wood ash + biochar

the wood stove is a gardener’s companion, highly valued for its production of wood ash for sweetening acidic soils, charcoal to inoculate in deep litter for biochar, and even bone meal for minerals. 

this is stacking functions at its best. the many concurrent uses for the wood stove multipy the benefits of heat we’re already producing, while simultaneously providing amendments that reduce our material use of mined lime and imported fertilisers, holding water in our sweetened, enriched soils much longer, giving structure to soil and homes to healthy microbial life. and it’s simple and waste-free to produce.  

today i am thrilled to be out in the garden filming the long-form film on making biochar at a large-garden-farm scale, putting all those fallen and pruned branches to good use. this is biochar made in a dedicated kiln, in collaboration with a lovely fellow-islander and kiln-maker. i so look forward to sharing the whole process, step-by-step, with you.

thank you to our patrons for their support in making this possible! this is one of those small works* with very real impacts, where not only can we empower ourselves to produce what we need, simply, but these films might reach out and alter a culture of burning carbon to gases into one of sinking carbon to soils. nothing short of miraculous.

this short is a remix from the journal of small work* film, ‘wood stove‘. i hope you enjoy the variation. i’m glad the minute films have emerged into the gardens – next, building soil, planning kitchen gardens and sorting out seeds, i should think.