Turning Points

After some thought and some research, I’ve changed my mind about buying lump charcoal. It really isn’t that hard to make your own but there are some “start-up” costs involved. Humans have been making charcoal for thousands of years and it is likely that the dark soils known as terra preta in the Amazon (and found in many other locations world-wide) are the result of centuries of human habitation in one place. I have read, contrary to what is commonly thought, that the Amazon basin had a substantial indigenous population prior to the arrival of Europeans and their diseases. Epidemics of diseases that the indigenous people had no immunity to wiped out the populations in a matter of decades. Similar events occurred in North America. So the conclusions that the anthropologist Betty Meggers arrived at (that the poor soils of the Amazon rain forests could not support dense concentrations of humans) increasingly appear to be based on faulty interpretation of the data. But I digress – this post is about how to make biochar, not about the demise of indigenous populations.

Charcoal is made by heating wood to break the chemical bonds that make up cellulose and to drive off the resulting gases and tars. The heating is done in an oxygen-deprived environment so that only the carbon in the wood remains. If you would like to view an interesting series of videos showing how charcoal was made up until the 1850s in Pennsylvania, click on these links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. This series of videos is from a 31 minute documentary made by Van Wagner and is a “historical re-enactment” of how charcoal was made in the “good old days” which were not all that great! It is an entertaining series of videos to watch but not something that would inspire me to go out and make charcoal that way!

There is a better way – a way that does not pollute the environment as badly as the traditional direct method of making charcoal does. This method is the indirect or “retort” method and involves “cooking” wood in a container with an outside energy source to drive off the gases and create charred wood. A retort is simply a sealed container of some kind that can withstand the heat of the external fire and allow the gases created by that heat to escape. For an overview of what is involved, I recommend looking at Daniel O’Connor’s site. There are improvements that can be made in the way he has created his retort, but they cost money. You will note that Daniel has used concrete blocks to build his enclosure. It has been my experience that concrete blocks don’t last very long when exposed to a wood fire – they crack and disintegrate. You will also notice, in one of the pictures, that the pipe that supports the drums has bent under the weight of the drums and the heat of the fire. A better method of constructing this kiln would be to use refractory brick and a thick steel plate to separate the drums from the fire underneath. But the principles that he is using are sound – the gas that is driven off by the heat of the external fire is carried via the pipe back down into the combustion area, where it is burned instead of escaping into the atmosphere where it would be a pollutant.

I think that a combination of the kiln-building expertise of wood-fired potters, the skills of a welder, and the enthusiasm of gardeners who want to use biochar in their gardens would result in a long-lasting retort that could produce biochar for an entire community.

Biochar, as I wrote in the previous post, is identical to charcoal, at least when viewed under a microscope. What is different about biochar is that to be called that by the International Biochar Intiative, it must be used as a soil amendment for agricultural or environmental gain.

As I wrote in the last post, it is quite possible to make charcoal in your own back yard. But does it make economic and environmental sense? After all, making charcoal in the traditional way produces a lot of toxic gases and smoke and it also does not capture the bio-oil and syngas that can be captured by industrial processes. I suppose this is a personal decision to make but my decision would be to buy charcoal rather than to make it myself.

So if biochar is identical to charcoal, why not go out and buy a couple of bags of charcoal briquettes, grind them up, and incorporate them into your garden soil? There are three reasons why I would advise against doing this. First, charcoal briquettes have more than charcoal in them – most also have coal as a secondary ingredient. I don’t know the percentages of each ingredient in the finished briquette, but this site says that 90% of the briquette is composed of charcoal and coal. The remaining 10% consists of an accelerant such as nitrate, starch to bind the grains of charcoal and coal together, and lime to let the back yard chef know when the fire is ready for the meat to be placed on the grill. Second, who are you supporting by buying briquettes? What company makes the briquettes? Who owns that company? What politicians are supported by that company? And what store are you buying the briquettes from? Wal-Mart? Third, do you really want the toxins contained in the briquettes to be mixed in with your garden soil?

A better choice, it seems to me, would be to buy a product known as “lump charcoal”. It is manufactured by many different companies, including Cowboy Charcoal, which I mentioned in a previous post. But there are many other companies out there to pick from and you may find the Naked Whiz’s Lump Charcoal Database a useful tool to help you make a decision about whom to buy your charcoal from.

