Editor’s note: We’ve received a lot of emails in the week since we launched, but we wanted to post this one from Orville B. Pulsiver of Grapell Bioenergy. This note spoke to us because it highlights the importance of marrying innovation with traditional resource-based industries. It’s a theme we hope to revisit frequently. P&C.

Hello Peter & Carol,

Your article in today's Sunday Chronicle Herald (p A-12) awakened my interest in what you are trying to do and its importance.

In 1994 I inherited a farm in Middle Musquodoboit, just one of more than 2,000 smaller farms across N.S containing in total at least 100,000 acres or more in run-down fields earning little or nothing for their owners and creating little or no employment or wealth. In 2007 I started working with others to form a new industry to produce grass fuel pellets from these lands.

This has led a small group of inventors and innovators, of which I am just one, to build this industry across Nova Scotia and Eastern Canada. We are making progress and, finally in mid 2009, I incorporated a marketing/distribution company - Grapell Bioenergy Ltd. - to marry as many like-minded interested parties throughout Atlantic Canada and build toward a successful launch of this industry.

Grapell has now acquired modest private entrepreneural funding and will shortly open an office in Truro to speed this launch.

I simply wish to make our firm known to you and to direct your attention, if possible, to our web site. This industry has the capacity to help hundreds if not thousands of small farm owners in Nova Scotia alone and to create a new industry...to create new employment...to create new wealth... to strenghten rural and urban economic activity and to replace fossil fuel for clean space heating in perpetuity in domestic, commercial and institutional settings across North America.

Thank you for reading this communication (and for the invaluable work you are doing trying to teach folks how to spell - I-N-N-O-V-A-T-I-O-N - and to respect its power(!))

Orville B. Pulsifer

Grapell Bioenergy Ltd.

(in association with McFetridge Farm)

web: www.grapell.wordpress.com