The Zeithamer Family: Alcohol Fuel at Work

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Alan Zeithamer with a tractor that runs on alcohol fuel.
Alan Zeithamer with a tractor that runs on alcohol fuel.
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The Zeithamer's still includes the fermentation vat at left and the stripper column at right.
The Zeithamer's still includes the fermentation vat at left and the stripper column at right.

It would be hard to imagine any group of people who are harder hit by fuel shortages than are this nation’s farmers. And, of course, when our agriculturists–who supply so much of the world’s “bread and butter”–suffer, millions of other folks share the effects in the form of high priced (or even completely unavailable) food.

But one particular granger family–the Zeithamers of Alexandria, Minnesota–is simply not about to take any “gasoline drought”–real or contrived–sitting down. These folks are making their own alcohol fuel for about half the price of the commercial gasoline it’s replacing.

It’s Plainly Practical

The Zeithamer dairy farm–a 50-cow, 500-acre spread–requires more than 10,000 gallons of combustible petroleum to get through each year. Increasing fuel costs were enough of a burden for the Minnesotans to contend with, but a scarcity of the precious liquid could have resulted in disaster–one reason why Archie (the senior Zeithamer) and his son Alan decided to convert to alcohol fuel, aka “farmer’s fuel.”

“It’s nothing new, you know,” Archie says. “Farmers were burning straight alcohol in their tractors years ago when they couldn’t get anything else. There’s no doubt it works. And no one else is better equipped to handle alcohol production than are farmers. We have the raw materials right on hand, and we’re far more flexible than any large commercial distilleries could be because we can make fuel out of whatever surplus crop we have available. Furthermore, we’re producing our ethanol right here where it’s going to be used. We aren’t burning up half our product trying to deliver it to some distribution point located three or more states away.”

  • Published on Jan 18, 2013
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