Sheffield dairy farm rakes in the cheddar from selling power generated from cows' methane

The Aragi family's dairy farm — the largest in the state — is special because it still exists and it isn't losing money.
Pine Island Farm is actually making money, not just by selling milk, but by selling power it generates from methane thrown off by cow manure. Nary a penny lands on the farm's electric bill, and the Aragis' sell the excess power to some local off-takers — like Ward's Nursery — at a discount through a state program called net metering.
It is for this reason and more that Pine Island, with its roughly 1,500-plus acres of pasture, corn and hay fields for cow feed — was just awarded Outstanding Dairy Farm of the Year in Massachusetts by the Green Pastures Program at UMassAmherst. Holly Aragi, sitting in the farmhouse kitchen, never mentioned the award, but talked about the hard work of grant-writing and wading through a bureaucratic swamp to get $405,000 from the state Department of Energy Resources to upgrade National Grid's Sheffield substation, and to do line upgrades that will allow for a second generator to run the anaerobic methane digester that turns cow manure and food waste into electricity. And food waste also goes into it to help the digestion along. Excess grains and other food from local producers like Guido's Fresh Marketplace and Berkshire Mountain Distillers is fed into the digester. And even Stonybrook Farms in Vermont sends its excess whey here.
The digester separates the liquids and solids, and out comes liquid to fertilize the fields and solids to bed some of the farm's 1,500 cows, of which about 564 are milked. The farm sells milk through the Dairy Farmers of America cooperative.The cow bedding is critical, Holly said. If the generator, which runs 24/7, shuts down for maintenance or other reasons, trouble can stack up across the farm.