Mike Farmer

Any char I make goes right into my chicken coop or run. The flock has free choice of if they want to consume any or not. We compost right in the run, so it get inoculated in place, crushed by my footsteps, and eventually gets harvested with the chicken run compost.

Is it the biochar the dog wants, or the inoculant? Raw charcoal is probably fine, but depending on what you inoculate with, that could be good or bad, I suppose. Would the dog eat raw charcoal if offered?

My guess is that once the scientists are doing sciencing, the detractors are done detracting, and the disagreers are done disagreeing, we'll find that a mix of sizes is good for most all applications.

The Ring of Fire kiln is meant to be portable for on-site biochar making, although with fairly high quantities. I think they serve a purpose and for that price aren't an unreasonable approach. I've seen much smaller scale setups being offered for sale for more.  I've never used a Ring of Fire, so can't offer up personal feedback, but if we're going to produce biochar at the scale we all think we need to, we'll need many, many approaches.

The big question of "who will pay for all of this?" is a tough one. The way the political winds are blowing, I think it's safe to say the answer isn't the federal government. These wealthy landowners certainly could be the answer, if they believe in long-term investment to improve their holdings. I dunno, though...when I hear Bill Gates talk about everyone having to eat fake meat when he could literally jump start the compost and biochar industries just with his own landholdings, I have my doubts that the billionaires will save us.

I think we're at the "start small and prove it out" stage. It's painful to be so much at the beginning of the journey, but hopefully we'll get more and more converts quickly who are willing to put in the blood, sweat, and dollars to do the work that we all know offers up many benefits.

John Suavecito wrote:I would look up Kelpie Wilson and Wilson Biochar. She has a blog too, that talks about some of these things.  She was recently talking about similar programs, so I would think it's still possible.
John S
PDX OR

If I recall correctly, her company builds and sells a kiln that's designed to be transported to the burn site in pieces and assembled for the burns.

I've been thinking about forest cleanup, biochar, and wildfire and climate remediation lately.

In many areas, such as here in the Northeast or the Smokey Mountain area I visited recently, and I assume many more, have forests that aren't in great shape. The number of dead or overcrowded trees, plus invasives makes for a lot of biomass that can cause major fire risk.

If those forests could be cleaned up, with all that biomass made into biochar, the remaining (and additional planted, where appropriate) trees would grow better, be healthier, and sequester more carbon. Add in all that carbon sequestered in biochar in the soil, and the soil improvement it provides, and wow...game changing. Oh, and it'd make the forests a lot more able to deal with wildfire pressure.

It'd take a lot of labor. And labor takes money. But in terms for bang for the buck, I think it'd stack up to an awful lot of other climate remediation ideas, with a LOT of added benefits.

This approach makes a lot of sense to me, John. Leveraging the mulch to keep in moisture and cap everything off uses the most plentiful resource in the largest quantity. But underneath, the compost is keeping the char moist and as it rains, I'm sure lots of good nutrients are working their way down into the char.

And don't feel bad about talking about pee. If you go onto the compost forums on Reddit, about 40% of the content is about peeing on your compost pile. I've been known to pee around the perimeter of my chicken/compost area to deter predators.

In my big coop I have a pile of organic material (hay, some shavings, etc.) under the roosts to cut down on drafts and absorb droppings. Any time I've made biochar this winter (not as often as I'd like due to weather) I put a good layer of char between layers of material. I think it helps with odor and moisture (although the pile freezes for long stretches). In the spring, I'll pull it out into the run to compost. I harvest finished compost from the run as I need it.

I didn't crush the biochar at all, figuring it'll crush as part of the process. I certainly have found a few chunks that got tossed off the pile and I end up stepping on. I'm sure that'll happen more during muck out and once all that material is in the run.

I've only occasionally attempt to feed biochar to the flock, usually mixed with a damp treat. They seem to like it OK. I haven't done enough experimentation to see if it helps with odor or gut health. It's not done any harm. I'm sure they peck at bits of char in the run, too, where I've been known to dump clean ash mixed with bits of char for them to dust bathe in.

And you're not kidding about biochar being locally produced....my fire pit is about 12 feet from the fence to my run, so the chickens will come out and watch me make char through the fence.

I'm certainly no expert, but I'd think that yes, you'd want some way for air to get out of the bag, but that you'd also want a way for air to get INTO the bag so the microbes inside don't die.

Yes, lots of really great "stacking functions" to the idea. Now I just need a wealthy benefactor to sponsor it...the one thing it won't do is make money.