Rocket Stoves and Biochar at the Florida Earthskills Gathering

Earthskills Gatherings are weekend long events consisting of workshops and discussions to do with primivate skills and permaculture.  They happen all over North America, usually on an annual basis and place a strong emphasis on regional ecologies and cultures.  At the Florida Earthskills gathering a few weeks back, there were workshops on anything from how to make rope from various regional grasses, how to build houses using cob construction, how to harvest and filter rainwater using materials found in the dumpster or how to slaughter a goat.

One awesome thing about the event was how sustainable everything was.  And by "sustainable" I don't mean that we bought fluorescent bulbs, rented low-water porto-potties or bought tofu rather than chicken.  I mean that food came from dumpsters behind Trader Joe's.  I mean that people collected and prepared fresh roadkill for dinner (the meat you pay for at the grocery store is much worse for you [seriously..]). Meals were prepared on high-efficiency stoves built from salvaged materials.  Composting toilets were built onsite and the humanure will later be used to fertilize garden beds.  This event was sustainable!

There were about 300 people at the event, all of whom had to be fed.  I helped out in the kitchen a bunch with maintaining the stoves and fires that the food was cooked over top of.  A couple guys, Joe and Conner, had been working on high-efficiency rocket stoves and bio-char ovens for a few years and, while volunteering in the kitchen, I was able to learn a thing or two about what it takes to build stoves similar to the ones we were using.

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Rocket Stoves

Conner setting up the rocket stove

The air flow allows for wood to burn hot.  Using long and thin pieces of wood allows for more area of a given unit of wood to burn.  The downside is you have to monitor closely and keep stocking.  Build it and give it a shot.

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Biochar Ovens

(10 minute video defining biochar, the process of creating it, and it's purpose)

Doug cookin' up a storm

There are two main outputs: 1) Biochar (used as wonder-fertilizer), and 2) heat.  The heat can be trapped and harnessed in whatever way you can image and could be used for many things (ie, heating a house).  The method that Joe and Conner use works really well for cooking food en masse. 

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All of the food for the gathering (300 people X 2 meals X 4 days) was cooked over a few different stoves.  There were also two fires that food was cooked on in addition to the two-burner rocket stove and the biochar.

Moral of the story: If you are paying for sustainability you are doing it wrong!