AT AGE 36, Doug Fine decided "to see if a regular guy who enjoyed his comforts could maintain them with a reduced oil footprint." And so he bought a parcel of land in southwestern New Mexico, dubbed it the Funky Butte Ranch and dug right into his greener lifestyle.
"In concrete terms, this meant raising animals and crops for my food, figuring out some way besides unleaded to get anywhere, and making bank account-draining investments in solar power," Fine writes in his memoir, "Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living." Within the first few days the universe appears to give him two thumbs up when his parked Subaru rolls backward into a tree, "MY CAR WAS LITERALLY RUNNING AWAY FROM ME. . . . I figured I would forge success from astonishing seemingly irrevocable defeat, you know, like Al Gore."
Fine starts with four simple goals: to use a lot less oil, to power his life with renewable energy, to eat as locally as possible and to not get killed in the process. He soon discovers it isn't easy being green. He confronts his first major challenge as he pulls into his local Wal-Mart for supplies. "The lifestyle contrast was too stark to ignore. I had a bag of organic goat grain in the LOVEsubee, for crying out loud. I was at a crossroads: was I going to go green and independent, or was I going to keep the Walton family buying Picassos?"
He buys two goats (off Craigslist) and names them the Pan Sisters. They quickly become his primary companions as well as endless sources of humor and frustration. "When I was inside the ranch house violating their social boundaries by eating a meal without them, they tried to get in with increasingly powerful horns applied to my sliding glass window. They actually knocked." Despite their endless assault on his prized roses, Fine's deep affection for the goats and their importance to his project creates a beautiful and hilarious tension.
Next, he bids farewell to his Subaru and purchases what he calls the ROAT (for Ridiculously Oversized American Truck"), which he converts from diesel to run on used deep-fryer vegetable oil collected from local restaurants. The only downside, he discovers, is kung-pao-scented exhaust. "I found myself mysteriously drawn to Chinese takeout places at every exit. Now and forever more, my truck was basically a munchies machine." Thoughtfully, he includes a recipe for kung pao chicken with cold sesame noodles.
