well … it’s funny how things come full circle.

my first year at middlebury college i took a class called adventure writing and digital storytelling. the course was simple — spend a month with an interesting local and tell their story. i wrote a few pages, shot a short (poorly executed) video and spent a lot of time with a wide-eyed, longhaired vermont farmer who loved dog mushing. i was hooked. the class ended, but i continued to tell stories.

fast-forward four years. i embark on the seminal post-college road trip with my roommate, benji. we were planet forward explorers — off to discover innovations in america’s food system in a mom van. in the dead of winter and without a single lead, we tracked down, stumbled upon and connected with people — following their stories as they led us across the country. we met tony in his teaching garden in new orleans, rachel as she tandem biked compost through austin, and the cooksley’s calves in the sand hills of nebraska. the road trip opened my eyes to entire new landscapes and ways of life and inspired me to continue on my quest to be a lifelong storyteller.

multiple food service jobs later, and a whole lot of moonlighting, and i’m finally, finally, working in film full time and producing my first long form documentary. the story? it’s about a dog mushing dairy farmer setting off on a cross-continent road trip.

sound familiar?

this project is a culmination of a lot of things for me, but even more for farmer doug butler. since milking his first cow on the evening of 1966, doug hasn’t left the farm for more than a couple of days. in all that time he’s had the same dream — racing his sled dogs in the world championships in alaska. today, at the age of 65, he’s on the doorstep of that adventure, and i am honored to be tagging along to tell his story. 

i invite you to follow along on www.underdogfilm.org and humbly ask for your financial support in our kickstarter effort to fund the trip to alaska.

as doug says, “you only live this life once, so let’s do something … let’s get ‘er done.”

_{learn more about white’s six-year-long journey to help change
the economics of rural villages through off-grid refrigeration in
his tedx talk from july, then check out our bloomberg west
segment on promethean power.}

editor’s pick: what if you had to boil your milk every time you wanted a bowl of cereal?

while american farmers have the luxury of reliable, 24-hour refrigeration systems, farmers in india find it virtually impossible to get milk to the market without dangerous levels of bacteria due to the country’s unreliable power source. as a result, families are forced to boil their milk before drinking it, which diminishes its nutritional value. sam white and sorin grama, founders of promethean power, are focused on developing a diesel-free solution to help farmers in off-grid areas chill their milk. 

_{originally submitted june 18, 2012}

promethean has developed a thermal energy storage platform that eliminates diesel generators for cold-storage applications in rural india. thermal energy is stored using proprietary phase-change materials encapsulated in a modular container, essentially a new type of battery that stores cold liquid rather than electrical energy. this thermal battery pack stores and releases large amounts of energy quickly to cool agricultural products immediately, thereby preserving freshness. we have a repeat customer with india’s largest private dairy.