a resource for information and support. The GrapeVine Project merely aids in the work they already do by providing them with the training and materials to do presentations to groups of women on topics that are especially pertinent to women’s health.

   “Many rural women are isolated from health care resources and social networks they need to support their health and well-being,” said Sue Ann Thompson, president of the WWHF. “Parish nurses are a trusted resource within many rural communities, and by working with parish nurses through the GrapeVine Project, we are able to get valuable information right into the hands of women living in some of Wisconsin’s most remote areas. It’s not about big programming…but about personalized outreach and person-to-person outreach.”

   The nurses chosen to become parish nurse partners of the GrapeVine Project live in counties that have been identified by the WWHF as areas lacking programs that specifically provide outreach to rural women. When the program began in 2002, there were only a handful of nurses serving Marathon, Wood, Waupaca, Outagamie, and Winnebago counties. Since then, the success of the program has become evident and funding has increased, allowing the program to grow to 25 parish nurse partners spread across the state in Brown, Monroe, Ozaukee, Fond du Lac, Bayfield, Douglas, Vilas, Sauk, and Florence counties in addition to the original five counties. This expansion has allowed information to directly reach more than 1,500 women. With additional funding, the WWHF will be able to create more materials, train more nurses in more counties across the state, and reach more women.

Specialized Training, Offerings

    Currently, the parish nurse partners are trained in three units: breast and cervical cancer, heart disease in women, and osteoporosis. However, by the beginning of next year they will also be trained in units on mental health and domestic violence. Additionally, the nurses refer women who may be eligible to the Wisconsin Well Woman Program, which provides certain screenings such as Pap tests and mammograms to women free of charge in all of Wisconsin’s counties.

   The materials researched and created by WWHF staff for the parish nurse partners allow for customization depending on the audience, and each presentation is an interactive learning experience for the attendees. For example, for the breast and cervical cancer unit the WWHF supplies each parish nurse partner with a video showing the correct technique for conducting a self breast exam and a breast model that contains lumps simulating the feeling of tumors. The nurses also have “tumor necklaces” that have wooden beads of different diameters showing the size of tumor that can be detected by various screening techniques, such as a self breast exam or a mammogram. These tools allow women to become comfortable with their skills so that they can be confidently applied at home.

   “A lot of the nurses just don’t have time or money to go out and search for materials and information because most of them are volunteers. We can do that part,” said Kolehouse. “Our units are connected to the best experts and latest information that we can find. We don’t teach them how to nurse; we just provide the materials they feel they need and help them do their one-on-one and small group outreach, which is what we’ve found to be the most effective kind of outreach.”

Broadening the Audience

   While parish nurses generally focus on providing for their own congregation, the parish nurse partners are dedicated to expanding their audience for the GrapeVine presentations to their entire communities. Some nurses even advertise their services, offering to share the materials and information they have with any women’s group who will listen. The Oneida Nation, Salvation Army, and numerous women’s groups affiliated with churches and other organizations are among those to invite various parish nurse partners for presentations.

   “I just think we need to inform women. There are so many women who don’t have insurance and so they don’t go to the doctor. They don’t know the importance of getting a mammogram, for example,” said Dolores “Dee” Wiseman, parish nurse partner in Outagamie County. “I want to see if I can get to some of the women from the outlying areas because a lot of the farm women don’t have insurance and we are worried that they’re not getting the information. Somebody has to do this, why not us?”

   The GrapeVine Project strives to get women to take an active role in their health. This involves increased communication with their health care providers, friends, and family. To encourage women to schedule mammogram and Pap test appointments for themselves and to help motivate their friends and family to do the same, the WWHF gives a 30-minute phone card to every woman who attends a GrapeVine presentation.

   By helping women in rural areas of the state, the WWHF believes that it is benefiting entire communities because healthy women lead to healthy families, which in turn lead to healthy communities. So, through this small, individualized educational-outreach program, the GrapeVine Project is working to improve the health of rural Wisconsin one woman at a time.

   “Sharing is one of our strengths as women…and is the philosophy our Rural Women’s Health Programs were founded on. When we provide information to one woman, she shares it with her family, friends, and her co-workers who share it with their families, friends, and co-workers…and so the GrapeVine grows,” said Thompson.

   For more information about the Wisconsin Women’s Health Foundation and its Medicine Basket Rural Women’s Health Network, call 1-800-448-5148 or visit www.wwhf.org.—Keisha Rovick

The Wisconsin Well Woman Program

   For 11 years in all 72 counties, the Wisconsin Well Woman Program (WWWP), a program of the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services’ Division of Public Health, has been providing certain health screenings for conditions that commonly effect women. In 2004 alone, the program served more than 11,000 women who qualified across the state.

   Women between the ages of 35 and 64 who meet the income guidelines and are uninsured or have limited coverage may be eligible to receive the free screenings. The available screenings include Pap tests, mammograms, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, as well as several others.

   For more information about the Wisconsin Well Woman Program, call 1-608-266-8311 or visit http://dhfs.wisconsin.gov/womenshealth/wwwp to find your local coordinating agency.

 

Editorial
by Perry Baird

In the spotlight—Host farmer Lee Jensen (left) talks with radio newscaster Bob Bosold at the June 22 dedication of the digester/generator array.

