New and Old friends, Fire and Fungi
Our ancestors were deeply connected to the cycles of the natural world. One of the ways we can all still connect in a deeply traditional way is through making the turnings of the day and nights at pivotal points in our year.
The Winter Solstice marks the shortest day in the year falling this year on Sunday 21st December, after which days get longer and light starts a welcome return. At Flete Field Lab winter is a good time to fire up Hestia, our Exter Retort and biochar producer. Hestia’s name means hearth, fire, alter – a Greek Goddess who refused marriage she tended the fire at Olympus. Our Hestia fires at a temperature of around 550 degrees Celsius and as such definitely needs human tending!
We start early in the day, and often can’t leave the site until after supper. Homer wrote of Hestia:
“Hestia, in the high dwellings of all, both deathless gods and men who walk on earth, you have gained an everlasting abode and highest honor: glorious is your portion and your right. For without you mortals hold no banquet, – where one does not duly pour sweet wine in offering to Hestia both first and last.”
Perhaps it’s time to toast our furnace with sweet wine – particularly as recent trials are showing quite extraordinary remediation properties to the activated biochar she produces. On a small tributary of our local Aylestone River we discovered that biochar used alongside mycofiltration is proving very effective at removing pollutants (10 – 30% of Nitrates, Phosphates and e.Coli).
We certainly need to raise a glass to The AIM Foundation and The Dixon Foundation for their incredible support which has allowed us to appoint Simon Platten to join the team in a CEO-type capacity, as well as pay the co-founders for the work they do.
Alongside this we welcome Alice Sophia Pefanis as a new Associate – bringing with her not only a wealth of knowledge about bioremediation but also two years of project experience with us. She was instrumental in gaining the prestigious Mossy Earth Innovation Funding, a project that she’s just writing up.
And throughout winter we’ll be working with our team on how to collaborate without following traditional hierarchical systems. Currently we haven’t got a clear plan on this but if you’re interested, keep your eyes peeled as we experiment not only with fungi and biochar but with our own human ways of organising!
Enjoy the wintering – the hunkering down – the time of dark, reflections and flames.