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Erich Knight, who commented on my previous post in great detail, supplied some further resources to read and study so that I could better understand this phenomenon called biochar.

The first question that I had was really basic: what is biochar? Well, it isn’t terra preta (terra preta is an Amazonian soil that has high levels of carbon of anthropogenic origin). Biochar is similar to charcoal in that it is produced by burning under the same oxygen-limited conditions that professional charcoal burners (known as colliers) have used for thousands of years. Biochar is essentially the same product that the Amazonian peoples used to create what became known as terra preta soils but modern production techniques yield more than biochar from organic feedstocks. The definition of biochar according to the International Biochar Initiative (IBI) also requires that it be used as a soil amendment for agricultural and environmental gain.

The biochar that is being produced today is different from charcoal in that it is a product of modern technology and industrial processes. Originally, the term biochar was applied to the material produced by a process called “slow pyrolysis” in which oxygen is limited, heating is slow, and the temperatures are from 450 to 650 degrees Centigrade. Two byproducts of this process are the production of synthetic gas, shortened in the literature to “syngas“, and “bio-oil.” Slow pyrolysis yields about 30% bio-oil, 35% biochar, and 35% syngas. The term “biochar” has since been extended to include the matter produced by the processes of fast pyrolysis, intermediate pyrolysis, and gasification. These other processes produce less biochar and varying percentages of bio-oil and syngas. The charcoal yield from traditional processes used by colliers might be as little as 10% with no syngas or bio-oil being produced whereas industrial techniques produce as much as 35% biochar plus syngas and bio-oil.

Can biochar be produced by the methods that colliers the world over have used for centuries? Yes. But industrial methods of producing biochar yield syngas and bio-oil in addition to charcoal. Traditional methods of charcoal production allow syngas and bio-oil to be wasted.

If you would like to read more about the technical details of how biochar is produced, please download this document, produced by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).

There is a lot more to biochar than the definition of what it is – that information will be the subject of future posts.

Several years ago, I read an article on something called terra preta. Intrigued, I looked for information out on the Internet and found very little, other than the fact that terra preta is Portuguese for “dark earth” and that the pre-historic inhabitants of the Amazonian rain forest had manufactured it and used it as a soil amendment.

Fast forward two years: a big, big change. Suddenly, terra preta, now called “biochar”, is touted as the solution to global warming by some. Others are not so sure, so the truth likely lies somewhere in between. In its December 4, 2008 issue, Time Magazine had a piece that featured Josh Frye, of Wardensville, West Virginia, who was burning chicken litter to produce biochar. As usual with the mainstream press, there was more to the story than met the eye. Articles in The Mother Earth News and in BioCycle gave lots more information and revealed that biochar wasn’t something that the home gardener could easily produce in the quantity needed. The Gardening With BioChar wiki has a great deal of useful information about how to use biochar in the home garden and I intend to peruse this source in depth when I have the time. You can make your own biochar, but you can also buy regular charcoal from Cowboy Charcoal in 20 pound bags or you can buy a whole pallet of the stuff if you want to apply it to your entire garden. The TreeHugger site has an interesting article that documents up to a 17% increased yield by using biochar as compared to a control plot.

The International Biochar Initiative website also has a great deal of information on the subject. I’m not sure how I got to this particular page, but biochar is not a light topic. There is some very serious research taking place.

Here is a video that features Johannes Lehmann, of Cornell University, which offers an overview of this complex and fascinating subject. The truck spreading biochar and the pyrolysis unit are on Josh Frye’s farm:

Is anyone in Virginia or the Carolinas using biochar in their gardens? BioChar has “permaculture” stamped all over it – how many other folks out there are investigating its use?

I’m catching up on my back issues of Acres, U.S.A. and read an interesting article about something called Conditioned Taste Avoidance (CTA) that can be applied to predators, including coyotes. The idea of CTA has been around for quite some time – it was apparently first investigated by Carl Gustavson in 1974. Because coyotes are territorial, if you “teach” the coyotes whose territory overlaps yours, they will not attack your livestock and will prevent other coyotes from coming into their hunting grounds. For those interested in learning more about CTA, please visit this website. It has everything you need to know, and then some!

