Tony Lopes

Tony Lopes lived in 10^th Street Bez Valley before moving into a townhouse in Kensington with a small garden which he has transformed into a laboratory of miracles and wonders.
  
Gardener, inventor, conservationist, modern day alchemist and mystic, Tony cooks with solar energy or methane gas produced in an assortment of discarded coffee and paint tins; grows his own vegetables; runs his car on rancid cooking oil, is experimenting with an anaerobic digester; heats his water with a solar geyser made from coke bottles, and recycles just about everything.

An electrical engineer by training, Tony began to change his way of life after reading Einstein; Masanobu Fukuoka, the Japanese farmer/philosopher and author of ‘The One-Straw Revolution’; author and director of ‘Grow Bio intensive Mini-Farming programme for Ecology Action’, John Jeavons; and ‘The Ringing Cedars’ books, which were first published in Russian and then translated into 20 other languages.  The books are a documentary account of a man called Vladimir Megré’s encounters with an extraordinary, almost mythical character known as Anastasia, over a period of 10 years. People from all over the world who have read the books have radically rearranged their lives.

Tony spends hours doing Internet research and then tries out his new inventions, experimenting and learning on his feet.  Each new initiative involves research, networking, and tracking down components for the lowest possible price. It’s hard work. For instance, to collect cow manure, he travelled into a deep rural area where one of the wheels of his vehicle was damaged when it got stuck in the mud.  “Everything has a story to it. Nothing is easy,” he says.

In 2009, Tony built solar cooker using a Masonite wood panel, a wooden frame, galvanized sheeting, and cardboard for insulation.  He uses it to cook rice, potatoes, beans, millet, sorghum, mielie-meal and his own sour-dough bread. It doesn’t work when there is no sun, so he has constructed a wood/gas stove made out of a discarded ‘Ricoffy’ and paint tins, which produces sufficient gas (hydrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide) to cook food. Tony’s experiments with a bio-digester involved purchasing a 1,000 liter water tank for R 500 through Junk Mail. It is filled with water and fresh cow manure, which contains bacteria that creates methane gas, which is used for cooking.  

His solar geyser was modeled on the work of a retired Brazilian mechanic, Jose Alano, using used coke bottles and long life milk/fruit juice tetra pak cartons. It has cut his municipal electricity costs down to R 160 per month.

Discarded vegetable oil, collected from fish and chips shops or catering businesses and more recently from the St Giles Association for the disabled in Kensington, is used to power Tony’s van, according to principles developed by Dr. Rudolf Diesel in 1895.  This involves a two-tank system which allows Tony to start up his vehicle using diesel and then when the engine is hot, to switch over to vegetable oil. “The conversion wasn’t easy,” he says, “So there were school fees…”

In his small garden, Tony grows blueberries, youngberries, sweet peas, cabbages, broad beans, kale, strawberries, parsley, rosemary, tomatoes, and comfrey, in between persimmon, olive, prune,  avocado, peach, fig, apricot, guava, and almond  trees. He also cultivates mushrooms and a variety of medicinal plants.

“I like the science, I like to do the research because of my background as an engineer, but I need to get out into my garden because that is where the divine engineering happens.”

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