On farm, sun, wind get extra chores

Karen Cook, whose family owns Cider Hill Farm in Amesbury, shows state official Ian Bowles a method of growing strawberries that involves less water yesterday. (Josh Reynolds for the Boston Globe)

AMESBURY - Readouts on two meters along a wall inside a barn at Cider Hill Farm tell the story: Since last November, solar panels out back have generated about 13,500 kilowatt hours of power, and a nearby wind turbine has racked up about 1,400 kilowatt hours of power since it went online in January.

In all, renewable-energy systems at Cider Hill produce about 20 percent of the electricity used by the farm, which state officials visited yesterday for a demonstration of how Massachusetts' working farms are using alternative-energy systems to do business more efficiently. As part of the Green Communities Act signed into law by Governor Deval Patrick earlier this year, farms that generate power using a renewable source - up to two megawatts - can sell any excess back to the regional power grid.

"It is a business and we pay a lot of people, so whatever I have to do, I have to do it smart," Cider Hill owner Glenn Cook told the group, which included Ian Bowles, secretary of the state's Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. "I think all farmers are environmental."

Cook said that before adding solar and wind power, he was spending about $25,000 on electricity annually. He and his wife, Karen, have also found a way to cut fuel expenses drastically. Cook hopes today to fire up a trio of outdoor wood-burning boilers that will warm nine greenhouses this winter and provide heat and hot water for three homes on the property. That should cut costs from about $20,000 for oil and propane to about $3,000 for wood, Cook said.

State agricultural officials estimate the 2,000 to 3,000 full-time working farms in Massachusetts spend $90 million to $120 million a year on electricity, heating, and transportation costs.

At least a dozen farms are already using renewable energy sources, such as solar panels, wind turbines, and biofuels. Unlike residential homeowners, who can only sell wind- or solar-produced energy back to the grid under the Green Communities Act, farms are allowed to deploy a broader range of technologies, including anaerobic digesters - systems that use animal and food waste to generate energy.

Bowles, state Representative Michael Costello, a Newburyport Democrat, and officials from the Department of Agricultural Resources toured Cider Hill, which grows apples, strawberries, chrysanthemums, and corn.

"I think it's the best example I've seen of integrating green power on the farm, bringing wind power back to the farm," Bowles said of the operation. "It's the full vision of ecologically sustainable farming."

Erin Ailworth can be reached at eailworth@globe.com.