Clearly I have more tips than I thought I did.

At least at first, you should probably stick to taking photos outside in natural light. It's amazing what a difference bright light makes in photography.

Probably the most common thing I see that changes a brilliant photo into a mediocre photo is not getting in close enough to the subject. Try to fill the entire photo with whatever you're taking a picture of, and even chop off a bit of the edges. Notice how the big picture at the top of this post just doesn't grab you as much as the two lower pictures. By lopping off part of Mark's butt and part of the truck, I suck you into the image.

And I'm going to stop now because I'm about to give a lecture on composition --- diagonals, negative space, etc. That might be worth reading up on if you've never taken an art class. In fact, if I was going to recommend a book for you, I'd recommend a beginning art book to train your eye on composition, not one about photography.

Thank you! We really love taking pictures, and I'm always glad to see that someone enjoys them.

Even though I'm usually an advocate of book-learning, I'm not when it comes to taking good photos. Instead, I think you should get a digital camera, then start taking lots of pictures and putting them on your computer to look at immediately. The great thing about a digital camera is that taking a hundred pictures costs nothing --- if you don't like them, just delete them. You'll teach yourself how to take good shots as long as you're willing to take a bunch of them.

I think that it's important to get a good camera, but I don't think you need to spend too much on it either. The newest edition of the Fuji would be a very good choice for a moderately priced (less than $200) camera that takes awesome pictures.

the pictures on this site are always so...picturesque ;). can you recommend any good photography books for us non-artistic types?

I don't want to use wood for my biochar because to me it's not a waste product --- I like our trees where they are and any that fall go for firewood. It does sound, though, like it might be smartest to build something large and save up our waste so that we can get hot enough.

I'm a bit confused by the combination of slow pyrolysis and high heat --- wouldn't that hot of a heat make things pyrolize quickly?

I knew someone was going to ask that, but I was betting on my father. Those radishes produce much less biomass --- they've been bred to be small and tender. But they are in the same species.

What about the small red/purple radishes? They're very nice raw and in salads.

According to the biochar wikipedia article, you need 400-800 °C for biochar production. The same article says you want slow pyrolization to produce the most char, and you can tune the process to run completely on the volatiles released using the retort process, because the higher the temperature the more volatiles will be released, which makes sense. (According to the wood gas wikipedia article, gasification of organics needs at least 700 °C.)

I don't think that a rocket stove will do the trick. Unless you want a rocket stove that boils a cubic yard of soup, and transforms your trailer into the surrounds of a blast furnace.

In essence making biochar and charcoal are chemical processes. Making those clean and efficient requires resources that you don't have.

Since you have sufficient wood, try building a charcoal pile. Those can be built from a about a cubic foot to as big as a house. And the only things you need are wood, straw, dirt (all easy to come by in your case) and some practice. As long as you don't burn more wood than you grow, the process should be carbon neutral. That seems like the simplest solution to me.

Of course you can experiment with adding other dry plant material to the pile. See how it works.

Thanks! I was very impressed how Mark laid out our scavenged windows into such a beautiful array.

Thanks for looking that up! That's why I think that, for us at least, biochar only makes sense if combined with a rocket stove. If I was using the heat put off by the stove to cook our supper, and was able to turn blighted tomato stalks into biochar as a soil additive at the same time, it would probably be a net gain for our mini-ecosystem. Or maybe if we used the heat for something else (though I can't think what, beyond heating the trailer in the winter.) Ideas?

Wow I love all the windows you used, having the various shapes and sizes is really neat looking. Bravo!

The following page will give you an idea of how much fuel it takes to make charcoal (which is more or less the came as biochar I think, but made from wood instead of other plant material ), pretty much using the process I described; Making Charcoal.

You'll be burning about ½ as much wood as you're putting in to make charcoal. And that is with using the volatiles from the wood itself.

I'm surprised that steel barrel can withstand the heat. I wonder how long they'll last?

One of the thinks to think about is the cost of biochar, measured in the amount of energy required and/or CO₂ released to produce it.

Suppose that producing 1 kg of biochar would require burning >1 kg of wood or releases >1 kg of carbon in the form of CO₂. It that still worth it? What would be sustainable?

I agree with you --- bland is a selling point for me in a grain. I like being able to top them with interesting sauces or throw them in soups without worrying too much about the grain's original flavor.

Thanks for breaking it down so simply --- I'd been meaning to do some research on pyrolysis and see if there was more to the process than I'd gotten out of the talk. Mark thought high heat was essential from something Rory Maguire said, and it sounds like he's right. Thanks!

The production of carbon fiber is made by pyrolysis too. A synthetic fiber (usualy polyacrylonitril) is heated to up to 3000K in an oxygen-free atmosphere. This shakes all hydrogen atoms loose leaving only pure carbon. There seem to be two important factors in this process;

• high temperature
• lack of oxygen

The second means using a closed container to contain biochar. When heating organic materials which are mainly carbohydrates, volatiles will be released (at the very least all the hydrogen you've cooking off). You'd want to capture those to help fuel the process.

A fluidized bed reactor would probably be the most efficient to char organics (they've been used successfully for energy generation from coal and biomatter) but they're probably out of reach for most people.

So take two concentric drums like the video suggested. Put the dry material (boilding off water takes lots of energy; not efficient) to be charred in the inner drum and put a lid on it. This drum goes in the outer drum where wood is burned to heat everything. The lid of the inner drum should contain a pipe to lead the escaping volatiles through a check valve and to a burner under the inner drum.

The check valve is important since you don't want oxygen getting into the inner drum but you want the volatiles to escape without pressuse build-up (think explosions )

I think quinoa tastes great, I'm surprised to hear it described as bland. Think of it as rice or pasta - you don't eat it by itself. It's meant to have stir fry served on it, or tomato sauce, or sauteed vegetables, or all of these things!

