From the Permaculture list Status: U From: "souscayrous" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: [permaculture] Jean Pain + Brushwood + Biogas + Compost X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Importance: Normal Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-BeenThere: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.5 Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=help> List-Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> List-Subscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture>, <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=subscribe> List-Id: Permaculture <permaculture.lists.ibiblio.org> List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture>, <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe> List-Archive: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture/> Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 09:41:12 +0100
Steve, thank you, excellent sources as always. In a discussion of the Fukuoka Farming list at Yahoo Groups the connection was also made between Jean Pain and the intriguing work of Lemieux at Laval. The essential difference between them being the actual breakdown of the woody matter: Jean Pain used the traditional thermophyllic breakdown of any compost pile (bacterial) while Lemieux suggests that the breakdown of his ramial wood chips should be by basidiomycetes - white rot (fungal). Why the difference? Lemieux makes the claim that fungal breakdown of wood produces upto 50% more humus (humic acid) than does bacteriological breakdown, due to chemical nature of the breakdown of the lignin, unassisted by heat. For anyone who has not yet seen Lemieux's work, I recommend it highly, http://www.sbf.ulaval.ca/brf there is much in English amongst the French. The underlying premise of Lemieux's work is that all fertile soil comes originally from climax hardwood forests and that without renewal of climax hardwood breakdown products this soil will eventually become exhausted. A salutary reminder that although humic acid is an extremely persistent molecule, it does eventually degrade to leave the soil practically worthless for crops (before nature returns with its plant successions, until, hundreds or thousands of years later, the soil has again been recovered by hardwood forests). Jean Pain and Gilles Lemieux both have important things to say, not the least of which is to concentrate our minds on building soil and not producing crops (the latter being simply the product of the former and never the reverse). In reference to Jean Pain's biogas work, contact me off list if you would like more information [EMAIL PROTECTED] and if anybody has any sources of further information on the Templar origins of Jean Pain's work I would be grateful. Souscayrous -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Steve Diver Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2002 12:58 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [permaculture] Jean Pain + Brushwood + Biogas + Compost The Jean Pain method came up; i.e., using chopped brushwood to generate biogas and/or to wrap water pipes around a very *large* brushwood pile for the purpose of capturing heat from thermophyllic composting (for example, to distribute hot water through hydronic tubing in greenhouse production beds in association with rootzone heating). An interesting parallel to the Jean Pain method is the Ramial wood chip mulching work at Laval University in Quebec. Several years ago a farmer here in the Ozarks imported a special brushwood chipper to generate mulch for their organic orchard / farm. I talked to them last year and they said they love the benefits of the brushwood mulch, but it is a lot of labor to cut enough brushwood and chip the material to generate the bulk quantities of mulch needed each spring, coming also at a time when the farm is really busy. Here are some web notes I collected May 2001 on the Jean Pain method. Jean Pain resources, 5-11-01 http://ncatark.uark.edu/~steved/archives/humus/jean-pain-notes.txt There's some interesting material on Jean Pain + brushwood + humus in these notes. A tale unfolds where Jean Pain got his idea on brushwood mulch from medieval templar monks, who understood humus at a deep level centuries before the Industrial Revolution racheted things out of whack .... The Le Jardinage Naturel material looked pretty good, and worth re-exploring, but that link now appears to be gone like an Internet memory; though Google has a cache page which you can access for a glimpse. Steve Diver _______________________________________________ permaculture mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture _______________________________________________ permaculture mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
