[Terrapreta] farm/compost site

[Dick Gallien]

Am looking for suggestion. I've had a community service farm compost site,
open every day, from dawn until dark, for 16 years, operating on an honor
system. Three times I've hired a 650 hp tub grinder, the last time was 7
years ago, costing over $10,000 and there is no market for the grindings. So
I have 7 years of accumulated brush, trees and stumps.  Over 90% of tree
waste in Mn. is torched and I joke that torching is against my religion.
Biochar and terra preta allows me to bend, but not break my religion. I'm
looking for the simplest way to char large quantities of brush and larger
wood, to use on this farm, as a demonstration, to keep from being buried in
it and because I have a hangup about rich, living soil.

Must immediately reduce the volume of brush, so
a few days ago I dozed old brush against a 15' high bank of wet, packed
biomass. When it was blazing I dozed (Kamotso, with 11' blade--little bigger
than a D-6) the pile from above, completely burying it, except for a few
wisps of  smoke still coming from the pile, 5 days later.

Obviously not the answer.  Can stack brush 8' high with the jawed backhoe or
much higher with an old log truck.
Leave a pole in the center as a chimney, to be pulled later.
Cover the pile a few ft. deep with wet biomass and light it down in the pole
hole.  Would appreciate any suggestions on better ways to do this.

Once the huge piles of brush are cleaned up am wondering about something
like the Adam retort, except much larger.  My Trojan loader bucket is 8'
wide, so could make a rectangular trench into a bank 10' to 12' wide, for
loading and unloading into the 425 bu. spreader.  I can get 2'X2'X6', tongue
and groove concrete bunker blocks delivered for $35 at .  Don't know how they
would hold up to the heat.  I use them double stacked to hold hogs in, which
I raise totally on food waste.  Same question for pre-cast concrete, self
supporting bunker silo walls. I can put either one into a bank, 8 or 10'
high, with dirt flush to the top, so the sides would be airtight.  Have the
end of a 42' wide building, made into a bank, the bank retained by 16' high
precaste bunker silo walls,--- but what to cover a larger Adams retort
with--, some crude, top loading, movable wood burner as part of an end
wall???

Thanks for listening,  Dick

-- 
Dick Gallien
22501 East Burns Valley Road
Winona MN 55987
dickgallien at gmail.com [507]454-3126
www.thewinonafarm.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /attachments/20080526/99c7448e/attachment.html