John Williamson, owner and operator of State Line Farms, has been growing crops for biodiesel fuel for about four years, and using the fuel in his tractors and trucks.

"We started with one crop of canola, and about three acres," Williamson said. "We had pretty good luck with it the first year, so we continued with it."

The effort has been expanding since. "Last year, we had 50 acres, growing such things as canola, mustard and flax," Williamson said.

Williamson said his attempt at biodiesel farming soon caught the attention of others and, with the help of the University of Vermont, his farm and Clearbrook Farm were able to obtain a machine that extracts oil from seeds.

The remainder of the seeds, said Williamson, are used as high quality feed for livestock.

"From (that machine), the oil runs into a settling tank," Williamson said. "Then, it is placed in the reactor tank, where it combines with lye and alcohol."

Williamson said the farm has a newly constructed apparatus to mix the fuel, which is not yet quite complete. The new machinery is made of used parts, including one tank previously employed in mixing chocolate milk.

According to Williamson, the new machinery offers several benefits over his old system, including a greater resistance to fire. He estimated that the stainless-steel apparatus will work well into the future.

He hopes to one day have the machinery working 24 hours a day.

"It's designed to run continuously," Williamson said. "This year, we're not up to full steam, but hopefully (we will be) in a couple of years."

He said four area farms are currently involved in the effort to grow biodiesel crops. In addition to Clearbrook Farm, Williamson said a farm in Greenwich, N.Y., and another in Cambridge, N.Y., send material to his farm to be processed.

According to Williamson, the farm had to learn some things the hard way.

"(Sunflowers) are hard to grow — there's not much advice available that applies to this area," Williamson said, adding that he had seen advice for growing the crops elsewhere. "The rules that apply in North Dakota don't really apply here."

"Harvesting is not the easiest either," Williamson said. "I had to build a special head for the combine."

Crops aren't the only source of the oil needed to create the fuel — Williamson has also been using used oil from local restaurants.

He said the biodiesel effort has drawn a great deal of attention as fuel continues to be a foremost concern in people's minds.

"A lot of people have approached us," Williamson said. "Some just have land and are interested in growing the crops, others are farmers and some are just people interested in buying locally grown biofuel."

Williamson said he was struck by the circular nature of it all. He said his ancestors would feed their horses with crops grown in the fields, and that he was, in a sense, doing the same with his means of transportation.