Wow, that's passion! I like your analysis of Egyptian and Amazonian soils, although I suspect that other cultures took advantage of frequent floods the way Egypt did, but perhaps without being noted so much in the history books. China, for example, with their rice paddies.

I totally agree that we need to go back to a system of building soil as our wealth. I think that biochar is only part of the picture, though. Over supper, Mark and I were discussing how flawed even the best compost we can buy is since it is mixed chemically and not biologically. If someone started a compost company that inoculated the humus with biochar and good microorganisms, I'd think they could sell it for at least double!

Now that you've shamed him into it, I'll bet Mark will dig up the original splitter that came with the saw. It's somewhere lost in the barn, I think.

Make sure that the splitter is just as wide as the cut that the blade makes;

• any smaller and it won't protect properly against "throw-ups",
• any wider and it'll get stuck!

If you have saws of different width, you need a splitter for each. The best form for a splitter is one that is curved and follows the back of the blade. The end pointing to the blade should be ground to an edge. Not sharp obviously, but enough to push the wood aside.

The final arbiter/accountancy/measure of sustainability will be soil carbon content. Once this royal road is constructed, traffic cops (Carbon Board ) in place, the truth of land-management and Biochar systems will be self-evident.

A dream I've had for years is to base the coming carbon economy firmly on the foundation of top soils. My read of the agronomic history of civilization shows that the Kayopo Amazon Indians and the Egyptians were the only ones to maintain fertility for the long haul, millennium scales. Egypt has now forsaken their geologic advantage by building the Aswan dam, and are stuck, with the rest of us, in the soil C mining, NPK rat race to the bottom. The meta-analysis of Syn-N and soil Carbon content shows our dilemma;

https://www.agronomy.org/publications/jeq/articles/38/6/2295

The Ag Soil Carbon standard is in final review by the AMS branch at USDA. Read over the work so far; http://www.novecta.com/documents/Carbon-Standard.pdf

Agriculture allowed our cultural accent and Agriculture will now prevent our descent. Wise Land management; Organic farming and afforestation can build back our soil carbon, Biochar allows the soil food web to build much more recalcitrant organic carbon, (living biomass & Glomalins) in addition to the carbon in the biochar.

Every 1 ton of Biomass yields 1/3 ton Charcoal for soil Sequestration (= to 1 Ton CO2e) + Bio-Gas & Bio-oil fuels = to 1MWh exported electricity, so is a totally virtuous, carbon negative energy cycle.

Biochar viewed as soil Infrastructure; The old saw; "Feed the Soil Not the Plants" becomes; "Feed, Cloth and House the Soil, utilities included !". Free Carbon Condominiums with carboxyl group fats in the pantry and hydroxyl alcohol in the mini bar. Build it and the Wee-Beasties will come. Microbes like to sit down when they eat. By setting this table we expand husbandry to whole new orders & Kingdoms of life.

This is what I try to get across to Farmers, as to how I feel about the act of returning carbon to the soil. An act of penitence and thankfulness for the civilization we have created. Farmers are the Soil Sink Bankers, once carbon has a price, they will be laughing all the way to it.

Unlike CCS which only reduces emissions, biochar systems draw down CO2 every energy cycle, closing a circle back to support the soil food web. The photosynthetic "capture" collectors are up and running, the "storage" sink is in operation just under our feet. Pyrolysis conversion plants are the only infrastructure we need to build out.

For those looking for an overview of biochar and its benefits, These authors have done a very nice job of distilling a great deal of information about biochar and applying it to the US context:

US Focused Biochar report: Assessment of Biochar's Benefits for the USA http://www.biochar-us.org/pdf%20files/biochar_report_lowres.pdf

WorldStoves in Haiti; http://www.charcoalproject.org/2010/05/a-man-a-stove-a-mission/

and

The Biochar Fund; http://biocharfund.org/ deserves your attention and support. Exceptional results from biochar experiment in Cameroon

Since we have filled the air , filling the seas to full, Soil is the Only Beneficial place left. Carbon to the Soil, the only ubiquitous and economic place to put it.

Soil Carbon Dream

I have a dream that one day we live in a nation where progress will not be judged by the production yields of our fields, but by the color of their soils and by the Carbon content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, a suite of earth sensing satellites will level the playing field, giving every farmer a full account of carbon he sequesters. That Soil Carbon is given as the final arbiter, the common currency, accountant and Judge of Stewardship on our lands.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made forest, the rough soils will be made fertile, and the crooked Carbon Marketeers will be made straight, and the glory of Soil Sequestration shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see a Mutually assured Sustainability.

This is our hope.

My apologies to Dr. King, but I think he would understand my passion

Erich

I think we're talking at cross-purposes. I've been talking about the NYT article, and how it says that home refrigeration and food preparation is such a huge part of the energy footprint of our food....

Of course. But that's not my point. Today it is pretty common for frozen foods to be stored in big warehouses. That is likely to be more efficient than in a small fridge. Also because those warehouses probably have a better incentive to be efficient; keeping energy costs down.

If I look at table and miter saws in DIY stores they all look and feel so flimsy and cheap. As if it's built to throw away after a couple of years.

Of course most of the woodworking equipment at work is at least 25 years old with quite solid cast iron frames. Most of those machines like the jointer and thickness planer should be able to outlast me, at least mechanically. I like the sturdyness of these old designs.

I hope I didn't sound snippy --- I was just at a bit of a loss for how to get in touch with you. Thanks for coming by!!

I check this blog 4-5 times a week. I don't know how I managed to miss the previous announcement. I've just sent my info. Thanks for the second chance.