Navigating the Unknown

We have entered an age in which intellect is considered a bad thing by many, creativity and honor are disrespected, integrity is confused with just being angry all the time and it seems, at times, the more ludicrous a person is, the greater their appeal to the mass market of "ideas", which is to say whatever the opposite of ideas really are. I hesitate to claim that feelings are the opposite of intellect. It seems to me that ideas and feelings are related, it is just that one arises from chemical changes in the whole body and the other is mostly confined to our heads. Oddly enough the formerly crazy, dysfunctional and dangerous are being allowed more and more freedoms while those of us who have learned to control our impulses, consider well the results of our actions and consider well the thoughts and feelings of others are held in disregard, alternately condemned and disrespected, making it difficult, if not impossible, to be taken seriously.

Many of the basics that we learned as children are completely off the table now.

The U. S. of A. now has an ignorant asshole as President and the old way of trying to not make waves has led to trying to coddle and rationalize why he is not so bad, calls for giving him a chance and excuses for why his repeated attempts to ruin our nation are something we just need to get used to. I seriously doubt that accommodating bullies has ever worked to solve the problems that follow them through life. In fact, the old reality demanded that we put down bullies, yet there are strong forces in our society today that just love bullies because they have become so used to being beaten up. People who study the psychology of victimhood will speak endlessly about the influences that we fall under when we are bullied, I have written about this myself on this blog. Power and control issues spiral out of control and the dehumanization of the victims is extremely common to be spoke of and the power and control wheel seem to help some victims get a map that can help them cut off one or two of the chords of the "wheel", breaking off the trajectory. However when individuals don't even have an effective map of the territory, finding their way can be difficult.

Less is said about the other half of the equation, the Stockholm syndrome is recognized, but the very nature of caring for your captors is abhorrent to the average person and as such it does not get spoken of nearly as often. This is akin to the male anatomy, the "outie" getting all the attention, all of their conniving attacks get attention. Looking curiously, investigating and communicating  about the more internal events that take place, tend to get less attention. Even though these states skew our very biology, they get less attention. The vast majority of the population of the planet feels threatened by the incompetent asshole that the U.S. has "in charge", but the denial of that fact is manufactured, because it serves the oligarchy. No one else. The infinitesimally small .1% are like the boorish boss, because no one feels that their "ideas" are to be questioned. Here's the rub. Say a guy makes twice as much as you, what he says usually goes, but in the right business climate, or other interaction, you can talk to the guy, sharing your ideas and possibly, through this sharing, find a better outcome. When you go high enough up the economic ladder, people making ten or a hundred times more than you are part of the mix. You are sure to very rarely even see them, they frequently design their lives to stay away from "normals". Even if you tried to share an idea with them, the response would become, "You are not paid to think."

In my youth, this was why the Wisconsin Idea made those who took the time to understand it proud to be from the state. It was an overt attempt to build a relationship between the top and bottom segments of society into a stronger, more creative and culturally vivacious mix of ideas from all walks of life both feeding into the colleges and universities, but the scientific advancements made utilizing state dollars, in the form of the UW system could flow back to benefit the common man. but I digress. this post is about navigating post map, post reality, post and possible sign about what can be expected in any dimension, at any time and although we are paralyzed by not knowing which way to turn for relief, we are trying to rationalize our captivity in a horrible situation. The very sacred nature of our being is constantly under active assault by the marketplace, the government, stressors like climate destabilization, slow and ceaseless erosion of standards of living, etc. Like the abused spouse, our whole society is collectively making excuses for our bully in chief, his cast of characters who have explicitly said they want to dismantle every agency. Are these people praying for Armageddon?

The rest of the world is seeing us as completely off the rails crazy as a nation and are quite probably exactly right. Instead of honoring and respecting our humanity, treating our citizens as if they had value, we let the top down, or trickledown of power and control dynamics rule every interaction with the brunt of the burden borne by those who cannot afford it. I consider it a lavish lifestyle that I get to have occasional days off, so I can ride my bicycle, a $35 one that I bought in 1984. After I rode around the Great Lakes, using it, I calculated that total costs per mile (with the two hundred dollars of racks, panniers and new front chainwheels) at less than 1/3 of one cent per mile.

When I left home, I was stepping off into the unknown to a very great extent. all I knew about the areas that I was going to be traveling through were primarily based on a map published by Pollution Probe that gave great detail about environmental catastrophes and where they were located around the shores of the Great Lakes. much of the rest of my trip I was flying blind. One several hundred mile portion of the trip, the only map I had was one of Canada produced by National Geographic!

