Saturday, July 19, 2014

Not Another Biochar Blog!

Yes, you guessed it, I'm on a tirade again. I know a way to produce at least twice as much food on a set amount of land, and do it with style, grace and an eye to making the planet liveable into the long term future. It takes a bit of coaxing the fire goddess to come out and play, and some art, but mostly science in delivering this precious gift to the landscape. As the name implies, it is biologically activated carbon, which helps shrink the carbon footprint of humanity and it is an idea that ancient cultures, more advanced in some ways than our own developed nearly beyond the mists, and myths of our time.

True science in agriculture is more properly a biology lesson rather than one in organic chemistry.

This biochar revolution translates interestingly as a fractile form of our own humanity, or lack of it. Essentially the structures of and within biochar allow a person to hold fourteen acres of surface area in a single hand full. It is easy to understand that soil microbes would be safe, secure and prolific with material like tat around. Even people unschooled in biology can understand the tiny "pores" in the material act as territory and shelter for soil organisms.

Each of these microscopically tiny beings is a hydrophyllic (water loving) creature. When moisture is available, they thrive and hold on to as much as they can, then slowly excrete food for neighboring organisms. It is what they do when not assaulted with petrochemically based fertilizers. Biochar works by making "room" for the creatures that mediate nutrient upload for plants and the more soil organisms that there are in the soil. the healthier your plants become, reducing the needs for pest control and most soil amendments.

Donations help defray the costs of biochar workshops, ECO-Tours and tree planting across Northeast Wisconsin. Two years ago, we began making and sharing information on bio-char and want everyone to rediscover this miracle substance. As human beings, this substance is one of our birthrights and needs to be used everywhere! In principle, I try to avoid as much fossil fuel use as possible in my char making. I consider myself a charmaster for home and garden scale. Sizing up is something that I have a firm grasp of the physics, but have not built large scale devices for farm use. If we can find funding, I would love to create a char "incubator" project for farm scale operations. If you would like to donate specifically to char making projects, please tag your payment as such.

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