farmblog towards actually sustainable farming in Ahualoa

September 17, 2012

Farm visit: pictures, lots of work done, rotary sifters

Filed under: biochar,tea — ben @ 7:04 pm

Tons of work got done during the 3 weeks there, including:

  • Took down and partly processed 6 very large cypress trees above the tea field
  • Started new long-term compost pile
  • Planted several dozen new tea plants, mostly Y/Y cultivars
  • Lots of wood moving and splitting
  • Re-built the char pit with real firebrick, which should last forever
  • Several burns of the char pit.

Lots of thinking about how to make the process easier, mostly in the sifting-crushing-sorting.  Right now i am thinking about building a low-tech Rotary Sifter, something like this. Combined with some kind of crushing phase, with gravity to assist in moving char through the process, i think this would radically increase the amount of finished fine char per hour of work.

Update: it turns out that what i’d like to build is called a Trommel.

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