towards actually sustainable farming in Ahualoa
Lots of people make small batches of biochar in kilns, retorts, rings and pits. To move the char, most people shovel it out. When your batches of char get bigger, unloading is a lot of time and energy. How to improve that? There are two main challenges: moving the char out of the kiln, and …
Concerning volume. In my previous biochar post, I summarized that my two rectangular lined pits were producing around 1.3 cubic yards of char per firing. Since then, I’ve been told that a simple earthen pit could produce as many as 5 yd3 in a single firing! Let’s calculate how large that would be. A round pit …
It’s been seven years since I posted anything to this blog, but it’s a reasonable place to put things I’ll want to refer back to, so… There are currently two biochar pits. Pit 1 is the original, and Pit 2 (built July 2015) is a larger pit which incorporates lessons learned from the first pit. I …
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 …
I’ll be back on the island from August 24 – September 15 – to work on the farm, plant tea plants, split firewood, make compost, make biochar, and experiment with lots of cool stuff like making native bricks and larger and better biochar production techniques. I’ve also just bought a GoPro and Steadicam so i …
More about growing tea with biochar in Sri Lanka, from an eariler comment on this blog. 1. “Biochar: Can it put the tea industry back in the black?”, Dr. J.C. Krishnaratne, http://www.sundaytimes.lk/120624/business-times/biochar-can-it-put-the-tea-industry-back-in-the-black-3850.html In summary, it says that the Sri Lanka tea fields are in bad shape due to erosion and long-term overuse of chemical fertilizers, …
I spent the month of September 2011 back on the farm, getting it into shape and making batches of biochar. At the end of the month i took a truckload of the char down to Josiah’s biochar operation in Puna, where it was inoculated and ground up. Back at the farm, the living char was …
How does biochar fits into our farm? I scribbled a flowchart onto paper, and today put it into the computer; it looks like this: Ideally, it’s a continuously flowing cycle; there is no “waste” and no need for unsustainable inputs; that’s the goal. The chickens provide meat and eggs to the humans, and poop to …
Those of you following the biochar-hawaii list know that i’ve stopped using my kiln, and am now focused on making biochar in a pit. This is both for reasons of scalability and wear; my 55-gal steel drum kiln/retort could only make ~23-gal of char, and the surrounding kiln blocks cracked from repeated heating. Hence, a …
I recently did a second and third burn in my biochar kiln, tweaking each time. The story is best told in pictures: Upon detailed inspection, the April test burn actually gave good results. Four white buckets are completely charred material, two orange buckets incomplete, one mixed and one of material from the surrounding fire. Completely …