Continued documentation on preparing for operational tests and funding.

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State of Terra Preta Operational Test #1 4/23/2007
Funding
The contact with the New Mexico Science director went very well. He was very supportive and took the idea down to a meeting in Los Crusis at NMSU the ag collage for New Mexico. The current concept is that there may be a parter of an operational test in New Mexico funded by the State possibly at the on of the Ag Experiment Stations. So they are starting to look for a place to work with us.
We have started a small contact in the state of Oregon. We will see how it goes we are about to start grass roots contacts in my county. We are still waiting to hear any word back from the Los Alamos grants.
There is an interesting article in the Oregon Department of Agriculture quarterly newsletter on the 25X25 where you can get 50% tax rebate on bio energy production costs but I'm still working on figuring out if Terra Preta would qualify.
Equipment
1. Massey-Fergison 3 point Sickle Bar Mower: I will need to do some repairs on this but it runs fine. I got a number of parts for the mower at a farm auction last Saturday.
2. Farm Hand pto driven manure spreader: We got the manure spreader we needed at the above farm auction last Saturday.
3. Large chipper: one is coming up for auction next weekend.
Preparation of Irrigation and Burner
I finished all the work on the irrigation system last week.
I surveyed the area around the wigwam burner again and we need to do four thing to get ready for collecting the wood and preparing the burner.
1. Cut the cover off the burner with a cutting torch so we can get get the backhoe in to clean out the interior.
2. Remove all scrap metal in the are to make it safe to work in.
3. Develop two areas for wood to be delivered to be dried before it is made into charcoal one for hardwood and one for conifer wood.
4. Test small mound charcoal burn to gain experience with making charcoal on a larger scale.
Well that brings work list up to date for a while