The New York Times Energy for Tomorrow Conference took place this week, and one of the speakers was Steven Chu, our Nobel-prize winning Secretary of Energy.

Dr. Chu told a tale that reinforces the idea that “environmental imperatives” can drive technological change to happen — and swiftly accelerate the process.  Speaking before his New York City audience, Dr. Chu pointed out that before the automobile, people and their goods were moved around New York City by approximately 160,000 horses.  As he put it, “There was a very visible environmental impact that was piling up on corners all over the place.  So it hastened the shift remarkably.”  It took only 25 years, give or take, for automobiles to replace horses and horse-drawn carriages.  (You can hear Dr. Chu’s full presentation, and others from the conference, here.)

Manure in a field in Denmark, photo by Malene Thyssen

With gas prices back up over $4 a gallon, and my compost piles overflowing, and while large farms pay to haul manure offsite or leave it in those dreadful lagoons, one wonders how long it will take for someone, somewhere, to figure out how to make manure work for us as a fuel source.  It’s a natural.  Direct combustion of biomass is an ancient form of energy production.  While it can’t replace all other forms of energy without serious consequences (just like any other fuel source), it could certainly help to recycle energy from farms that are already producing manure.

Earlier this month, I focused on the magazine Farm Show as part of my regular feature How to Spend Your Money (you can find more ways to deplete your bank account in the drop down category menu at the right).  Sure enough, the folks who are featured in Farm Show are way ahead of the pack when it comes to repurposing manure.

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Yesterday morning, my retired Thoroughbred had an episode.  An episode of what, I’m not sure.  When I got up the hill to feed breakfast, he was weaving maniacally (he used to weave all the time, now it’s rare and half-hearted if it happens).

When he wasn’t weaving, he was tossing his head up and down, barely missing the top of the window in his shed row stall.  His eyes were open as if he needed to see more than he could see, and his nostrils were flared.  It was as if the skin on his face had stretched along the fine bones of his classic Thoroughbred head.

When I opened the door, I saw his legs shaking — first the left front, then the left hind, then both fronts.  Periodically, he’d spin around in his stall, a series of beautiful pirouettes.  Light and graceful he’s always been, and on the rare occasions when he shows me his talent, it still takes my breath away.

He was staring down the hill.  I thought it might be a bear.  Or some other creature, terrifying alive or terrifying dead.  The only other times I’d seen a reaction as extreme as this was when I’d seen him weaving so fast his head was a blur…and then as I drove out to the road, saw a bear ambling along not five feet past my passenger door.  The other time was during the winter, a less extreme reaction than what I was seeing now, but similar.  For days, he was uneasy.  And it was only when the snow melted that we saw the dead deer by the stream — its body preserved by the snow and ice, its neck broken against a tree.

As my horse had hysterics, I watched from outside the stall, and my Yankee-Irish horse whispering boyfriend went into the stall to try to calm him down, his voice soothing and his hands stroking my horse’s back and hindquarters.  I saw my horse lift a leg and I said, “Watch out, he just lifted a leg.”  My boyfriend was out of the way when my horse let go with both hinds.  Perfectly synchronized, perfectly elegant, perfectly dangerous.

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I have a new horse on my farm.  What a great time for him to arrive, when we’re having the most ideal spring ever.  It’s warm and clear and the bugs have yet to join us.

The pastures are turning green, but the horses are so happy to have a new friend that they’ve forgotten their routine of staring longingly at the grass from inside the sacrifice paddock.  I don’t let them out until I think the grass is high enough that they can tear off what they want to eat without weakening the roots.

Whenever there’s a new horse on the property, I like to keep watch to make sure that everyone’s settling in well, and that makes for long days and nights. Call me obsessive.  I don’t care.  I freely admit to being obsessive about things I care about.  Primary among those things are horses.

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Before you know it, it will be time to mow.  In the 70s this week and 81 predicted as Thursday’s high.  Pastures will come high and quick, if this continues.  Pray for good hay!

There’s encouraging news from the UK for all of us who own farmland.  According to the Financial Times‘ House & Home rural living special (I agree, it is), farmland prices are soaring over there, while country house (see below — when they say country house, they mean Country House) values are dropping.

Durrington House, Sheering, Essex Savills London

Just how soaring are those farmland prices, you ask?  Well, according to Edward Sugden at Property Vision realty, farmland in the UK has turned into “a safe haven, performing very well against almost every other asset class except gold.”

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