Biogas, Solar, Creativity, and a Joyful Spirit Fuel Sustainable Living on Peter Maurin Farm

Lots of Catholic Worker communities incorporate sustainable environmental practices like composting,  energy-efficient appliances, and a preference for using secondhand items rather than purchasing new. Some might even have a graywater recycling system, solar panels, or a composting toilet.

But it’s hard to think of a Catholic Worker community that has taken a more systematic, comprehensive approach to reducing their environmental impact than Australia’s Peter Maurin Farm.

Located just outside of Brisbane, Peter Maurin Farm has been home to Jim and Anne Dowling and their seven children since 2000. The couple met at another Catholic Worker In Brisbane; you can read about their journey to the Catholic Worker here: How We Came to the Catholic Worker: Anne and Jim Dowling.

Over the years the Dowlings have engaged in protests of militarism and war while also embracing a lifestyle rooted in simplicity, sustainability, and environmental stewardship at home. Their way of life is rooted in Peter Maurin’s Easy Essay, “A Case for Utopia,” the first few lines of which are:

The world would be better off
if people tried to become better,
and people would be better
if they stopped trying to become better off.

The Dowlings have made two videos giving tours of their farm In an effort to inspire others to adopt the same practices. Their daughter, Teresa, made a video in 2020 showcasing the farm’s low-energy lifestyle; in 2021, Anne Dowling made another video offering a tour of the farm’s environmental practices.

It’s “hard to get people to think seriously about the (easy, in my opinion) possibility of personal change by living simply and resisting the culture by doing so,” Jim Dowling wrote by email.

Much of this story is based on the farm’s video tours, with a few updates provided by Jim Dowling over email. One happy update: although Anne mentions possibly having to leave the farm when the long-term lease on the land expired in a few years, with help from a relative, the Dowlings were able to purchase the land the farm sits on, allowing them to stay.

Beyond Solar: Use Less Energy!

All of the farm’s hot water and electricity come from its small 640-watt system of solar panels; most of the time, they provide all of the electricity the farm needs, with any excess being sent back to the electric utility. On cloudy days, people heat water on the stove or take cold showers.

The same amount of money that bought the 640-watt system in 2000 would purchase a 6.4 kilowatt system today, Teresa said.

“Despite…consuming less than one-twentieth of what an average Australian consumes with electricity, we’ve lived pretty comfortably,” she said.

The family gets by on its small solar system primarily by eliminating high-energy appliances like toasters, air conditioners, electric heaters—and hair dryers and straighteners, too.

“Dad’s really anti-hair straighteners and hair dryers,” she said, laughing. “We also don’t have a TV ever, absolutely not. Dad has a whole rant that he does about that.”

“Terrible, evil, disgusting things,” Jim Dowling interjected.

“If you want to be entertained, read a book, play board games, that kind of thing,” Teresa continued. “Play the guitar—terribly!”

A lot of the family’s energy-saving moves are simple things that make a big difference, she said. For example, the refrigerator is a chest freezer that has had its freezer thermostat switched out for a regular fridge thermostat. The modified freezer uses less than one-fifth of the electricity of a normal fridge.

On sunny days, the family boils water, cooks food, and even bakes bread using a repurposed satellite dish that has had mirrors attached to it; the mirrors focus all of the sunlight on the stove unit, quickly heating water and baking bread in under an hour.

A Stove Powered by Food (and Toilet) Waste

When the sun isn’t shining, the family cooks on a stove that runs on biogas produced on the farm. A biogas digester converts organic waste from food scraps and the toilet into methane. The stove works most of the year, but in some of the colder months, the methane-producing bacteria don’t produce as much. Then, the family cooks over a wood stove powered by wood trimmed from trees on the property.

The biogas digester cost about $200 to build—along with a lot of labor, Jim said, since much of it is buried underground.

Some of the biogas is produced by waste from a non-flushing toilet. “There is normally no smell from the toilet except when there are many users when we have a gathering,” Jim said via email. “Then we just grin (or groan) and bear it.”

The waste initially goes into a large eight-cubic-meter ferro-cement dome enclosure, where it undergoes an anaerobic process that produces the biogas. As the gas is created, it forces the liquid at the bottom into an overflow tank. This liquid then flows into additional tanks and can be used as fertilizer for the farm’s extensive garden and fruit trees. The pressure from the overflow tank forces the biogas up through a pipe and into the stove for cooking.

Since the videos were made, the family has upgraded its stove to a Chinese-made model designed specifically for biogas; the new stove takes up less space, saves gas, and cooks much faster, Jim Dowling said. The upgraded stove cost about $200, mostly for shipping costs.

Since 2002, all of the farm’s automobiles have run on either homemade biodiesel or used cooking oil. The Dowlings purchased diesel-to-biofuel conversion kits online from a German company, Elsbett. The conversion kits cost the Dowlings $1,000 each, although Jim notes that they might cost up to $3,000 for some vehicles. “Most people would spend more than $3,000 a year for fuel, I reckon,” Jim said.

Used cooking oil is sourced from local restaurants, pubs, and cafes, and then filtered at the farm before being pumped into the car’s tank. The cars have run “pretty smoothly,” Teresa said, covering hundreds of thousands of kilometers on used cooking oil alone.

Six Loads of Laundry on One Tub of Water

All of the farm’s water needs are supplied by rainwater that is collected from the roof and held in a holding tank; the water is then pumped by a 50-year-old windmill into a header tank, and gravity-fed to the house as needed.

The family does its laundry in a twin-tub washing machine, known for its efficient water use and ability to recycle water for multiple loads. The clothes are washed in one tub, then moved to the second tub to have excess water removed by spinning before they are hung out on a line to completely dry.

“I actually have done six loads of washing in one lot of water in this machine, saving the dirty ones for last, of course,” Anne Dowling explained. “And we’ve had seven children in cloth nappies just using the twin tub washing machine.”

The water also helps the family grow much of its own food: figs, bananas, and honey from a native beehive, among other things.

“Homegrown bananas taste a million times better than store-bought ones,” Teresa said.

What it can’t grow is often supplemented by food rescued from grocery store trash bins. (Check out this video of Franz Dowling dumpster-diving on the Snapchat show First Person.)

Living Simply So Others May Simply Live

As innovative as all of the farm’s practices are, there’s something larger at stake, the Dowlings say.

For Anne Dowling, it’s important to acknowledge that a joyful encounter with God when she was a teenager sent her down the path that eventually led to Peter Maurin Farm. That encounter has spilled out into care for God’s creation and all the people who live in it.

Ultimately, the biggest change people need to make isn’t technical, Jim says, but a change of heart:  “We need to realize that we don’t need all the MOD CONS (modern conveniences) of so-called Western civilization to be happy.

“You just need to live simply so that all may simply live.”

All photos are screen captures from the Dowling’s videos, used with permission.