From Table to Farm?

Morse Pitts collecting vegetable oil.

Kudos to New York City Greenmarket farmer Morse Pitts, of Windfall Farms, for following all the way through on an environmentally A-plus idea. Manhattanites might be familiar with the super-sweet pea shoots and exquisite mustard greens Windfall Farms brings in from upstate every Wednesday and Saturday. When I caught up with Morse on a recent Wednesday, he was behind the wheel of the retired school bus with which he shuttles his vegetables to market, headed out into the big City while assistants manned the stand. "Where you going Morse?" I asked. "Hop in," said he. "I'll show you." Morse opened those big swaying doors the way only school bus drivers have authority to do and I thought, somewhat nostalgically: Oh boy. A ride on a school bus. Off to four Manhattan restaurants we went—City Bakery, Chow Bar, Heartland and Chinos—to collect five-gallon containers full of spent vegetable oil. Every five gallons of vegetable oil converts, through the addition of some lye and other ingredients, into four gallons of biodiesel. Among the various bi-products of this conversion, the residual potash gets sprinkled over Morse's compost heap back home. Root crops like carrots just love potash. The restaurants gladly put their oil out every Wednesday for Morse because now they don't have to pay somebody to cart it away. And the cost of converting the oil to fuel is about one dollar per gallon, a windfall for the farm (no pun intended). Morse uses biodiesel to heat his home and one greenhouse. In addition, two tractors, one pickup truck, and the versatile school bus run on biodiesel. "Hmmm," said I, venturing into a display of one of the few tidbits of knowledge I possess about biodiesel. "So how come this bus doesn't smell like French fries?" "This one doesn't smell for some reason," Morse explained, "but driving my tractor makes me hungry." For more about Windfall Farms and biodiesel, check out Neely Green Soulutions.