State Line Farm and Clear Brook Farm
Success Story



Shaftsbury, Vermont: Local Farmers Experiment with On-Farm Ethanol Production>
With help from University of Vermont scientists, John Williamson and Steve Plummer are working to produce ethanol and biodiesel. In order to distill their own ethanol, they have been growing sweet sorghum and sugar beets. They have also learned how to make lye from wood ash.At the other end of the shed from the ethanol still, a metal container is nearly overflowing with oil the color of melted butter. With a cost-sharing grant from the University of Vermont, Williamson and Plummer bought a $9,000 screw-auger press from Sweden that squeezes seeds, sending oil down a pipe, and the presses “seed cake” into a hopper below. Stainless steel reactor tanks sit on the concrete floor near the hoppers of dry seed. Once their new facility is complete, the mixing process necessary to create biodiesel from the seed oil will take place inside these safely sealed tanks.

The residue from the sorghum and sugar beets will fuel a furnace that both heats the oil in the biodiesel reactor and fires the ethanol distillery. The by-products of each process also have value as a food source and can be used as component in animal feed stock.

“John and Steve have the goal of developing a decentralized, biodiesel production model that other farmers could adapt,” says Vern Grubinger, an Extension professor at the University of Vermont. “This model supports energy independence, reduces consumption of fossil fuels, and contributes to a sustainable fuel-food cycle.” For more information see State Line Farm.