Mother's Methane Maker Meets The Media

By the Mother Earth News editors

November/December 1973

On November 2, 1973 a press conference was held on the Shuttleworth farm in Indiana. Representatives of Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Farm Journal, Prairie Farmer, Rolling Stone, Earth News, the Associated Press, the Bureau of Mines, the United Auto Workers, the Canadian Broadcasting Company and many local TV stations and newspapers rubbed shoulders with a number of Hoosier farmers who had come to see whether or not "Shuttleworth's Folly" would work.

It did. Everyone was treated to an explanation of the digester's operation and was shown that t "homemade fuel" it produced would cook food on a gas stove, power both natural gas and propane lamps, run a gas refrigerator and furnace and water heal. . . and drive a 1948 Chevrolet automobile engine L. John Fry-of South African pig farm fame-was also on hand to demonstrate a model bio-gas plant and tell how he had powered his whole 1,000-hog agricultural operation on methane made from the pigs' droppings. MORE »