As we get more and more informed about the current state of the planet, we each find more and more reasons to grow a few vegetables in a healthy way for our own health and welfare and many, once bitten by the healthy food bug, want to share the bounty for the earth with others, hoping they will feel better just like we do! Our school, when fully funded will be able to teach many hundreds of people each year how to make the Earth thrive under our care, sequester carbon cheaply and easily and understand the necessity of doing so. We may not even be able to "see" the territory into which we have been thrown, but by doing simple things repeatedly, positive change can be made.

Char classes 2017

MREA (Midwest Renewable Energy Association) Energy Fair takes place on the weekend closest to every Summer Solstice. They are located in custer Wisconsin, right in the middle of the state. ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. has always been devoted to protecting water quality in the Great Lakes generally and in the3 entire Great Lakes Watershed. Techniques learned in these classes can be used anywhere and need to be used everywhere to reduce energy used in agriculture and continue to pursue a more sustainable system of food production that relies less on irrigation, less on fossil energy and more on local needs, conditions, ecological niches and available and abundant natural resources.

This was one of many programs offered last year. we will be making as many dates as possible to teach biochar making skills and techniques. The time is NOW to take back our food system and biochar allows users to double agricultural output.
 Please call or write ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. to arrange your classes today!

ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc.

I feel the need to explicitly link my blogs in new ways. I would like to think that the same people who enjoy reading The Otherfish Wrap would also enjoy my blog entries at: ECO-Tours of Wisconsin (this site is more for social, political and topical issues, whereas the ECO-Tours blog and ECO-tours of Wisconsin Inc., the organization, focus more exclusively on issues of the environment. Although there are occasional overlaps, I do try to keep my focus more narrowly confined to health, education, and ecological ethics and issues. This moon alone, more than 200 people checked out the writings I have made at my other site, and I take heart in knowing that both the issues I choose to tackle and the ways that I present information, as well as my attempts to present solutions to the environmental woes that we all face is part of what inspires my readers.

For instance, this moon we have found seven parcels along Lake Superior that offer an excellent opportunity to preserve sensitive acreage, protect water quality and house a school of sustainability. These seven parcels all exist within seven miles of one another, between the Wisconsin Michigan border and the wetlands East of Little Girl's Point. This area is extremely sensitive to poor management and  can easily be enhanced with tools and techniques that we emphasize with our classes. The area is also unique in geology, hydrology and cultural history allowing us to tap local experience and talent to teach dozens of classes from homestead butchery to foraging for wild foods and edibles.

With over a mile of shoreline between them, these seven parcels include nine bedrooms and seven baths, mostly all clustered in the middle would allow biking, hiking and field trips to over two hundred seventy acres and over a mile of shoreline. In addition to the shoreline access offered in the school grounds proper, there are two parks, Legion park, at the mouth of the Montreal River, which includes another half mile of public access shoreline and even more hiking on the mile or so of shoreline in Little Girl's Point County Park. additional room for larger gatherings exists for both remote and tent camping experiences as well as developed ones with overflow into Little Girl's Point County Park Campground. This beautiful park has over thirty campsites and a lodge that can sleep up to forty more people. for even larger conferences and events, there are six other campgrounds and a hotel and casino within twenty miles of the facility.

The properties also have several out buildings for equipment storage, a 90 foot falls and many miles of internal trails, including many hiking opportunities along the shoreline. Few resorts or outdoor schools can offer hiking, biking and canoeing/kayaking/sailing opportunities like this. Saxon Harbor, just to the west allows for sailing access to the Apostle Islands. Hosting guests and students in this unique setting present an interesting mix of relaxation, quiet and restful days and fun, interesting and invigorating discussions, music, friendship and story-telling in to the evening.

We have been looking to get our outdoor school started on the shores of Lake Superior and this area has many more significant benefits than those this post can only hint at. On the 270+ acres we are working to protect, and within the hundreds of acres of County Parks and thousands of acres of County Forest that are adjacent to these seven parcels, the opportunities to learn and practice living lightly on the planet abound. If you would like to help support our school or make donations to help us begin the school by purchasing the acreage and accommodations, you can either call or write at ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. (nine 20) double eight four-triple two four or write us by snail mail at: ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. fourteen forty-five Porlier street, Green Bay, WI 54301-3334 or if you only want to contact us digitally, try Paypal account number tnsaladino42@hotmail.com which is also conveniently our e-mail.

