Wayne Newton

Amazing what Sepp has done. Extremely hard working he is.

In nature, where there is an abundance of food, you soon have an abundance of whatever animal eats that food.

Because of relatively cheap and abundant energy in the form of fossil fuels, we have been able, over the past 100 years, to produce an abundance, and our population has grown accordingly.

Question: How do you feed the masses with permaculture? Can it be done? What is the mechanism for change? Or are we looking at peak oil to bring war, famine and mass starvation... if GMOs don't wipe out all the crops first.

Charcoal is know as one of the best adsorbents. Especially activated charcoal. It works equally well for air as it does for water. Activated charcoal (carbon) is what is in your Brita water filter, to clean municipal water, and is used in most commercial air filtration systems. When you go to the hospital for accidental poisoning... that's usually what you get - activated charcoal. It will also detox the soil from herbicides and other toxins. Use food grade AC to detox your body too. It's good stuff!

So, if you are choosing between charcoal and ashes... go for the charcoal.

Moller is probably one of the few companies who are actually close to production of the flying car... http://moller.com/dev/

What if you take your typical rocket mass heater design, with the 55 gallon drum, and put an oven on top (air tight of course) for making charcoal? I hear the temps can reach 900F. The oven gasses could be piped back into the rocket stove inlet making it more efficient. What is the possibility of explosion when working with syngas?

If you had a monopoly on energy, would you want high efficiency?

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/gashole/

Go straight to 2:45 and skip the presidents lying to us.

Dale, here is pricing and additional info for the 2 systems...

Small automated system that creates Electricity and Biochar...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPrYZ55WDQg

Light industrial automated system, again for Electricity and Biochar...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUyDcULt0xc

Glenn, here's a bit of info that might be helpful... Mineral County has a commercial chipper that it rents out for $50 per day. It is a Bandit with diesel power that self-feeds 8 inch limbs. If you have slash and clean-up already stacked, one day of rental will produce a lot of great ground cover.

The reason I mention the chipper, is because you said you lacked a creek or spring. The following link is a video by a guy who started using mulch on his orchard and garden, and has not had to water his fruit trees for over 35 years even during drought.

The video gets a little long, but the first part is inspirational.

http://backtoedenfilm.com/index.html#movie

Welcome Glenn! You sound like a Libertarian. Congratulations on the property purchase. You've come the the right place for information. I'm finding that the folks on Permies are amazing, and have a wealth of information.

I'm west of Missoula in Mineral County, and looking for others who want to discuss starting an ecovillage. The idea is to own the property jointly via a LLC or Land Trust, operate it like a campus to educate others, yet members will be able to sell their membership (and house) getting their value back out, if they want too.

As a last resort, we may need to camp-out on your 20 acres. lol

Troy, I negotiated a pipeline across our 12 acres and received more than twice their original offer by holding out. They are usually prepared to pay more. One thing of great importance, is to to retain "exclusive right to grant access to third parties". Typically, the pipeline company will include language that grants THEM the exclusive right to sell Right Of Way to other companies. A corridor can be used for multiple pipelines. Once an easement has been established, it is considered an "Economic Corridor" and has a much increased value. You would want to make a declaration to that affect and file it with the county.

I will attempt to attach a sample of the agreement on my deal.