CONE PIT BIOCHAR bees and nut trees S4 ● E82

today we're making biochar receiving bees and sorting out nut trees so we're making pickle charcoal we lit a fire in the base of this here which will ignite the wood that we want to actually charcoal to make biochar so biochar is a bit different from charcoal in that it's been hydrated because sharpeners hydrophobic in repels water and we want to soak it for two weeks that could be in water could be in urine to make use of the nutrients and after two weeks we would put them to finish their aerobic compost like the ones we've been making and we would charge all of the pores within those pores within those paws because charcoal is a fractal structure those tiny pores on the walls of the pores inside the pores of the phloem they're the perfect size for bacteria to come in the lid now if we put manure straight on the ground it will last in the soil maybe five years maximum if we've MBK is six to eight to ten months manure five years maybe it ever be compost could last twenty years in the soil carbon like this thousands of years since well and it's very stable form so burning wood is good if you take the heat out of a good combustion and then bury the carbon that's the best way you could use wood actually so now we've lit the fire we're going to put on a layer of wood and get that burning to a certain point when the wood is combusted enough that hasn't started actually burning away we don't want to see embers on the wood see how in a camp fire you get the white embers building up and there's smoke coming off its not combusting right fully smoke like smoke and off-gassing is the sign of non full combustion it's just wood gas that's not being ignited so it'll always smoke when we add a layer but when it really gets going there's no smoke so it's a massive column of heat and it will get to 800 degrees or so in here that's why we moved it away from the fence we met with defense last night I mean it will melt offense two meters away it's it gets very hot I have a picture from last year we were toasting marshmallows and we were stood like six meters away with whole willow bunches here we go to swing up and we will keep doing less until they're the right level of combustion then we'll add another layer let that get going add another layer and it takes a lot of wood because it's burning down as we go and then when we get to the top level we'll end up with a slightly raised dish get that burning to the right point and then we'll just douse it with water from the hose pipe then load the water to get it out at the bottom otherwise it'll slowly burn away the cone shape is to function to not allow oxygen near the bottom so we're burning without oxygen so this is the simplest cheapest most reliable way to make charcoal there's many ways so let's go for our first layer would we want to evenly space it so that it's filling all the air holes ideally and it will start to smell because that would get to going and we're trying to take even sized pieces of wood because we want them to all combust equally everywhere if we put massive logs in we'll have charcoal on the outside and timber still on the inside which won't do very well it may be blocked out the air a little bit much will let this one get going and then we'll we'll just keep adding layers like this so we're adding more less and as you see it adds smoke as you add a new layer and as the heat comes up it takes couple of minutes to get a raging combustion again with no smoke it's kind of counterintuitive perhaps that you've set up around the campfire a lot like you would think that this will become a big orange glowing mess you can already see down there you think that that's just going to burn away but there's no oxygen being sucked down to the base of the combustion so it's it's not it's burning very hot and clean underneath there and telling its carbon and very quickly this will really catch and the smoke will dissipate so a couple of minutes later this layer is combusting mainly in the middle but as we up the cone it will start creeping out to the edges as you see there underneath and I trick is to look for like the white ashes of an incomplete combustion on the their logs in the middle there this is a bit of clay in the soil underneath the topsoil there so this will be very well baked by the time this is done it will be a very different looking soil and ahem understand that's all right this is our trash Brown so next point wearing an oven there and just an even layer all over and it will probably start to smoke again now as we have this and again a couple of minutes and it will be ragin again there's quite a time-consuming process even this pit it will give us like a third of a cubic meter of charcoal and it will take quite a lot of wood to get there and it takes time it's a good job to do sitting around singing songs take a beer eat a barbecue cook some sausages marshmallows yeah but you really need to watch it it's not something you can walk away from anyone you need to keep your eyes on it like less things with you we just added another layer and we'll do a little time lapse to see it becoming smokeless oh good this good no not gonna [Music] so it takes exponentially long as we got because we got a much bigger hit what we do not reckon the amount of wood per the size of the hole is mmm got up there yep there's a factor of double or three or I would say public rumble we've still got quite a long way to go I'd say we're going to add nearly as much as we are here so up to the final n how long have we been in town here music so takes a little while give us you know big old couple of seconds to come first but we put the last layer on now so this last last layer is a bit of a sacrificial s some of that might not fully and charcoal before the layers below er in jeopardy so we will we've got the hose pipe over here and we'll just wet the whole thing down when we feel like time is right a lot of steam will come up you'll be able to communicate with our neighbors in summer and then we'll leave it overnight certain