What if Black Friday Could Be Biochar Friday?

Here it comes, the annual consumer blowout we know as Black Friday - the week where sales will make or break retailers for the year, either catapulting them into the black or drowning them in a red pool of bleeding profits.

If we care about a healthy economy that is growing, then we must consume! Otherwise… what? I don’t know. The stock market will crash or something. Maybe if we refuse to max out our credit cards once again, the financial institutions will lose out on our interest payments and the whole debt slavery system will implode.

Once could hope.

So it’s Black Friday and I really should be offering deals on all the great biochar products I have, what I call The Complete Biochar Toolkit:

• The Biochar Handbook (Chelsea Green is offering 35% off for the holidays)

• My Practical Biochar self-paced online course. Nine sessions available at Regenerative Living Online

• The Ring of Fire Biochar Kiln®

If you are ready to deep-dive into biochar for your home, farm, or business, I guarantee you will find value in what I have to offer, based on nearly 20 years of professional and hands-on involvement with biochar.

I don’t have any special deals to offer on The Complete Biochar Toolkit, just the exceptional value of these products that are available for you whenever you are ready for them.

Instead, I want to share some ideas for no or low-cost biochar-based gifts that you can make and share with your loved ones.

Let’s start with some charcoal potions you can make for health and beauty. Mix up a big batch, clean out some nice jars you have saved and fill them with gifts for everyone. Decorate some stickers to put on the jars listing the ingredients.

So far, I have only used a purchased food-grade activated charcoal for health and beauty products, out of an abundance of caution. I get mine from Charcoal House, an outlet owned by John Dinsley, author of Charcoal Remedies. Dinsley spent decades as a medical missionary working all over the world in remote communities with few resources. He used charcoal to cure dysentery, heal wounds and bites, stop poisoning, and knock back infections of all kinds. This book would make a great holiday gift for anyone. Charcoal Remedies belongs on every biochar prepper’s bookshelf.

You don’t strictly need to purchase food-grade charcoal for personal care products. If you are confident that your homemade biochar is made from clean wood, bamboo, or nut shells in a clean metal container, and that it has been well-cooked at a high temperature so that it crushes easily, then it should be fine to use for these products. The Biochar Handbook has instructions for several different methods of making your own biochar.

My number one charcoal health product is biochar toothpowder. If you already have a favorite toothpowder recipe, add a food-grade activated charcoal powder to it. The biochar is not there to polish your teeth white, but to immobilize and remove bacteria that eat away at teeth and gums. Generally, charcoal is not abrasive enough to remove tooth enamel, but I like to add bentonite clay to help re-mineralize my teeth. The alkalinity of the clay and the biochar help prevent loss of calcium and other tooth enamel minerals. This toothpowder also acts as a mouthwash. Charcoal’s odor absorbing powers go to work when you rinse your mouth. Swish it around before you spit it out! I have a recipe for biochar toothpowder in The Biochar Handbook, but you can figure out your own combination of these and other toothpowder ingredients to make it the way you like it. Your loved ones will appreciate this gift of healthy teeth and gums.

Biochar Toothpowder ingredients

• food-grade activated charcoal

• bentonite clay

• baking soda

• xylitol powder for tooth-safe sweetness

• powdered mint for flavor

A gift of bath salts says you really care. Get some plain epsom salts and add essential oils for relaxing aromas and mix with powdered or granular biochar. Salt changes the osmotic pressure of the bathwater, pulling water soluble toxins from your skin into the bath where the biochar can absorb them. Such a great way to get clean and relax.

Biochar Bath Salts ingredients

• one part epsom salts

• one part activated charcoal

• a few drops of essential oil like lavender or eucalyptus

Those who use an exfoliating facial scrub may have no idea that these products often contain microplastics to perform the scrubbing function. You can make this scrub to give as a gift or use yourself. Some biochar will work nicely to increase your scrubbing power while absorbing toxins that are released. I add clay for its drawing power and tea tree oil as an antiseptic. You can also leave it on your face for a few minutes as a mask.

