Char Chit Chat11 Sep 2025

CCC S1E14 with Cameron Smith

Episode 14 featured Cameron who lives on a lifestyle block near Pukekohe in the Auckland region of New Zealand.

I liked Cameron's answer to what is biochar: "I like the coral reef analogy - I think it's something people understand. They have a strong visual image of what a coral reef is... and full of life, a structure, a habitat..."

Cameron is super passionate about biochar because of the results he gets after adding it to his growing areas.

We talk about the practicalities of making biochar and how his methods have adapted over time to suit his context. Retorts at community gardens, TLUDs for corn cobs, pits for home biomass, to old dairy vat for prunings and sawmill waste...

We also talk about feeding biochar to various animals and using it successfully in a deep litter sytem for chickens.

We hear about Cameron's optimism for making serious inroads into predator control with the confluence of intelligent, resetting, and dynamic traps that hopefully will become low cost enough to be deployed throughout all of New Zealand.

The chat gets into permaculture near the end and you can also read more on Cameron's blog: https://onionroadfarm.com/ including some posts about biochar :)

An introduction and overview of Biochar: https://www.sces.org.nz/biocharThe national biochar association in NZ: https://biochar.net.nz/ (BNNZ)https://freesound.org/people/joshuaempyre/sounds/250749/

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Episoder(32)

CCC S2E12 with Greg Hart (Mangarara Farm)

Episode 12 features well known regenerative farmer Greg Hart from Mangarara Farm in the Hawkes Bay region. Dylan has known about Greg and his tree planting for many years and met Greg at the Undergrou...

27 Jul 36min

CCC S2E11 with Shakēd From

Shakēd is involved in a large variety of endeavours and we talk about these for awhile before biochar comes up, but hopefully you will still find it all interesting!We chat about a 3 year black soldie...

18 Jul 45min

CCC S2E10 with Phil Stevens (Slow Farm)

Dylan's first face to face podcast with an update from Phil in Ashhurst about what he is up to (S1E2 here). We had just returned from Hamilton with John after Fieldays 2026 and I was spending two days...

20 Jun 14min

CCC S2E9 with Lydia Thomsen (Pickled Compost)

Episode 9 with Lydia from the Wairarapa covers the relationship between soil health, plant nutrition, and human health. Lydia is a qualified nutritionist on a mission to pickle household food scraps u...

26 Mai 42min

CCC S2E8 with John Valentine

Episode 8 with John explores his recent discovery of biochar for his compost and his method of making it in a stainless steel bucket. This takes some work to do, but in a social context such as hangin...

14 Mai 30min

CCC S2E7 with Stephen Newman

Episode 7 features Stephen who lives just north of Auckland on 23 acres. He is one of the farmers who receives food waste from the City To Farm project featured in Season 1 Episode 6. We talk about ho...

27 Apr 38min

CCC S2E6 with James McNally

Episode 6 featured James from the Hawkes Bay. We talk about his current role as a tutor at Land Based Training where he hopes to incorporate biochar into the horticulture courses.James' passion for bi...

20 Apr 34min

CCC S2E5 with Anni Kurze (Soil Stewards)

Anni talks to Dylan about her life journey from Germany to Portugal to settling in New Zealand in 2012. She and husband Ron homestead on 50 acres in Maheno in North Otago and besides homeschooling 3 c...

27 Mar 52min