Straw Bale House 
People have built homes using straw, grass, or reed throughout history. These materials were used because they were reliable and easy to obtain. European houses built of straw or reed are now over two hundred years old. In the United States, too, people turned to straw houses, particularly after the hay/straw baler entered common usage in the 1890’s. Homesteaders in the northwestern Nebraska “Sandhills” area, for example, turned to baled-hay construction, in response to a shortage of trees for lumber. Bale construction was used for homes, farm buildings, churches, schools, offices, and grocery stores.
Straw, the stalks remaining after the harvest of grain, is a renewable resource, grown annually. Each year, 200 million tons of straw are under utilized or just wasted in this country alone. Wheat, oats, barley, rice, rye, and flax are all desirable straws for bale walls. Even though the early bale homes used hay for the bales, hay is not recommended because it is leafy and easily eaten by creatures great and small. Straw, tough and fibrous, lasts far longer. The U.S. Department of Agriculture indicate that America’s farmers annually harvest enough straw to build about four million, 2,000 square-foot homes each year, nearly four times the houses currently constructed.
Straw is a viable building alternative, plentiful and inexpensive. Straw-bale buildings boast super insulated walls (R-50), simple construction, low costs, and the conversion of an agricultural byproduct into a valued building material. Properly constructed and maintained, the straw-bale walls stucco exterior and plaster interior remain water proof, fire resistant, and pest free.
Agape has built a 2,500 square foot straw bale house, completed in 1999.
Solar Power at Agape
Pollution created by the burning of fossils fuels (oil, coal, natural gas) reacts with other gases in the atmosphere creating a greenhouse effect which traps heat that adds to global warming. Instead of burning fossil fuels, we harness the sun’s clean, non carbon polluting energy. We also recognize that nuclear power, oil, gas and coal-- fuels that are used to make electricity are non-renewable energies. The small but necessary step of putting up solar panels one building at a time means fewer fossil fuels will be burned.
Photovoltaic panels consist of solar cells made out of sand that has been refined into silica. This silica is similar to that used for computer chips. The silica then undergoes several more processes, resulting in solar cells. You take these photovoltaic cells, laminate them between glass and plastic, put a frame around them, and this panel now converts the suns rays into electricity. Current solar panels can produce energy for up to 30 years.
At Agape, the panels are mounted on the roof, pointed at the sun’s path, and electricity produced by the panels will go down the wire into a charge controller, and then into a battery bank. The electricity that is produced during the day will be used at that time or stored in the batteries for use at night or on cloudy days. The next day, the sun comes out, recharges the batteries, and the same cycle continues over again.
Grease Powered Car
What Is a Vegetarian Car?
Grease cars are automobiles with diesel engines which run on oil as well as diesel fuel. In 1898 German Rudolph Diesel patented his diesel engine to run on vegetable oil. Therefore all diesel fuel vehicles can run on vegetable oil. Also, Vegetable oil straight from the grocer’s shelf can be used. Using vegetable oil over petroleum reduces all car emissions (except nitrous oxide) by 80%.
For the last six years, Agape’s VW Jetta diesel has run on vegetable oil given to us by a friend who manages a 99 Restaurant. We filter this frialater grease and pour it into the grease tank in the trunk. We start the car on diesel fuel and the vegetable oil is heated in the grease tank. After a few minutes we switch the fuel line from diesel to filtered grease. Both new vegetable oil and restaurant French fry grease can be used as fuel.
Using this vegetable oil system requires installing a grease tank in the car and running an alternate vegetable oil fuel line to the diesel engine. This conversion costs approximately $1800. The fuel is free. At 50 mpg this adds up to 750 miles worth of “fuel” in exchange for an hour and a half of labor filtering.
Restaurants have to pay to get rid of the used oil they accumulate after deep-frying foods, so Agape does them a favor by taking it. Agape gets between 40-50 miles per gallon using vegetable oil. The bumper sticker on the Agape Jetta reads: “Drive Vegetarian.”
The Politics of Oil
As the war in Iraq seemed imminent we at Agape saw oil as the source and symbol of a lifestyle of privilege leading to our military violence. Non-cooperation with oil, we reasoned, cold starve the war at its source.
Agape encourages people to start converting their lives to other forms of energy.
Eating a vegetarian diet is a good start because the meat industry is a major source of pollution.
Agape Community Reduces Dependence on Oil with “Grease Car”
by Terence Hegarty Catholic Communications staff
HARDWICK. Powered by vegetable oil?
That’s what the white lettering on the rear windshield says, but most don’t believe it; at least not at first.
Looking at the 1997 Volkswagen Jetta, the statement on the back of the vehicle is the only indicator that the car doesn’t operate on a traditional fuel. But, aside from the start up and shut down of the engine, fossil fuels are not needed for this vehicle.
Rather than burn vegetable oil to prepare fish and chips dinners, husband and wife Brayton Shanley and Suzanne Belote Shanley, use the fuel to drive what they call a more socially and environmentally responsible vehicle.
The Shanleys, co-founders of the Agape Community, what they call a ministry of prayer, simplicity and nonviolent education, have attempted for many years to live simply and employ alternative energy sources. Their car is one of many what are called “grease cars” in our area.
