[Terrapreta] Biochar Surprise

[David Yarrow]

i forgot to mention the malawi cigar.

the homesteader lad's younger brother had lived in malawi with ordinary 
village people.  he observed their method to turn a tree trunk into 
charcoal.  robert klein will love this, and sean barry will turn purple.

as he dscribed the process, a family would selectg a downed log of a large 
tree, and build a fire at one end of it.  the purpose of this fire was to 
ignite the tree trunk wood.  while this initial fire was getting 
established, they began heaping dirt all around and over the log, covering 
and enclosing it with dirt.  once the end of the log was burning well with a 
large red ember, they closed up the end of this earthen sarcophygus.  they 
left this slow-smoldering log alone undisturbed for a few days, making 
occasional small digs to inspect the condition and progress of the burn.

the log slowly burned from end to end, like a giant cigar.  but instead of 
ash, at the end of the burn, this hardwood cigar had become a large supply 
of charcoal.  they only had to bust it up in chunks to use as fuel.

David Yarrow
"If yer not forest, yer against us."
Turtle EyeLand Sanctuary
44 Gilligan Road, East Greenbush, NY 12061
dyarrow at nycap.rr.com
www.championtrees.org
www.OnondagaLakePeaceFestival.org
www.citizenre.com/dyarrow/
www.farmandfood.org
www.SeaAgri.com

"Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times,
if one only remembers to turn on the light."
-Albus Dumbledore

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Yarrow" <dyarrow at nycap.rr.com>
To: <terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 10:34 PM
Subject: [Terrapreta] Biochar Surprise


>i had a delightful surprise saturday morning.  at 8:30am, i met a dark-eyed
> young lad from the albany free school, and his younger but much bigger
> brother.  he took me east of troy, ny, on rte. 2 -- up on the rounded 
> domes
> of dense crystalline taconic granite -- to his 70 acre homestead.  i 
> located
> a well to drill near the timber frame, strawbale house he will build next
> spring.  the land had been logged a few years earlier, with numerous
> coppiced trees and young sapling sprouting from the butchered woodland.
>
> i identified six sub-surface springs feeding a small pond caught in a
> shallow basin in the granite massif.  on the northwest, several stout, 
> older
> white pine stood guard.  i was startled to see at the center of the pond,
> perched on a stone pedestal , a giant granite rhombus -- a tilted cube --
> perhaps 7-feet on each edge.  the visual effect itself is dramatic,
> eye-capturing.  but the flux field anatomy at and around this massive 
> stone
> monument suggests a device to capture charge, and store energy in water --
> especially its placement in a granite water bowl.
>
> i found two other springs at the top of the steep-sloped field below the
> pond basin.  but the real delight was when we crossed the gutter draining
> water from the pond, and re-entered the first field below the lad's house
> site.  there, the lad had tilled up an 8x50 rectangle of light brown 
> soil --
> his first effort to turn meadow grasses into garden bed.  in this bright
> cultivated rectangle, in dark visual contrast, were two 3x46 foot black
> strips.
>
> inspection revealed soil plots black from charcoal.  earlier, i had
> explained to the lad how terra preta engenders charcoal-based microbial
> reefs in soil, while pyrolysis of photosynthetic biomass yields a variety 
> of
> biofuels, and charcoal.  i had even suggested he might try making a barrel
> or pile of charcoal himself this fall. now, here was a demonstration of 
> this
> strategy.  excited to see what i had earlier described, i said at the very
> least, his first garden bed will warm up faster in the spring, and asked
> where he got so much charcoal.
>
> he pointed to a brush pile in the middle of the field, at the top of the
> slope.  tops of perhaps two trees had been stripped and tossed in a pile.
> under a thin tangle of limbs and leaves was a thick layer of soil and
> charcoal -- residue from burning an even larger pile a year earlier --  
> final
> resting place for trash trees and tops removed in logging operations a few
> years earlier -- northeast US version of typical slash-and-burn forestry.
> in the forest's funeral pyre, most of the tree minerals were oxidized into
> gas and ash, and washed away in a few seasons of rain and snow.
>
> but some of the wood -- incompletely burned -- survived as charcoal.
> without scratching around much, i could see the lad was blessed with an
> abundant starter supply of charcoal.  very likely high quality, high
> density, low temperature, hardwood biochar.  while in two or three years
> much of the nutrient-rich VOM residue of charring in the bonfire has 
> leached
> from the char, some of these organic enrichments are still active in the
> soil around the char.
>
> i left many pages of photocopies for the lad to study beyond the terra
> preta, rockdust and sea mineral links on my website.  i left feeling 
> hopeful
> that quietly, across america, many other young people are pursuing a 
> similar
> path into the future.  returning to land, soil and homestead.  perhaps in
> their humble choices lies the real future and destiny of america.
>
> David Yarrow
> "If yer not forest, yer against us."
> Turtle EyeLand Sanctuary
> 44 Gilligan Road, East Greenbush, NY 12061
> dyarrow at nycap.rr.com
> www.championtrees.org
> www.OnondagaLakePeaceFestival.org
> www.citizenre.com/dyarrow/
> www.farmandfood.org
> www.SeaAgri.com
>
> "Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times,
> if one only remembers to turn on the light."
> -Albus Dumbledore