Blessed Be!

Post Two-party System Dialogue (The other PTSD)

I had to steal this. Occasionally there comes something, drifting through the inter-webs, that is worth stealing...This came to me already anonymized, passed friend to friend to friend. Sorry to whoever originally wrote it. There were a handful of minor modifications that I made for clarity, brevity, impact or punctuation. I can't guarantee that my changes are the last that this needs. Alter at will, but please, stay true to the sentiment.

These were very expensive signs, utilized for all of three minutes for the tee vee cameras. I worked as a stagehand and pulled nearly them from a dumpster after the gig, painting them with a half dozen stencils in an attempt to turn the throughput of the failed political system to new uses, helping educate and serve the people, rather than just exploiting them.

 A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN:
Joe rises at 6 a.m. filling his coffeepot with water, to prepare coffee. The water is relatively clean because a bunch of tree-hugging liberals fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first glug of coffee, he takes medication. It is relatively safe to take, because commie liberal tyrants fought to ensure the safety and efficacy of all drugs. All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because liberal union thugs fought their employers and many died, to secure paid medical insurance. Now, Joe gets it too. He prepares breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because hundreds or weak, bookish, girly-man liberals fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. After having read the book, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.

In the shower, Joe reaches for shampoo. His bottle is labeled with each ingredient and relative  amount in the total contents, because a crybaby liberal fought for Joe's right to know what he puts on his body and how much, of what, it contained. Whole organizations of "leftys" like Environmental Working Group have fought so that people can know exactly what the best and healthiest products to put on your body are, it is called Skin Deep.

After his shower, Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is relatively clean because environmentalist wacko liberals fought for laws stopping industries from poisoning the air. No doubt, after reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Joe heads to the subway for his government-subsidized ride to work which saves him considerable money in parking, wear and tear on his own ride and greatly reduce his transportation costs because fancy-pants liberals fought for affordable public transportation, giving everyone an opportunity to be mobile and contribute.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for the working standards he enjoys today, like the weekend and the forty hour week. Joe's employer pays attention to these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get worker compensation or unemployment benefits that he has paid for with a little bit from each check because stupid, godless, liberals didn't think Joe should lose his home because of temporary misfortune. At noon, Joe needs to make a bank deposit on his lunch break, so he can pay bills. His deposit, federally insured by the FSLIC, because some spendthrift liberals wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who have repeatedly ruined the economy and banking system even before the Great Depression. Not to mention the most recent crash! Joe pays on his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and a below-market federal student loan because an elitist liberal snob decided that Joe and the government are better off if he is educated and earns more money over his lifetime.(That's what allows him to pay more taxes too and he will miss them less as he makes more!)

Joe, home from work, plans to visit his father in the evening at his farm, back at his childhood home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among some of the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards and equipment. He arrives at his family's homestead, after traveling on a road funded by money-wasting, bleeding heart, socialist-inspired network of roads and bridges. His was the third generation to live in a house financed by Farmers' Home Administration, another liberal subsidy, because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberals stuck their noses where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification. Joe is happy to see his father, who is retired. Living on Social Security and a union pension because a bunch of over-educated, wine-drinking, brie-eating liberals made sure he could take care of himself, so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in the car for the drive home, listening to a talk radio show. The host, funded by the oligarchs, keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans, bastions of "business interests", have fought mightily against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees with the radio though: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! Tax and spend! Tax and spend! It's either jobs, or pollution, you can't have both! After all, I'm a self-made man, just like John Wayne in the movies set in the "Old West". Everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

1984

Living in the post two-party system era requires us to educate ourselves on the relative worth of thinking only about the next quarter and how that compares with seventh generation thinking!

One Moon Passes

Since the swearing in of The Donald, the U.S. of A. has had a few Constitutional crises, some illegal firings, a mass exodus of administration officials and high ranking agency types, who are vital to the functioning of their respective organizations. In addition to increasing the cost of government, our new fearful leader, Twitler, as some call him. We are expected to swallow this giant bitter horse pill based purely on false hopes and promises. As I pointed out years ago, hope was the last thing out of Pandora's box. We need pragmatists, more than ever to stand up and hold the governments of our world accountable for their flagrant reliance on false facts from their corporate welfare recipients. For many years I have questioned how and why business leaders are even consulted on pending regulations that will affect them? Is not the purpose of regulation, to reign in bad actors and require a basic level of "service" from providers? Equity, fairness and  basic humanity have taken it on the chin when companies have been allowed to run amok. Inviting industry leaders into agencies that have been established to limit corporate power has always seemed akin to allow the foxes to unionize and then let them design the next generation of chicken-houses!