For the Shanleys, the idea of utilizing this technology came about because they were unhappy driving conventional vehicles that burn gasoline. “It starts with a profound disenchantment with oil,” said Brayton.
“I don’t think too many Americans have to be talked into a dislike of oil. It’s a substance that we go halfway around the world to get. We pay a fortune for it, we pollute in getting it and we pollute in using it,” he said.
Agape, a lay Catholic community, celebrated its 21st anniversary October 4. Several demonstrations of the car were conducted as part of the daylong anniversary celebration, which hosted approximately 150 at the 32-acre Agape property in this central Massachusetts town. The Shanleys are parishioners of St. Aloysius Parish in Gilbertville, Mass.
Grease cars are automobiles with diesel engines that run on oil as well as diesel fuel. Used vegetable oil, like that from a restaurant which cooks fried foods, is suitable as a fuel after it is filtered. Vegetable oil straight from the grocer’s shelf can also be utilized. The cars also run on a mix of diesel and soybean oil known as bio-diesel.
While the Shanleys may be subject to the occasional joke about their car “Can I get some fries with that”– they said there are much more serious reasons for “driving vegetarian.” The Shanleys said this brings them closer to the teachings of the Catholic Church. “We’re Catholic Christians dedicated to Jesus Christ,” said Brayton, “and he’s all about living simply, to being kind to all living things, to being harmless.”
“It doesn’t make sense to be impassioned in the love of Jesus and be living high and being the number one polluter in the world.”
Political concerns added to the Shanleys motivation to begin driving a grease car. “As the war in Iraq seemed imminent, we at the community sought to look within, to see where our lifestyle was fueling the madness of this aggressive, pre-emptive war,” said Suzanne. "We began to see oil as the source and symbol of a lifestyle of privilege leading to our military violence. Non-cooperate with oil, we reasoned, and you starve this war at its source,” Suzanne said.
Even before the most recent conflict in the Middle East began, the Shanleys were attempting to divest themselves of their dependence on oil and “electricity from the grid.”
“Oil is such a precious material that we get into political disagreements and empire building," Brayton said. “So, the question is ‘Do we want to just keep using oil?" The answer, for the Shanleys, is a resounding “no.” Several years ago, they built and began living in a straw bale house and utilizing solar panels for electricity. They grow much of their own food for their vegetarian diet. They have a compost toilet, which uses no water, and burn between 15 and 20 cords of wood each year, for cooking and heating both houses on the property.
With all of the lifestyle changes the Shanleys have made, they said nothing has gotten the response that the grease car has. “People are enchanted,” said Brayton Shanley. “Of all the things we’re doing, nothing strikes the imagination as much.”
He said he doesn’t expect everyone to follow their alternative energy lifestyle example fully, but that people can make gradual changes. “You want to put oil out of business progressively,” Brayton Shanley said. “And you will make a more peaceful planet. Start converting your life over to other forms of energy.” He said eating a vegetarian diet is a good start because the meat industry pollutes heavily.
According to Brayton, restaurants have to pay to get rid of the used oil they accumulate after deep-frying foods. “So you’re doing them a favor (to take it),” he said. “It’s a good deal all around.”
In March, the Shanleys had a 15-gallon fuel tank installed in the trunk of their four-door sedan to accommodate the oil. Filtered oil is pumped into the tank, allowing the diesel engine to burn vegetable oil.
The Shanleys said they get between 40 and 50 miles per gallon using either diesel fuel or vegetable oil. The performance of the vehicle varies little between the fuels. “It runs as good or better (on oil) than on petrol,” said Brayton.
According to Justin Carven, owner of Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems in Florence, there are many reasons his customers choose to “drive vegetarian.” He said grease cars make great economic sense, since there is no cost for used vegetable oil, although it takes roughly an hour and a half to filter a tank-full of used oil. Grease cars have been in use locally for about five years, said Carven and are increasing in popularity. Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems is a manufacturer of conversion systems that enable any diesel-powered vehicle to run on unprocessed vegetable oil.
Agape’s Compost Toilet
A Sight-Built Permaculture Design
Today 40% of all residential water of drinking quality is consumed by flush toilets. It is an inefficient use of the earth’s resources by investing so much energy and capital building archaic municipal water systems to capture, purify and pump water to flush away our bodily wastes which can end up polluting our rivers and oceans. This out of sight /out of mind flush toilet system creates the need to build sewer systems in an attempt to re-purify the water once polluted. Even well built and maintained septic tank / leach field systems will fail eventually resulting in a major contamination of our groundwater with nitrites.
The objective of the Agape compost is
- Achieve safe and sanitary treatment of human wastes
- Conserve drinking water.
- Function with a minimum of maintenance and energy consumption
- Operate without unpleasant odors.
- Be an economically built and integrated part of a variety of house designs
- Recycle so-called "wastes" as composted fertilizer for our fruit trees
- Return to nature the nutrients we consume in a form nature is able to handle, rather than turning them into groundwater or surface water pollutants
Agape's compost toilet cost $400 in materials. It is constructed with two chambers so that each chamber may be used alternately for a minimum of four years. One chamber is in use while the contents of the other thoroughly decompose before removal as fertilizer.