The value of being greener Farmers find that energy efficiency
pays off by saving money, protecting environment There was a
time when farm life was impossible without a big, beefy truck.
Carting bales of hay and hauling equipment took a burly gas-
guzzler. At Otter River Farm, David Smith’s utility vehicle uses
no gas at all. Zipping around his dairy in Winchendon, home to
Smith’s Country Cheese, on a zero-emissions golf cart, Smith is
blazing a path for greener and cleaner times in agriculture. “We
rely on electricity to run everything: pumps to circulate water,
oil to run the boilers,’’ said the plainspoken cheese maker,
chatting on the porch of his country store. “We are heating a
lot of milk and need hot water for sanitation. It’s a pretty
energy-intensive enterprise.’’ Massachusetts dairy farmers like
Smith have taken steps in recent years to change their energy
consumption through more efficient and sustainable practices.
They are cutting costs in the process, important in an industry
that operates on th