walk around them and so we think the charring is done and now it's time out water it takes a lot of water to cool this down obviously it down at the bottom there's still red hot you want to make it more of a jet you're going to really have to add a lot of water so it looks like the fires out but if you were to step back from this now it would just take off again it's really hot underneath there you have to be really careful it's best to fill it with water and leave it overnight and see here the plume of steam coming up so I would give it a good three four minutes of water to make sure it's really gone down to the bottom so does no lot of water in the fire very hot but it nicely careful so we'll leave it overnight it smell get out and plus it probably drive the Rhino over in your car or you could do the Hamilton okay move up a typical 10:30 at night delivery yeah no beans we've got three of these splits when would you expect them to have been split I don't know but there's a lot of bees in there yeah at an early split it's been split out a little while so he's a little Palestine prize and we're going to get them up there well there's condensation from but only just a few weeks and he put in a lot of young bees and every girl they harvest beasts and put them in I think yes from them hmm but that's it does the Queen in there already yes everything is okay you're not black me look the omen it put on in English and what we know could be t27 I talked to him before I bring them here and he made his Queen on Luger in venom now so he didn't make them here but they want you to change Queens and I don't know when how the price is it is four or five hundred or if it's the half the price or if they are free I didn't he wants us to change in a minute Nino I get Queen from him and I am helping with that but I'm really happy it's a strong time it can it's quite middle of the season against yeah it's perfect now so we're going to put these up tonight in the we put the new flow hi Val aside they knew the last of the top bar hives out in Bucky field where the hop cell and so we'll put all of these out tonight sitting just by the hive entrance and open them up and then Tuesday Thatcher's coming back to tell us all about being yes we're just opening up these vents for the bees and see a little be sticking up and we're citing them right under the periscope entrance to the top bar so that's a little periscope they go up and in there and have some more events at the other ends with putting the hives all in place and then we leave into the Tuesday land that you can set two more vents on this side so I came on black hunts and that we just coming along these are three year old plants and that's the harvest on to these little plants and we have hundreds of them all the way along here we've got two rows in top Delta and it's a crop that's Ben Lomond the one I've been talking about previously it just does so well here so easy in low maintenance that any gaps in our tree names are going to become back home because we make a lot of gem so we will be freezing this up in bags and then taking it out to make jams later prep so we have the apple harvest we can make apple concentrate as the sugar source of the jam and pectin also and so we'll just freeze it down in a couple of kilo bags at a time eating some fresh and putting some away from next year so then for the way 20 kilos of black currants and we've got a lot more to pick keep going in the freezer just before they're fully ripe to the perfect for making jams and that's what we're going to do with them make jams put away from next year we love them they need a bunch faster it has changes on the side because it splits in five in the B bridge ABS drawing so dehydrated on full-time at the moment we got st. John's walk and so these are all our T's applies for winter and for next summer - so yeah what do you think nice job we're now going to crush this up to increase the surface area so we're going to put it on the top and drive the ATV over completely so go to my collided and then we need to hydrate it so it takes two weeks the circle man now or urine or something like that we might throw them no bathtub pour daily urine at the compost toilet on that and then in two weeks we'll put into a compost pile that we've been making together and we'll have a look finish so will inoculate before with in the fourth with in the fourth with little microorganisms that will be good to sweat over some the no big bed we're at a stage now where we can actually start to close the loop with our compost cycling obviously making no big bed we are putting down huge amount of material in the beginning but the maintenance of these beds is going to be minimal now so we were calculating yesterday the amount of wood needed to make biochar and make good aerobic compost and biochars probably about 10 15 cubic meter the years that we really maybe double that depends on how intensive we want to go with it but the beauty of that is we could make that we're talking about making our social firepit into a biochar pit and anytime you decide you want to light a fire the evening at something you have to take responsibility for making sure the fire is managed then you end up with if you will bear as a budget we serve the perfect idea and it's very nice heat thrown off it and no smoke often we're sitting around the fireplace and someone's got smoke in their face the whole evening so I think it could be a pretty good strategy so we'll just make the pile out let's cover it up smash it with the Rhino so not totally found it so there's a lot of pattern okay and so we're going to transpose a button and fill it with urine so like most Swedish songs we have a compost toilet here that we used as well as one here so you're in Zambia denims for Maalik specifically Indonesia and we will come ease up with you and then leave us to it okay yet so in the bottom of nut fill the team has been in here clearly working on tightening up and feeding the trees putting the stakes back up they've been knocked down during grazing some