I have a situation that is faced by many in my part of the world. After many decades of wreckless logging, the whole area is pretty much a mess. Overgrown forests with massive quantities of Dead, Diseased, Decrepit, Dying, Deformed, Decadent (I'm running out of D's, whats a D word for crowded? Dense maybe...) trees and brush. Just the amount of already dead and down wood is sometimes enough to make a bunch of charcoal at any given site. The forests are generally unhealthy and not very productive of food for wildlife. The trees are crowded and instead of having a reasonable number of healthy trees we tend to have a lot of competing trees that are just hanging in there, with very healthy large productive trees of any kind being the exception. The forest is seeking an equilibrium as always, but that is a process that takes time and we can intervene to speed up the process or steer the ecology in a certain direction such as managing for diversity, wildlife, timber, or all three at once.
Given the general success of biochar growing experiments and the remarkable prehistoric and historic examples of charcoal amended soils, it just makes sense to pursue conversion of a portion of that biomass into charcoal. While sophisticated methods utilizing the energy released in charring will no doubt be developed (and should as soon as possible), there is no good reason for citizens with woodlots not to engage in small scale production of charcoal and at this point I think it's pretty much nuts to burn brush piles into ash. With the pit and trench methods, we have completely eliminated the need for chopping up or chipping wood 3 inches diameter and down. That is a huge step and makes burning charcoal extremely accessible to anyone that can get away with having open fires. But, I find myself faced with a problem that many others will also have. That is extinguishing the charcoal once it is formed. Most of my brush is in areas with no water. This simple idea might take care of that problem and make burning charcoal in remote areas very easy.
Anywhere I walk in the woods here there is clearing to be done. I think most areas that are unmanaged I could probably dig a trench and produce at least a couple hundred gallons of charcoal without having to drag the wood very far. Otherwise, I have to clear a way to drive in so I can either drive the brush out or bring water in (sometimes feasible and sometimes not). While my idea is very simple, solving that problem opens up huge possibilities for me and anyone else in a similar situation.
My friend Erica and her daughter Jessica live on 200 acres with the same problems. Like me, Erica does forestry practice, just because it is the right thing to do and needs doing. The result is huge amounts of biomass that could be converted to charcoal. When they have a window of good weather to come over, we're going to test out this idea and possibly be looking toward further experiments to assess the feasibility of char production as a cottage industry for land holders in this situation. I think there is great possibility there. I'm always interested in ways that people here can make a living doing something useful using the local resources of which none is more abundant than excessive biomass. That is more relevant than ever since the economy has been artificially buoyed by black market marijuana production for some time, and that won't last much longer as more people in more states are going into Marijuana production which is causing prices to plummet. Good riddance I say, but don't get me started on that! Eventually, we will no doubt return to the kind of hardscrabble existence that characterized the area previously. Personally, I see that as mostly a good thing as it forces people to be creative and do a diversity of things to get by. I have lived in areas like that before and there are negatives for sure, but I generally like the "necessity is the mother of invention" kind of effect which makes for interesting and less entitled people. It certainly weeds out the weak. I think that most people have become too lazy to pick up a shovel, walk off into the woods, produce some charcoal, haul it out, set up some processing apparatus and then prepare, bag and sell biochar; but I'm hoping that it may actually be feasible at this particular point in time to do so, and actually make enough doing it to make is profitable enough to pursue for people that like that kind of work. Personally, there is hardly anything I like more than being out in the woods with some hand tools and cutting, trimming and burning stuff. Most people would benefit from that kind of exercise and meaningful, direct work. That's my idea of a good time!
