Home » Posts tagged 'soil enhancement'
Tag Archives: soil enhancement
Making charcoal
Making charcoal
Growing up I knew charcoal as the square, chemical-soaked briquettes people bought in bags and poured into the barbecue grill once a summer. Like so much else in our lives it came from a store, wrapped in plastic and pre-treated for shelf life, with no sense that it shared a name with something amazingly useful, which hundreds of generations had made themselves.
Charcoal is simply wood that has been burned without oxygen, either by being heated but sealed away from oxygen or, more commonly, setting it on fire and then cutting it off from the air, keeping the wood from burning completely into ash. Most other substances in the wood are driven off, leaving a porous shape of almost pure carbon, lightweight and easy to transport.
It can purify water by soaking up impurities, as in many kitchen sink filters, and treat poison victims when crushed and drunk in a fluid. It allows people to burn fires hotter than wood, enabling people to smelt iron or shape glass in a way that wood fires cannot. It can be added to soap for abrasion, crushed to make ink or paint or mixed with minerals to make gunpowder.
Perhaps the most surprising use, one that gained a burst of attention in recent years, involves trapping carbon from the atmosphere. Frequent readers of this blog might have already heard of this and can feel free to skip ahead a few paragraphs – but for the unfamiliar, I will recap the basics.
Farmers in Brazil have long known about the “black earth,” or terra preta, found over vast areas of the Amazon. In the last decade or two archaeologists have begun to realise that the terra preta was not a naturally occurring phenomenon, but had been cultivated over centuries, if not millennia.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Growing Soil
Growing Soil
Much of what I have learnt about soil comes from doing a two year apprenticeship at Stroud Community Agriculture and the influence of one of the farm team there who recently passed away, Ute. Digging couch out of the field with Ute was an exercise in plant observation, reading the landscape and soil craft; turning the cow pats into the straw bedding in the barn was a class in compost making and soil life.
For her, soil, soul, and society were intertwined – a rich and fertile view and practice.
Soil and animals
When talking about Growing Soil in the British Isles, we have long depended on the cow and its dung, whether dropped in the field or made into manure through composting with straw in the barn.
Bio-dynamics clearly articulates the importance of the cow and its manure within its agricultural view, principles and practices. This is an insight that can be lost in modern debates about farming and the role of animals that can just see the commodities, meat and dairy. For example, Stroud Community Agriculture had cows primarily for soil fertility; the farm’s core business of growing vegetables depended on tonnes of quality manure. Meat was a secondary concern.
Taking the cow as central aspect of traditional agriculture also opens up a useful understanding or vision of the British landscape. Our landscape has primarily been shaped by the cow, sheep and horse. This has had a profound influence in shaping our communities and culture. For centuries, the forest has been cleared bit by bit, the soil exposed and then tamed through the use of horse, cow and sheep.
The patchwork of green and gold fields that covers this isle and the very fabric of British society have been grown with the toil, grazing and dung of animals.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
