i, yash, happened to have fortune to grow up watching many indigenous farmers make charcoal, mix in with cow dung and urine, spread it into seedling patch. they would gather cow dung, urine and jaggery (molasses), keep away for few days, place into a mud pot with a hole and wooden twig inserted into the hole, so it would drip into the flood irrigation channel, soaking straw in the mix and placing it above seeds, spray the mix over seedlings. i got to participate building piles, layered with biomass, dung, urine, liquid from compost pile and used to grow seedlings. later we would play with the worms, centipedes, roly-polies, gophers around the mounds, under the shade of giant mango tree. as a young teenager, i didn't know the term biochar, hügelkultur, though i witnessed and participated. was raised in urbans, sharing surrounding with many animals, hardly coming across waste and not knowing invasive.

10 years ago, we got lucky and got to call the land of lenape's to be our home and place of work. in a short period, we became a niche of first or second generation lebanese, indian, chinese, korean, italian, english, farmers and sharing our knowledge and resources. without losing any time we gathered thousands of cubic yards of biomass within 16 months. cleared the hedges of the farm of tree of haven, saved many wild cherry trees from being taken over by poison ivy and black walnut trees from wild grapes. reached out to rutgers, princeton, rutgers extension, sadc, scadb, farmers, farmers in lancaster, gardners, we would walk towards, talk to anybody and everybody.

rose a neighbor, showed us the artifacts she gathered from lenapes and taught the children to locate them on the farm. 6 years ago, we got lucky, as john the lenape, walked into the farm and taught us how his people use the vegetation that was growing at the farm and educated us on how valuable they are, especially the custom of gathering the pollen from cat tails and dousing over a girl who is about to carry on the responsibilities of woman and roasting, eating the cat tails tender shoots. we gained wisdom, many plants, likes of mugwort, poke berry, burdock, plantain, we didn’t know, were very important for the land. 

we used large amount of biomass to build hügelkultur mound right at the steps of our present home. as we were building it, children at home used it as a play ground and got very good at hoping. we did think of hazard and we figured the elements will teach us, as we learnt to tame fire, water, wind, smoke to be an advantage. every year we would amend the settlement on the hugelbed with additional biomass. it is a repeat experience of childhood to see small and large animals make a home above and in the bed. plants come out of dormancy, way early and staving off frost and cold till later. we are learning a lot. living provides opportunities to make mistakes and derive solutions. 

i have gotten to know charles as sadc for past 9 years. he has replied to my few lines of questions with paragraphs of response, maybe after a few day, but without fail. i have known scadb for almost 17 years. every time i came across a preserved farm for sale in somerset county, they would respond enthusiastically, many a times let us see what we can find. nofa-nj turned out to be place of innovative suggestions.

i take this opportunity to thank likes of cheryl, rose, chuck, mark, tara, rich, george, nick, joseph, jess, sue, craig, dave, lucas, bryan, john, kate in encouraging us as ag agencies, environmental agencies, ag supporting groups, institutions, scientists, neighbors, professionals, as we exceed norm of soil organic matter,  10.5, as we exceed active soil carbon of prairie soils,  1141 and slew of microbial, fungal life. we learn to draw good from every element.

please continue to be considerate and generous as many more beginning farmers are going to blaze the trail and many likes of jess, to go on to serve the ag community.

it is only fair to admit and seek forgivence, as a farmer who feels the urgency to improve soil and gain fertility, we have stepped over the regulating bounds and practiced age old techniques.