Profile: fa069e80...
Might be good to put goats, compost and chickens all in close proximity, used goat bedding/shit mixture can be turned out into chicken space and combined with veg and food scraps. Chickens eat seeds, bugs and plant material while helping to break the pile down. You turn the pile over every day or so into a spot further down the chicken enclosure (nearer to compost area), new manure/bedding and scraps pile is created at the front of the line. You then have a continuous compost production progressing nearer to compost aging area where you can leave it until required. This way you combine chores and improve workflow. with turning a pile in chicken area daily, you could create a cubic metre of finished compost per week.
I did same recently, and it worked for a while. Then they said you have 6 videos limit until you are blocked, so I opened videos in private tab for a while, and now it is back to normal..
Because it accumulates from the chest area in general, then through static or some other magic, it follows the path of your hairs ALLLLL the way to your lint pit.
What I do is stubbornly stick to my guns, ensuring that when they inevitably see the benefits of hard money, there is no chance for them to deny their previous mockery, and they are forced to make an embarrassed apology; but that is because I am petty 😄
Vecon. It is phenomenal. Vegemite better than Marmite, Vecon better than Vegemite. Vecon is a combination of concentrated vegetable stock plus yeast extract.
Xantham is tricky, annoying clean up too. If you like making Irish Cream/Baileys, I figured out that it was likely what they use commercially to make it shelf stable. Made my own that was way better than shop bought and never separated. I kept it in the fridge, but suspect it would keep at room temperature just as the commercial one does.
A new Golden Age is upon us.
Very cool. One thing I forgot to mention (probably particularly necessary if like me you have a sub-optimally shaped pit), is that a hose can be used to spot slow the burn in areas that are becoming too ashy if it is too small of an area to place more fuel on top (without melting your face). So I would spray a jet of water if ash appears at one side, until the rest of the surface catches up and I can throw a whole load more on top. Good luck with your experimentation!
I admire the pursuit of greatness and knowledge also. Some people are definitely producing sub par char through open burning, this is why I made the point to detail the building of a small fire (handful or so of twigs) first, then subsequent layering of fuel above that as soon as the first signs of ash appear, in this way you are 'robbing' the oxygen from the material below and producing an oxygen free burn there.
No, what I am essentially saying is that there is no reason to invest in equipment when producing biochar on a home or small farm scale, feed source flexibility is not a consideration for most people as they will be using branches in that context.
You said that you doubt that the required temperatures can be reached, well they can. Many people have shown this is possible, not least the indigenous. Clearly they were not producing mostly ash, as if they were, the soils would not persist to this day.
I never claimed that science or advancement is not something to be pursued, but there is a calculation to be made on barriers to entry. When discussing sovereignty and self sufficiency, the least equipment and reliance on external resources, the better.
Additionally you are operating on the flawed assumption that biochar is not created in the process aforementioned, while the modern pyrolysis may be slightly more efficient than traditional techniques and with an ability to use a wider range of fuel sources; it is erroneous to say that they only produce ash, as if they did, no one would have discovered biochar from those same techniques.
Congratulations on writing a paper on biochar in college. I encourage you to investigate more simple techniques as they certainly can produce great results.
I am pretty certain that the people who pioneered this process did not have advanced analysis or precise combustion units, they did however transform the poorest soils in the world and produce a soil amendment with the use of simple biochar and other elements that hundreds of years later is still thriving.
Oh, also they say to optimise for the cleanest burn, the pit should be as circular as you can, and about the same depth as the radius (like a semi sphere I suppose), this helps to direct the flames back over the fire surface to combust the syngas or whatnot. But I wouldn't obsess over that, I have an oval pit and the dimensions are not accurate at all, seems to work fine.
It makes for a really good addition to worm compost, it helps with aeration and moisture control, the worms love it. That and crushed (oven baked) egg shell, and rock dust too.
Obviously oxygen has to be eliminated from the burn, that is why the fire is built layer by layer, as soon as ash appears on the surface, you add more fuel; this creates a lack of oxygen in the material below as all oxygen is being consumed at the surface. If you add more material before ash appears, then you will not eliminate the oxygen from the lower layer, if you let too much ash appear then you are losing char quantity. Once you have filled the pit or exhausted your material supply, you can extinguish the fire thoroughly with the aid of a hose. Some people bury the pile (like the indigenous method), but then you have to wait a long time for it to cool completely and when using water, the char structure can be helped supposedly. The way to ascertain if your char is good (without equipment) is firstly if it makes a satisfactory tinkly noise when you drop it, and secondly if when you rub it on your hands, that any residue left behind is minimal and rinses off with just water.
You can make perfect biochar in a pit, just need to ensure the material is small enough diameter branches, then start the fire small and add layers as soon as ash appears.