permaculture

[John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

> Hi.  My name is John Fritz and I am new to the list.  I have
> completed the PDC twice, most recently in Occidental, CA in 1997.

Welcome to the list!
Did you do the summer 1997 course at OAEC?
If you did, I was in that one too...?
They say the first thing to go is...is...umm...ahh...dang, I can't 
remember... ;-)

> The only obstacle that I can think of (and it is a
> doosy) is the need for 50 tons of such "forest thicket compost" for
> each generating application, per Pain's use.  Still I would like to
> determine if the method could be modified for smaller applications.

One potential obstacle is finding a true shredder to shred the material 
once you've got it.  When I read the article about Pain some years ago 
in the PC Activist, it said that part of what made it work was 
along-the-grain shredding of the material, which drastically increases 
rate of breakdown compared to material that is only cut across the grain 
(something to do with exposing way more surface area of lignins or 
something like that).

Afaik true shredders are hard to find in N. America - at least last time 
I poked around some, which was years ago.
The so-called chipper/shredders readily available don't actually do much 
real shredding along the grain.  They're more chipper than anything else.

cheers,
John S.


--

John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
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