My Organic Dream

Sounds great and like your getting things going. Your in the Columbia valley area? when's the worm fest I love good micro brews

Actually the farm is located in the same neck of the woods relatively as Red Hook Brewery and Chateau Ste. Michelle, Columbia, Silver Lake to name a same handful of dozens in the area.

This is what my neck of the woods looks like, I will be enjoying the view of the valley on the west side of the cascades, the Columbia valley is the area between Washington State and Oregon. I am Northwest Washington abounding in organic material waiting to be properly composted and sold to gardeners, nurseries and whomever wants to grow with local compost organically certified!


DankSwag

Ste. Michelle has sites all over I worked out by their winery in Patterson. I'm on the eastern side of the state. Lol figured your spot was to green and everything for this side of the mountains

Today I picked up 3 nicely reconditioned 30 gallon steel drums, of too the fabrication shop where I will have a welder\machinist friend cut and modify these drums to prepare for use as a retort system during pyrolysis.







DankSwag

I just found this. The leaves really pile up in my location. I'm sure you have just loads and loads of stuff laying about with no where to go directly. This is the perfect solution. Love those photos and how you write. Keep it going.

http://organicgardening.about.com/od/compost/a/trenchcompost.htm

Ya know how they say be careful with whom you bunk at camp or you're whole summer is screwed... well let's just say I am glad and thankful to have a contingency plan. It appears the sub lease I was looking at well I don't care for the relationship between leasee and owner. Nice place but I will have to let smooth over a bit before I invest hard work and capital on that site. So none the less I am a little set back from waiting on this land to be cleared and materials brought in to begin worm composting. So this site is on delay. I am now looking at this as site to site partner ship. I now need to find land owners with onsite or access to raw input for composting that will let me sub lease space to start production. This time I need to find something ready, not that will be, whenever that is. BULLSHIT!

Okay so I have pursued my retort system and did fire off a batch last sunday. Unfortunately our fuel to cook the inner chamber burned out before our 4 to 6 inch wood logs chard through.

NOTE:BURN THE PAINT OF YOUR BARRELS PRIOR TO USING
Nasty Nasty Nasty... YUK!

Pics of Retort System. Sorry Phone low battery did not get burn just loaded prior.



I have to find my drill saw the freaking saws all is violent in cutting this lid jerks all over hard to get straight line. Had to pilot hole in center then larger bit hole to fit saws all blade into.
I was going to use lid flaps cut away to join to stove pipe. To difficult to drill into. So I cut them out and tried to get a nice round 5 3/4 inch cut but again using saws all not circular drill I have somewhere. Anywise I then screw 6 stove cap end over the top of hole, then cut flap inside the cap to bend up which help hold the pipe in place no need to screw to end cap flaps.

Here is a used chipper shredders 92 Grinder Inc Witchta KS. Can't get parts for it, cast iron on a trailer I'd have to license.

Briggs Stratton 8HP needs fuel tank line and carb clean rebuilt, for $800 cash. Well I don't need to trailer this from site to site, besides the new Brush Master I am looking at is slightly more, but new, more powerful 15HP motor mobile with lawn tractor hitch.



Well I don't need to trailer this from site to site, besides the new Brush Master I am looking at is slightly more, but new, more powerful 15HP motor mobile with lawn tractor hitch.
I am hoping not only can it make the chips I need which I am sure it well, but I can use it to shred cardboard for worm bedding.



Let me what ya think of this.
DankSwag

Sorry to hear about your problems with leasing land. Got to be right if you are going to invest hard work in it. I needed to let you know my landlord has assumed ownership of several lots by merely offering to pay taxes for land that has no owner or has no tax paid in several years. Even if the current owner coughs the tax money up they would still be obligated to pay for improvements. After two years it becomes yours by merely paying tax. The Justice of the Peace takes care of such business in our area. Really love your entries about bio-char. Careful with steel and try a torch on the barrel for a good fit. Found some worms under an old pile leaves in the yard. The castings really green the garden up.

Thought for the day...

Liebig's Law of the Minimum—a basic principle of plant science—points out, the nutrient in least supply is the one that limits plant growth.

DankSwag

Okay an update on my retort system known as the Tin Man.
As you all may recall the first attempt did not go so well did not have chips for fuel and just shoved sticks down the side and let them on fire, not enough heat and they burnt down within 2 hours.

So today I gathered up the Tin Man off the property I was going to sub lease and brought it home where I am temporarily setting up shop for know, scaling up as they say.

Anywise I am posting pics showing my new bad ass Brush Master Chipper. Highly recommend this beast it make chips better then a den of beavers.

Above test run
Below chips anyone? All that is need is fish fertilizer.

.Below Tin Man (Retort System) with a load of dry branches

Retort system unloaded with partially baked wood that did not go FULL CHAR on first run.

Retort system with inner barrel placed inside with wood stock to turn into char

Retort system with lid on inner barrel

It took 5 Five Gallon buckets of chips to fill the outer barrel and cover to the top of out barrel.


IT BURNS BURNS BURNS THIS RING OF FIRE THIS RING OF FIRE!



CHIMNEY ON BURN ON AUTO PILOT AT 5:40 PM. AT 9:40 I could see the chips through the bottom glowing red and Chimney stack still burning off fuel. Can't wait to see my char tomorrow morning.

DankSwag

What did you use as an accelerant to get the chips burning?

DonPetro,

I soaked a batch of chips with gasoline separately on the the out barrel lid inside face, so it would not pour down into the sides and burn the fuel too quickly. I took the soaked chips and laid them on top and completely around the edges. Light a wadded up newspaper tip soaked in fuel lit it and threw on top to start the burn....

Sad thing is I awoke this morning all excited to collect my char, wrong I still had solid logs in the inside barrel and they look very much unchanged.

Not wanting to be defeated by science in my attempt to use pyrolysis to create char I came to the conclusion that perhaps my feed stock of logs were too thick for the heated air in the inner barrel to penetrate and cause the additional need fuel gases from the wood stock to pass from the inner chamber to outer barrel where they would provide additional fuel for the burn in the outer chamber.
I also concluded that perhaps using only chips as fuel were too compacting and did not allow the gases from the inner chamber to release upwards to be burnt off keeping the fire hot in the out barrel thus releasing more gases from then inner chamber to complete the process.

So I took out the logs and chopped them up and reloaded. This time I took some of the sticks from the logs I chopped and placed them in the out barrel to burn and added just two 5 gallon buckets of chips, one bucket after I placed initial split log sticks inside the out barrel around the outside of the inner barrel, then added one bucket chips then filled the spaces again along the edge of the barrel with more sticks, then one more bucket of chips the more split pieces of wood. Started the burn again and this time the heat stayed consistent all the way burning down the sides unlike yesterdays burn where the heat was someone low temperature wise.

And guess what you betcha CHAR! Check out the pics showing what I described above.
I've got about 15 gallons plus of CHAR. That will go a long way once I inoculated with organic fertilizer and let it thermo compost to attract microbiology to their new homes. I figure soaking char in my dandelion tea might just be a good thing.











I feel like I actually accomplished something very beneficial today.

DankSwag

Thats pretty cool, man.

I was looking forward to photo of those "windrows". How is the State of Washington going to stock their dispensaries now? It seems like they would just give you some land if you could come through. The bio-char is such cool stuff.

Love it Dank! Good luck finding some land! I just finished up Vermiculture Technologies and I would recommend it for anyone looking to go into the vermicomposting business.

Have to say, this cracked me up:

"I hear the bark is perineum to have?"

Sending land opportunity vibes!
P-