At the end of the article in the magazine, there was an interesting link to a researcher who studies the Eastern Coyote. I don’t have the time right now to pursue this, but perhaps one day …. Jonathan Way studies coyotes and coywolves in urban and suburban areas and has written a book, Suburban Howls, that documents his research and adventures. From the little that I read, it seems a fascinating field of research. Some might complain that Dr. Way is engaging in an enterprise that romanticizes wolves and coyotes, but I disagree. If we are to live more in balance with nature, as we must, we need to learn that we can adapt to coyotes as they have to us, instead of labeling them as “predators” that must be exterminated.

Permaculture, after all, is all about learning from nature and applying the lessons learned so that we live a more ecologically sensitive life. The mindset in this video needs to be changed through education:

Contrarian that I am, you shouldn’t expect me to glorify Memorial Day – I’ll leave that to others. Yes, I am a veteran (U.S. Navy, 1968-1972), but I don’t want anyone’s thanks, because I joined (after losing a college deferment by dropping out) to avoid being drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam. I served on board the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk (CVA-63) as an aviation electrician’s mate third class in VF-213, an F-4 fighter jet squadron. The U.S.S. Kitty Hawk supported our troops in Vietnam from its position on Yankee Station, in the Gulf of Tonkin. Lost in all the glib words spoken about this day is the fact that not many of those drafted into “service” during the Vietnam War would have joined if they had had a choice in the matter. After the draft was ended in 1973, those who volunteered often did so because their economic options were limited and a four or six year enlistment in the military offered training and some funding for college, though not nearly as much as was offered to returning veterans after World War II. I’ve not done any research on the matter, but it would be interesting to know what percentage of enlistees, in any year, joined for economic reasons rather than a desire to serve their country, as is so often claimed by those who glorify Memorial Day. I suspect that the figure would be a lot higher than many would suspect.

It would be nice if, for once, on Memorial Day, we gave some thought to the militaristic madness that has gripped this country for the last 60 years. Instead, all we hear are speeches that glorify war, mindlessly support our troops and extoll the moral superiority of this country.

This is an excerpt from an essay by Steve Lendman that he posted on his blog on January 12, 2007. I don’t expect anyone to comment on this post, for it is forbidden in this country to challenge the idea that the casualties of our wars are for an honorable cause, isn’t it?

Memorial and Veterans Days

by Steve Lendman

Because both days are related, they’re discussed under a single heading. The first, Memorial Day, is commemorated on the last Monday in May and was first observed in 1866 and called Decoration Day beginning in 1868. Usage of Memorial Day wasn’t common until after WW II and wasn’t the holiday’s official name until federal law called it that in 1967. The day is an occasion to honor the nation’s men and women who died in military service to the country. More on that in a moment.

Veterans Day was formerly known as Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day in Europe, that originally commemorated the end of WW I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year in 1918 when the guns went silent, or were supposed to. It was first observed in the US in 1919 and made a legal holiday here in 1938. In June, 1954, Congress enacted legislation changing the holiday’s name to Veterans Day.

Both holidays would never be needed in a nation dedicated to peace, but one committed to perpetual war for an unattainable peace dishonors its youth in life and disingenuously honors those who died in imperial wars for conquest and plunder. Nations waging wars only guarantee more of them in an endless cycle of violence, militarism, brutality and shameless inhumanity to those made to suffer and die in combat theaters – so the privileged who get to stay home can profit from them.

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I’ve learned that folks who haven’t visited South Florida have the misconception that there is no winter here. While it doesn’t get cold by northern standards, the plants do slow down and many actually lose their leaves. Among native trees, the Gumbo-limbo (bursera simaruba) stands out in its nakedness during the winter months. It is a soft wooded tree that is a pioneer in hardwood hammocks and breaks very easily during hurricanes. Why this website says that it is “one of the most wind-tolerant trees in south Florida and is recommended as a good, hurricane-resistant species” is beyond me. I like to call it the “tourist tree” because it has red, peeling bark, similar to the skin of northerners after they bake in the sun for a few days on South Florida beaches!

One of a very few non-native trees that I have growing on my property is the Frangi-pani (Plumeria spp.):

Did I ever mention that yellow is my favorite color? You can see the broad dark green leaves behind the flower cluster – they drop off during the winter months and the shrub looks like a post-modern sculpture.

