Show Notes
Episode 13 of the Char Chit Chat with Amanda from Tinwald Farm covered a lot of cool stuff. I feel like more women are needed in the world to run farms so that they become way more connected with the living systems that they are part of.
Amanda farms regeneratively near Cromwell where her challenges are improving degraded soils and reducing inputs. She is doing this by breeding and applying microbes at scale and incorporating biochar into various aspects of the farm. Amanda has studied extensively with the Soil Food Web Foundation where soil life education is paramount.
Amanda explains in detail how microbes are extracted from home made compost and applied to the vineyard and pastures at scale. And also how grapes can be grown in a regenerative way. Current trials involve applying mixed compost and biochar under a wool mulch to those vines that need it.
And of course, how biochar is made and with what feedstocks in the Kontiki Kiln with skids for ease of mobility...
An introduction and overview of Biochar: https://www.sces.org.nz/biochar The national biochar network in NZ: https://biochar.net.nz/ (BNNZ)https://freesound.org/people/joshuaempyre/sounds/250749/
More from Char Chit Chat
Toula from Southland Carbon joined me for a chat this week about her journey of biochar discovery to being the largest commercial producer in NZ.
Episode 14 was a fun chat with Kevin Rapson from Buzi-B Flower Farm. We chat about how he has used biochar to improve his and his wife Trish's soil for growing flowers commercially on their small holding on the Kaipara Coast, North West of Auckland.
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 Underground Festival in 2025 after he attended his biochar workshop. It's great that Greg is now seeing the benefits of biochar to his farming systems and he is an excellent advocate for its widespread adoption. Greg talks about his farming journey and his move towards exploring better ways of raising animals without the abundant use of fossil fuels once he realised it's completely unsustainable around 20 years ago. Trees on farm are a massive part of this as are other ways of cycling nutrients such as on farm slaughter and charring of bones. Greg also is interested in intentional communities and is setting up an agrihood to address the "more people needed on the land" issue in a proactive and practical way.
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!
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 staying with Phil on my way to Wellington.