The mercabic force available to each one of us is expressed through time and all cultures as a handful of discreet elements.

I have gone through the ugly, but necessary process of looking at succession to the White House. We now have both a President and Vice President who have been tied to dealings with international agents and banks, designed to prop up the candidacy and fund a campaign that ultimately catapulted our current POSOTUS (Piece Of Sh$t Of The United States) to proxy for Russia in our White House. Both at least complicit in, if not responsible for capital offenses. This makes the Oval Office the responsibility of a Representative from an illegal district, the only reason he made it to office in the first place is because of driving down voter turn out by flooding the airwaves with lies, using out-of-state money to finance the making of a fine puppet or corporate welfare whores. Scratch him off and it takes you to Senator Orrin Hatch, of Utah. I have only made a cursory analysis of his policies and stances, at least what he has posted on his website. If that is the ignorant and misguided policies he actually believes, in the face of insurmountable research, investigation and science, he needs to be disallowed as well. That takes the succession of the Presidency all the way down to the Attorney General who Tweetmeister Pussy Grab fired within the first week of taking office.

I know it feels like the death from a thousand cuts is already weakening our resolve, our will to fight, our ability to even quit crying and get up on two feet again, but I can also say that the founding fathers planned for even these eventualities. there is a chart going around on the internet showing the percentage of Electoral College votes that all the Presidents had relative to their Popular vote totals. It claims that D.T. got 50% of the popular vote, making him something like the fourth worst finisher in that respect. In actuality, he only received 46.1% of the popular vote, making him the worst of the worst, gaining the White House with the lowest percentage of any President of the United States ever! There is no excuse for letting our system spin out of control. specific provisions have been made to prevent chaos from creeping in to the halls of Congress. It would be ironic, but appropriate if the "Making America Great Again!" was not achieved by buying hats from China, but was more about getting people involved, paying attention to our government and the way it is run. I trust that all these people marching and calling their congresspeople are saying the same things I have been saying for twenty years. Maybe now that the majority are getting sick and tired of being lied to cheated and stolen from on a regular basis, we will do what it takes to win back the halls of Congress and the White House from the takers once and for all!

NOTICE! I used the term takers in a more real sense, not like the major media outlets allow it to be used. The Corporate welfare whores have been taking for generations. Make millions, the government wants to lower your taxes...make billions and they want to give you subsidies. If you don't believe it, look at how much money the ACA is pumping into insurance company coffers. Look to the energy sector...look to the financial markets, the .1% has their hands out so far that they are dipping into everyone's pocket, whether it be for wars fought for access to oil, fictional accounts of imaginary threats, or surcharges for "smartgrid" technology, we are all having our collective pockets picked in hundreds of thousands of hidden ways and as they steal from the poor, they shift that wealth to the uberwealthy.

Do Your Job!

More and more people are chanting this to their "leaders".  We need competence in our representatives, if nothing else, they must at least be educated. We have a Head of Health and Social Services head who's favorite investments are in medical equipment and drug companies, who has actively opposed the ACA, the law of the land and a POSOTUS, on the phone with Russian President, who had to put Vladimir on hold, to ask his staff, "What the heck is this nuclear treaty thing?" From the hearsay in the room, the interpretations he was given...he surmised, it is a very bad deal and we need to renegotiate. Really? You think you would have read the treaty before taking office? Or, at least the Constitution, you never know when these sorts of things will come up! Rushing in where fools  and angels fear to tread is not always prudent, without any preparation.You had months to cram! At least have someone read it to you if you don't like to read. It took decades to get where we are in detente', grasp reality man! Ignorance has got to be dealt with! Perhaps this is what was meant by the old saying, Earth will end not with a BANG, but a whimper. If that is the case, it will be the whimper of the aware, the collective surrender of billions of people to the ignorance of the few.