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I first subscribed to Permaculture Activist in May, 1992 and it has proven to be a gold mine of information over the years about the philosophy of permaculture. What is permaculture, anyway? The most concise definition that I can think of is that it is a way of living that applies the rules that govern natural ecosystems to human communities. In short, we live as part of the eco-system instead of being alienated from it, as we have done for hundreds of years. Does this mean returning to a hunter-gatherer existence and giving up all modern conveniences? Not at all. It means living more intelligently and attuning ourselves to natural cycles – a crucial change that we either adopt voluntarily or we will be forced to adopt by accelerating changes in the environment.

If you read the Wikipedia article on Permaculture, which is quite lengthy, you will see no reference at all to the idea that permaculture has a place in the kitchen. An article in issue 71 of Permaculture Activist, entitled A Fridge That Takes Only 0.1kW a Day, by Tom Chalko, applies permaculture principles to the kitchen. If you adopt a permaculture outlook towards living, you will realize that an upright refrigerator violates the natural law that cold air sinks. When you open the door of your refrigerator, all of the cold air “falls” out and must be replaced by several compressor cycles worth of energy. When you open the door of a chest refrigerator, however, all of the cold air stays in place and energy use is minimized. In his article, Tom describes how he converted a chest freezer to a chest refrigerator that consumes only $5 per year of electricity. Of course, that figure depends on the price of electricity in your area. I looked on the Internet for chest refrigerators, but there is only one company that makes them and they are quite expensive. Buying a new or used chest freezer and converting it to a refrigerator, while not a job for the less-than-handy, is a very economical alternative. The instructions appear online, at Tom’s website. There is a detailed instruction manual here.

Here is a picture of the finished product:

It looks just like the conventional chest freezer, with the exception of the thermostat on the wall and the modification of the power supply.

I haven’t posted since April 26th, the longest since I started this blog back in September of last year. The reason is that I’m burned out — I’ve delved so deeply into the “conservative” mind that is so prevalent in the religious right that I’ve started to become tarnished by the narrow-minded, ignorant and hateful bigotry that is so common among the ideologues inhabiting that world. After posting the penultimate post, Fair Taxes and Tea Parties, I went back and read it over and over again, astonishing myself each time at the depth of bitterness that it reflected. I started this blog because I was extremely alarmed over the phenomenon of Sarah Palin and I’ve educated myself and hopefully I’ve educated my readers about what she represents. It is clear to me that this country, which, according to Abraham Lincoln, once enshrined the principles of “government of the people, by the people and for the people” has mutated into a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy. I am immensely distressed that a very substantial majority of Americans are enablers, in a thousand ways, of this state of affairs but I no longer have the energy to tease out the strands of how this has happened and what might be done to re-energize the progressive movement in this country. The election of President Obama is a small step in the right direction, but it will take far more pressure than he can exert to defeat the powers of the financial elite that has destroyed this country. The resources for educating yourselves to accomplish those aims will remain in the sidebar categories, but I will be devoting my energy in the future to more satisfying and nourishing fields of inquiry.

It is time for me to move on and get away from these narrow-minded anti-government hate mongers and refresh my spirit in the waters of the arts and the permaculture movement, which, other than a few posts on sculpting at Touchstone and my property in Floyd County, you weren’t aware of my interest in.

For the time being, I’m going to take a break and catch up on the issues of The Sun Magazine, Permaculture Activist, Yes!, and Orion Magazine that have piled up in the months since I began this blog. I also want to read some books that I’ve bought on themes that I’ve uncovered while doing research for previous posts. This is a time of retrenchment and reflection for me. I’ll be back, but I won’t be posting as often as I’ve done in the past.

I’ll part, for the time being, with this wonderful introduction to Permaculture:

In my last post, I lashed out at the ignorance of those who participated in the Tax Day Tea Party protests. I don’t apologize for that – it is time to start calling the regressives on their agenda.

For a different perspective on the power of the financial elite, you could do worse than to read this article in the current issue of The Atlantic.

Simon formerly worked for the International Monetary Fund and has written an article that should serve as a wake-up call to those who think that the economy is improving. As long as the financial oligarchy remains intact, the “recession” will not end.

Now, if the Tea Party protesters would take to the streets and demand the breakup of the banks that are “too big to fail”, I’ll take back all my unkind words. But I don’t expect that either of those scenarios will happen.