Charred to Perfection: How Biochar is Transforming Soil and the Planet!

The benefits of biochar on the land.

As the winter months settle in, we’re shifting gears—starting our seasonal maintenance projects, building an event space at the house, and reflecting on the progress we've made in our second growing season.

This summer, we’ve been especially focused on improving our fertility program, which is managed by Ari and Milo. Together, they’ve developed a worm composting system and begun experimenting with biochar production—two initiatives that will help us build healthier soil in the years to come.

What is Biochar?

Biochar has been an exciting experiment for us this year. Milo and Ari got creative using materials we already had on the land—repurposing old containers, logs, and scrap wood from a tree line we cleared last year to make room for livestock. They constructed a small “kiln” to burn wood chips at extremely high temperatures, turning them into biochar—a type of charcoal that’s packed with surface area. Just one gram of biochar can have a surface area of 9,000 square feet of molecular structure, which provides an ideal habitat for beneficial microbes and microbiology.

Why Biochar?

Biochar is valuable because, once created, it can be used as a soil amendment. First, it has to be activated through soaking. This activation process can be done using moisture or urine, which inoculates the biochar. To help with this, we’re partnering with our neighbors who have livestock to enrich both the biochar and their manure. This partnership will allow us to create a nutrient-rich soil amendment that’s full of beneficial microbes.

Ultimately, our goal is to use biochar in a variety of ways: to improve soil fertility, enhance the quality of our livestock bedding, and support a healthy, diverse ecosystem in the soil. The more microbes we can house in our soil, the more resilient it becomes—better able to withstand disease, drought, and other challenges while building strong, fertile earth.