My whole youth was spent learning that we, the U. S. of A. were the greatest nation on earth, not because of some "God-given" right, but because our political philosophy was built on founding documents that were inspired by a group of wise men, inspired by native systems of governing, but they forgot the main point...The Iroquoix Confederacy, did have the two houses the youthful and elders. This was mirrored by the House and Senate. The change our founders made was that the grandmothers were the only ones who had the vote. They held the culture's collective memory. They knew the hot heads and those who would treat children like dogs or hit them, or their wives, they knew the honorable ones and those who held appropriate reverence for others. We have turned the whole point of having our Constitution upside down. Our superiority, over the past fifty years, has been hollowed out by lack of will. We have anti-trust laws on the books that are not enforced. We have environmental regulations that are scoffed at, direct and indirect subsidies of energy, finance, insurance, etc. I am still biased to think that we have the best system, but it was never meant to be the best representation money can buy.

This has been the largest cost of my campaign...a friend sold me the hat, used, which fits perfectly, and another friend embroidered a few bands for it, so I can change them up occasionally. I think this set my campaign back about a hundred dollars. The rest is funded by ideas, the content of my character and my direct contact with voters. Talking with people that one is working to represent means listening to them more than talking.

 

Back in the heady days, around the time of the Revolution, the educated were the only ones at the table, the privileged, land holding, well-read and idealistic truly believed that humanity is generally noble. That one aspect of our government that has been most maligned, attacked and which seems to be nearly lost today. There are at least seven dozen glimmers of hope and about a dozen guiding stars still elected by for and of the people, Bernie, Tulsi, Liz, Grace, Elanor, Dianne, Kirsten, Tammy and many more. We have to acknowledge that some in Congress are doing their jobs, many are doing them well, but there has been enough contamination of the body with people who do not represent their people, but the wealthy interests that put them in office. Only 100 members of Congress can credit the Tea Party Revolution for their victory in their run for Congress. Two, were trying to go from the House to the Senate in the fall of 2016, however both lost their bids for higher office. It seems that just as quickly as their fire caught the collective imagination, it has died. When these folks begin to realize that representing the people of your district requires learning to filter information learning to look past who is willing to tell you things for money, and those who are truly interested in making our democracy strong! I have officially thrown my hat into the ring. I will continue to campaign for Congress because we need representatives who will work for the people, not corporations.

Less Than three Weeks In...

In the U.S. of America, we are experiencing a fascist takeover. Just the twenty or so Executive Orders that have been signed by our new Commander-In-Chief will leave us with difficulty and trauma for generations. If we removed the President today, it would take more than ten years to undo the damage already done in less than a single moon! The assault on every aspect of society amounts to nothing less than terrorism. The children, the elders, working people and those who have been caught by our social safety nets are all under attack. The most heinous crime against humanity is that the decisions being made are ALL based on fallacies. The lies of the right-wing media have festered for so long in our current President's mind that he has become delusional.

It is too difficult to list all of the damage done, to ugly to even want to look at it carefully. My stomach is turning over just trying to fathom how horribly wrong each and every action has been. Our system, which used to have checks and balances is so completely owned by the oligarchs and their Teathuglican operatives that Congress is emboldened as well, throwing their 1/3 of the power, granted to them by the Constitution, into eviscerating our nation as well. Bills that would have been laughed out of committee during the last Congress are being touted as noble and necessary by the current crop of "representatives".

When you have an ignorant and spiteful person at the wheel, addled by whatever drugs he is on, obsessed with keeping the pedal to the metal, and put him in charge of the vehicle of state, that has bald tires and has not had the oil checked for nearly a decade, bad things are definitely going to happen. The "conservatives" have worked so hard over the past eight years to cede no ground, to ignore every attempt to improve the lives of the American people, as well as enrich and enhance the standing of their donor class, that it has become that they no longer feel the need to even act like they care about the vast majority of our citizens.

These days, it is not unusual to wake up to find that several bad dreams have come true overnight.

This week, for instance, the first illegal raid on foreign soil took place under our new placeholder in the White House. It has come out since then that he was not even in the Situation Room when the attack was being discussed. I can only gather that he felt it was beneath him to attend. Obama had been briefed about the planned attack months ago and had refused to sign authorization based on lack of information. Lack of information is normally a bad thing in military exploits. Not in the New World Order! A 72.1 million dollar piece of equipment (one of over two hundred made) had to be scuttled, which is the nice way of saying destroyed purposefully on foreign soil because we got in over our heads...sixteen innocents were killed, including six children, one a U.S. citizen, two Navy Seals, who swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution were killed and fourteen "hostiles" were killed as well, making them martyrs for generations to come. More damage to our nation and our ability to practice diplomacy around the world in one fire fight than would have been tolerated under any other President, yet the media is virtually silent on the matter because of all the other mistakes that are being made under this President's watch.

