This Sustainable House

Posts Tagged ‘atmosphere’

One of the major tasks on my plate at the moment is to clear a section of scrubby land for use as paddocks for cattle, and perhaps free-range chickens. When I say I need to clear the land, I’m not talking about wholesale tree removal, rather I’m looking at clearing the area of debris to allow the natural grasses to establish.

A decision that had to be made in this instance was to burn or not to burn….

Traditionally a farmer would get all this scrappy stuff together and set it on fire. This would turn most of the wood to gas (releasing it to the atmosphere) and the remaining ash would be scattered over the paddock area. Doing this has the advantage of dealing with this debris rapidly, leaving a nice clear paddock.

However I feel it has two important disadvantages, the carbon that has been locked up by the plants is lost to the atmosphere (rather than being broken down for inclusion in the soil) and this material offers some very useful ‘stuff’ to form a mulch layer.

So at TSH the majority of this debris has been put to use as a mulch in the tree corridors between the paddocks.

The video below explains the concepts involved, and provides a sneak peek into how these paddocks will be managed. Enjoy!