really nice trees developers nice chat developing here into the drier sandier area so you see some nice trees here here in seedlings there's another one the same here this is if you've been watching our videos for a while you'll know that this Hill has been majorly influenced by and a couple of times before chickens of it you see a very different species assembly here and it's very sandy and drains not very fertile soil where does my flowers do you see coming up in here so cares and cheap and making their money there and quite a lot of slides out and out this time of year they often get pretty smart see how they stand back-to-back that's clothed Mae and her daughter and they help each other out by keeping the flight established Hilda's faces very smart animals there's one on the calf's just resting in here a lot of willow coming back here probably as I've talked about before I might cut pocket pawns down this wet strip so you hear all the lashes and my let this tree over and probably plants are more useful trees in that might lead these that produces their welcome to quick now talking a lot today about blocking in land like putting in a lot of hedgerows and wind breaks everywhere that's where this place is heading with you know Savannah style nut plantings long term with wind breaks on the sides and back survive Aryans up and high and then Avenue plans along the road and each little field is just getting more and more protected and it's really the way to go in a cold climate to influence micro climates etc and there's a castle over there you're getting stronger every day and we're getting milk yeah it says yogurt being made and there's nothing quite like raw milk and remineralized and well-managed grass full of trace elements that help you absorb the vitamins all of fat non homogenized non-pasteurized then you can in the presence of all those fats digest the proteins properly and milk is good human food contrary to what a lot of people are spoon fed nowadays that meats and dairies are bad view grass-fed real food is incredibly important food probably one of the only reasons people live this far north we're looking up at the boilers and they just fit here we're coming down in there in a single line because we wanted to take as much grass as we could here with the cows and sheep and it's better to stagger them out so the birds are pressed up next to each other which you know even if they're separated by a wire it still makes them feel like they're in a bigger crowd but that seems to be working fine and want to get down here we'll change the formation hello you beauty very nice tree it's really as they've done a really nice job mulching and sorting out the trees it's just a lot of our tree systems are a little bit neglected because they're secondary systems or the long-term systems that are going to take over again they're just not worth anything to the harvesting is one of a bit Unseld apples good thing it all neat and tidy again I just really look forward to seeing this blossom and grow in the future stiffen walnuts it's a white walnut sink and up on the hill that makes me really you know I can really visualize this space as a wide space there savanna with about 30 percent canopy cover if we cut out half the trees maybe in 20 years time 30 percent kind of covers what you want to go for here if you don't to lose any yield in your pasture and so that was looking down from above you'd in one hectare you can have more than 300 square metres of full-grown canopy turkeys going really good someone asked if they had any predation problem a lot of us know we need the pretty intimidating girl to come and get engaged with and I said you I that's not caring and a funny looking bird with your face but I really like the mentality of tackles they're really nice lettuce to keep on the phone we might just continue to run this enterprise along the birds are really going up in size that's always thanks so much for watching our videos we're looking forward to a weekend with the interns looking after the farm Cortina going away on holiday for a little well-earned break and I'm just booking holidays myself I'm going to go down see Mika in Denmark who is the core team member last year amazing man who studied his really nice market garden and egg-mobile business and Denmark with two of her good friends that were in terms of year before and then I might fly to Luxembourg and see my friend Marco who we featured in yesterday's video who set up his business I really want to see them in the growing season which is a really hard time of year for me to get away so I think I'm going to I said I was going to go this year so I'm for a sizing a bit of rest and seeing the projects that I'm interested in nearby thanks as always for watching thanks for your time and appreciate your comments etc and you can find out more in our book making small phone sweat see you next time [Music]

Channel: Richard Perkins

Views: 49,666

Rating: 4.9372935 out of 5

Keywords: ridgedale, ridgedale permaculture

Id: Yy9k0_sX1xU

Length: 23min 5sec (1385 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/technosaur]

I use trenches to make biochar, and take advantage of the heat to cure hand made clay bricks and gradually fire harden them.

Caution. The bricks must be thoroughly cured (sun dried) before being placed near the trench or interior moisture escaping as steam will shatter them, possibly with dramatic force (boom!). The last step is stacking them in the trench along the edges, where they make the charring a lot more efficient. After the char is removed, the trench liners go into a finished stack and more are rotated into the trench before the next burn.

I keep telling myself I will eventually use the bricks to build a biochar kiln with a flue that allows the heat to be channeled into a secondary kiln for other purposes (drying wood, brewing mesophyllic fertilizers) but I never get around to it. Too any other uses for the hardened weather resistant bricks.

[u/anewhopeforchange]

I haven't seen any permacultre peeps do biochar before