Teasers and Tributes

The “teaser” headline for this month’s cover story, courtesy of article author Dave Hoopman, was a real inspiration. As a slang reference for milk and with “juice” being a term for electric current, “Moo Juice” nicely fit the story about dairy farm production of electricity.

This marks the fifth time in the past three years that we’ve needed to come up with a headline for a feature concerning electricity generated from waste. “Cow Power” adorned our September 2002 cover for an article about the on-farm potential for producing methane-fueled generation. The story focused on the technology and an operating anaerobic digester near Princeton—but not one on electric co-op lines.

“Waste Not, Want Not” in June 2003 also described the conversion of animal waste to energy, highlighting Dairyland Power Co-op’s agreement to begin developing projects in its service territory. (We didn’t use it, but about that same time the cutesy term “moogawatts” crept into stories in other publications about dairy herds as sources of electricity.)

“Watts from Waste” in our August 2003 edition and “Waste to Watts” in August 2004 concentrated on methane-powered generation on the Dairyland system produced from a different source—landfills— but they mentioned the pending manure-digester developments.

Due Credit

While we’ve been anticipating startup of manure/methane projects on electric co-op lines for several years, those closest to the operations have been far more anxious. In particular, dairyman Lee Jensen and his family—members of Dunn Energy Cooperative—have had to put up with massive retooling on their farm in order to accommodate digester and power-production methods, and they’ve had to shoulder a fair amount of financial risk to put the project’s necessary components in place.

At the June 22 dedication near Elk Mound, dignitaries thanked the individuals who had a hand in siting, constructing, and hooking up the new renewable energy facility. Appropriately, the first person given the microphone was Lee Jensen, dubbed “one of the most progressive and modern farmers in the state” by master of ceremonies Dan Eastman, vice president of Microgy, the designer/builder.

“I kind of always thought we’d be doing something like this,” Jensen told the crowd gathered for the ribbon cutting. “I didn’t realize it would be exactly this style or exactly at this location, but we’re honored to have it here.”

Pioneering, Planning

Eastman elaborated,“ We call Lee Jensen ‘the pioneer.’ He’s the farmer who took the first step with us. We are very grateful that Lee trusted us to come out to his farm and produce this project.”

While a completed and successful project satisfied the goals of Jensen and Five Star Dairy, it’s the first leg of a course planned by Microgy and Dairyland Power to bring more energy-producing installations on line. A second collaboration, being built on a farm near LaFarge, is due to come on line this summer.

“We’re looking forward to making America’s Dairyland the premier producer of biogas-created generation,” declared Eastman.

And what better outfit to help spearhead such an effort than a co-op so aptly named Dairyland Power?

DOWNSVILLE DELIGHTS

   In the mid-1800s, on Wisconsin’s Red Cedar River, a small lumber mill was founded. This humble enterprise grew, evolving into Knapp, Stout & Company—an operation that became the nucleus of activity for the region. As crews cut through the virgin forests, pioneers followed, working the land into rich farming land. Communities sprang up around the mill sites, with Menomonie becoming an important trading site. Other building trades thrived as well, including the quarrying of sandstone.

   Among smaller boom towns that followed the lumber mills was Downsville, just a few miles south of Menomonie. Though the pine forests in that area were nearly depleted at the end of the 19th Century and the company moved on west, Downsville still survives, paying homage to its lumbering and quarrying heritage.

   To get a real feel for the “good old days” of the lumber barons and their impact in this area, make a visit to Downsville’s Empire in Pine Museum, which was extensively updated in 2004. This museum’s award-winning displays exhibit the rich logging and sandstone quarry history of the Red Cedar Valley. Operated by the Dunn County Historical Society, Empire in Pine offers glimpses of a blacksmith shop; a cook shanty used by workers at the lumber camps; lumbermen’s tools, including a rare up-and-down saw; the history of Knapp, Stout & Company; quarry tools and stonecutting examples; Dead Man’s Corner; the 1865 Louisville post office; and the village jail. Other exhibits show a kitchen, laundry equipment, and other reminders of family life in Downsville around the turn of the century.

   If you time your visit to Downsville for Saturday, August 27, you can experience more facets of Downsville life, past and present. On that day the town hosts “Discover Downsville.” Tours and demonstrations at the Empire in Pine Museum will become a part of many all-day activities (11 a.m. to 4 p.m.), including arts and crafts, a fur trader encampment, wagon rides, pottery and stone-cutting demonstrations, a bake sale, a dunk tank, and, of course, food. Among other activities will be a bean cooking contest (judging at 11), live music in the pavilion from noon until 4, and kids’ activities that include a pedal tractor pull at 1 and a coin hunt at 2:30. Several interesting shops and the Creamery, a well-known gourmet restaurant, can also be explored on the streets of Downsville.

   Why not bring the whole family to learn about the historic lumber-baron era and to discover Downsville’s old-time, small-town delights?—Linda Hilton

The Empire in Pine Museum is open from late May to early October. Hours are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, noon–5 p.m., plus guided tours by appointment. For further information, call 715/232-8685. For information about the August 27 “Discover Downsville,” visit www.discoverdownsvillewi.com or call Suzanne at 715/644-8311 or Tilli at 715/664-8600.