Things have been so bad, that lists have begun of pseudonyms for the "spray tan Cheeto head" so that no one has to type the four letter word that is his actual name! Disappearing someone's name from the internet seems to be the most appropriate punishment for a pathological narcissist. I have described his brain, if there is one, as being like a tampon that is selectively absorptive and only sucks up lies, fear and hate, oh and accolades, even if he has spoken them of himself.

If I wrote a post on each and every major misstep he has made, including his apparent lack of knowledge about the Constitution, which he has sworn to support and defend, well, it would take me until after Solstice. I just did a rough count and at seven per moon, yeah, it would take until after Father's Day writing my normal seven posts per moon! On Inauguration Day, he crossed the bar as the oldest person to ever be sworn into a first term and he had the lowest approval rating since there has been polling,  when he took the oath. (44%) When your President has an approval rating in the forties...before he has done a single thing, except raise his hand to swear...it is a difficult position to be in.

As Insurance, I make char. Wherever I have used it at the rate of one kilo per cubic yard, I have doubled production. this material is an ancient miracle and we needs as many people as possible learning how and why we make it!

I continue to make char. Each cubic centimeter, (just a hair larger than a pencil eraser) when powdered has as much surface area as a soccer field! Let that blow your mind, or think about it like this...each handful has fourteen acres of surface area...Char holds six times it's weight in water and can easily hold more when a thriving biome exists upon much of that surface area. Soil microbes use the char for shelter, worms can eat pieces smaller than 2mm and they pass through, becoming enriched with worm castings. Perhaps, as the Earth pushes past four hundred ppm of carbon, this method also helps sequester atmospheric carbon, which has been transformed into trees and woody plant material, once vitrified (charred) these elaborate carbon structures remain in soils for thousands of years (with proper soil husbandry). I have seen very well-funded research that tries to say that large amounts of char wash away, but when properly prepared and not only applied but worked into the top layer of soil, char is pretty much stable, especially if the area stays mulched. This small amount of char might only enhance a flower pot of soil, but it can do it virtually forever. Char acts like a molecular sponge, holding nutrients, moisture and stabilizes soil conditions like no other material. Since the billions of organisms who can flourish on the char, their cell walls are holding moisture in as well.

To put this in perspective, research has shown that the equivalent biomass in microbes, on healthy soil equals about the weight of a cow and her calf. I have written abut this before, but if you make your soil healthier than the research had to make their calculations from, well, that puts you off the charts as far as fertility goes, because the waste products of those organisms are what plants like to consume best, it is what they have evolved to do. Scientists have estimated that it takes nature ten-
thousand years to make an inch of soil (on average) I have made ten inches in a decade, but only recently had char to use. The biggest benefit of this material is that it is very light, however this can also be a pitfall. Transporting it, especially by fossil fuels, makes little sense. It is best made where it is to be used and as close to the source of raw materials is also best. If you have a fire pit near your garden, that is perfect placement. Making char whenever there is clean sawdust to be had, to prevent having to pulverize it and using local available wood to fire the process probably has the lowest cost and the highest value. Once you start to use fossil energy to make it, it probably offsets the good you are doing by sequestering the carbon in the first place! Doubling local food production is crucial and is always a good investment. Transforming char to biochar takes time, is a labor of love when done properly, and looks to the uninitiated as a sort of ritualistic witchcraft, and it is.

It is a miracle that a lifeless carbon latticework can be treated and prepared just-so, to be ripe and ready for the addition of microbes and that the microbes, once introduced to this prepared environment thrive. Just like with humans, you would not want to eat a diet lacking in life affirming minerals, and neither do the microbes, so we add mineral sources for them to feed upon. The char can hold nitrogen particularly well and if raw char is used, nitrogen deficiency can be a problem, so we introduce organic, local sources of that macro-nutrient. Most people have seen a Petri dish, but we don't need to see the microbes who inhabit char, it is just assuring to know they are there.

These SEM images show some of the microscopic texture inherent in sterile char. Charmasters learn to balance nutrients, moisture, minerals and air in just the right proportion so that microbes flourish, this powerful synergy leads to lasting fertility and much more balanced soil ecosystems. although I have seen people grow massive healthy plants on pure biochar, even the application rate of a kilo per cubic yard of soil, about two pounds per cubic yard is enough to double biomass production. For classes and/or further consulting on your char making experience, contact me through ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. 1445 Porlier street, Green Bay, WI 54301 USA or call (nine-twenty) double eight four - triple two four.