Biochar Facial Scrub ingredients

• activated charcoal

• bentonite clay

• enough water to make the clay into a paste

• coconut oil

• tea tree oil

⁠For your friends who love plants, whether houseplants, flower beds or gardens, give them the gift of rich, black soil. Introduce them to the power of biochar with these thoughtful gifts that you can make.

A big bag of gift-wrapped potting soil looks impressive under the Christmas tree! You can either buy some quality potting soil and add biochar to it, or make your own biochar potting soil blend. When adding biochar to the potting mix, keep it to about 20 percent by volume, and add in a bit of extra fertilizer to help charge up the biochar with nutrients.

When I re-potted my sad, struggling Christmas Cactus with biochar potting soil a few years ago, it exploded in growth. I have never seen anything like it! You could also gift a houseplant you grow or re-pot yourself with the biochar potting mix.

Introduce friends and family to the power of biochar by mixing up small bags of pre-inoculated biochar that they can add to garden beds and flower pots. There are lots of ways to charge up biochar with nutrients and biology. I won’t go into all of that here, because you really ought to get a copy of The Biochar Handbook to learn about the many different options for turning raw biochar into a powerful fertilizer charged up with nutrients and beneficial microbes.

Everyone has kitchen scraps and we all struggle with how to deal with the smell and the mess. You can be the hero who shows everyone how to use biochar and bokashi to ferment food waste on the way to the compost pile for further processing. Fermented food waste has a nice pickle smell, not that nauseating garbage can small.

Get some bokashi (I make my own) and mix it in a one-to-one ratio with biochar. Package it in a convenient container, and then find an attractive kitchen canister at a thrift store to hold the food scraps. Print out some instructions like this to include with your gift:

How to use the biochar-bokashi food waste fermenter:

• sprinkle a cup of biochar-bokashi in the bottom of the canister

• add your food scraps

• for every 2 cups of food scraps, sprinkle a half cup of biochar-bokashi on top

• smash it down with a wooden spoon and put the lid on

• when the canister is full, empty it into a larger bucket with a lid in the garage or porch

• smash it down to get the air out of it

• when the bucket is full, empty into your compost pile with leaves and other yard waste

• It won’t smell, animals will not dig it up, and it will make great compost for your garden

Here’s another project from The Biochar Handbook: a small biochar cookstove made with tin cans. I have two designs that you can make, the Bubble Stove and the Whirly Girl. Both use wood pellets and they make biochar while they cook your food. This is also a fun project to do with kids.

Enough with the practical gifts, let’s have some fun! Of course we all know that charcoal is an art material. You can make your own charcoal drawing sticks. Find some green willow switches and peel the bark off of them. Cut them to about 6 inch lengths so they can fit into a clean paint can with some nail holes punched into the lid. Toss the can into a fire and watch the gas come out of the holes in tiny flames. When the flame is gone, your charcoal sticks are ready.

You can also put items like pine cones, bones, nut shells, and even flower heads and berries into your pyro can and make interesting art objects to use in projects.

I charred some cute acorns the other day and I am wondering how I could make Christmas ornaments or jewelry out of them. If you use clear acrylic cast in molds to make jewelry, you could add some interesting charred objects to your designs, with a bit of glitter for contrast. Black is always chic!

Ok, here’s my final biochar Christmas gift idea: Coal lump cookies for the stockings. You know the kids have not been 100 percent good this year so they deserve a few lumps of coal from Santa. Mix up a batch of cookies with food grade charcoal. You could make my favorite, Russian Tea Cakes. Add enough charcoal to color the dough and then roll them in powdered sugar with biochar. They will look like perfect little lumps of coal, but they will taste much better.

I am going to have to try that.

Happy Holidays!

Please, if you want to learn more about practical biochar tips and tricks for growing your own food, or you are interested in stewardship biochar for restoring natural ecosystems and biodiversity, check out some of my links below:

The Biochar Handbook at Amazon.com

The Biochar Handbook at Bookshop.org

Purchase Kelpie’s Practical Biochar Course

Order your Ring of Fire Biochar Kiln®: RingofFire.earth

Check out my YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@KelpieWilson

Biochar On Site network for practitioners of stewardship biochar