PODCAST · education
Char Chit Chat
by Char Chit Chat
Char Chit Chat is created by Dylan Graves and explores char in New Zealand and beyond. The podcast aims to interview a range of people involved in biochar, activated charcoal, carbon anodes, and so on. The main subject will tend to be biochar as that is most accessible and scales from individuals making char in their woodstove over the winter to large industrial pyrolysis units outputting several tonnes per day. Biochar is also a great soil conditioner and improver and so is relevant to gardeners and farmers alike. An introduction and overview of Biochar: https://www.sces.org.nz/biochar
Episodes
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CCC S2E15 with Toula Finlayson (Southland Carbon)
Toula from Southland Carbon joined me for a chat this week about her journey of biochar discovery to being the largest commercial producer in NZ. Toula and partner Andrew set up the facility in the old Pukerau Brickworks which is near Gore in Southland.Southland Carbon produces livestock grade...
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CCC S2E14 with Kevin Rapson (Buzi-B Flower Farm)
Episode 14 was a fun chat with Kevin Rapson from Buzi-B Flower Farm. We chat about how he has used biochar to improve his and his wife Trish's soil for growing flowers commercially on their small holding on the Kaipara Coast, North West of Auckland. I met Kevin and Trish at the Fieldays in June…
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CCC S2E13 with Amanda Currie (Tinwald Farm)
Episode 13 of the Char Chit Chat with Amanda from Tinwald Farm covered a lot of cool stuff. I feel like more women are needed in the world to run farms so that they become way more connected with the living systems that they are part of. Amanda farms regeneratively near Cromwell where her...
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CCC S2E12 with Greg Hart (Mangarara Farm)
Episode 12 features well known regenerative farmer Greg Hart from Mangarara Farm in the Hawkes Bay region. Dylan has known about Greg and his tree planting for many years and met Greg at the Underground Festival in 2025 after he attended his biochar workshop. It's great that Greg is now seeing…
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CCC S2E11 with Shakēd From
Shakēd is involved in a large variety of endeavours and we talk about these for awhile before biochar comes up, but hopefully you will still find it all interesting! We chat about a 3 year black soldier fly trial using food waste to make fertiliser and high protein animal food, gold mining...
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CCC S2E10 with Phil Stevens (Slow Farm)
Dylan's first face to face podcast with an update from Phil in Ashhurst about what he is up to (S1E2 here). We had just returned from Hamilton with John after Fieldays 2026 and I was spending two days staying with Phil on my way to Wellington. Phil has been at this property, soon after arriving...
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CCC S2E9 with Lydia Thomsen (Pickled Compost)
Episode 9 with Lydia from the Wairarapa covers the relationship between soil health, plant nutrition, and human health. Lydia is a qualified nutritionist on a mission to pickle household food scraps using bokashi buckets along with her bone char made from her friend's Complete Cow farm business,...
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CCC S2E8 with John Valentine
Episode 8 with John explores his recent discovery of biochar for his compost and his method of making it in a stainless steel bucket. This takes some work to do, but in a social context such as hanging out with his grandchildren, is way more like constructive play and not really work at all. John...
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CCC S2E7 with Stephen Newman
Episode 7 features Stephen who lives just north of Auckland on 23 acres. He is one of the farmers who receives food waste from the City To Farm project featured in Season 1 Episode 6. We talk about how he deals with that food waste on his property and what he is using the resulting biochar…
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CCC S2E6 with James McNally
Episode 6 featured James from the Hawkes Bay. We talk about his current role as a tutor at Land Based Training where he hopes to incorporate biochar into the horticulture courses. James' passion for biochar shows through as we get into the chat. He bought himself a kontiki kiln several years ago...
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CCC S2E5 with Anni Kurze (Soil Stewards)
Anni talks to Dylan about her life journey from Germany to Portugal to settling in New Zealand in 2012. She and husband Ron homestead on 50 acres in Maheno in North Otago and besides homeschooling 3 children, homesteading with livestock, reading books, she also has a small business providing...
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CCC S2E4 with Katerina Seligman
Katerina has been involved in biochar in New Zealand since the 'early days' - one of the pioneers who saw it as a practical way to sequester carbon in response to excess carbon in the air. She talks about her trials in the garden using biochar and how she still continues to use it in her compost...
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CCC S2E3 - Dylan interviewed by Conan Moynihan (Force of Nature podcast)
The Force of Nature Podcast is where regenerative thinking meets high-performance farming. Hosted by farm consultant Conan Moynihan, this show dives deep into the future of food, farming, and human health. Tune in for real-world conversations with farmers, thinkers, and disruptors who are...
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CCC S2E2 with Gerard Anselmi (Kaipara Coast Farm)
Gerard turned 65 and then bought a 550ha farm for his retirement! Together with his son Jake, they are exploring more regenerative ways of farming livestock while also looking after the land. Biochar is an emerging part of this journey and I really like the DIY, give-it-a-go approach Kaipara…
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CCC S2E1 with Megan and Daniel Schutt (Above & Below Collective)
Great to get dairy farmers on the Char Chit Chat who actively use and promote biochar in many aspects of their farming operation. We delve into their farming journey and reveal many very sensible aspects such as once a day milking, cow barns with bunkers to give the cows comfort and to harness...
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CCC S1E20 with Matt Welton (Carbon Options)
The last podcast for the year for Season 1! Dylan is joined by Matt from Carbon Options at Gallops Ridge Farm in the lower north island. We talk about Matt's journey in life and with biochar as a solution to forestry slash on their property. They are giving parts back to nature and parts are…
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CCC S1E19 - Biochar benefits to Dairy Farms
This is an audio version (with some commentary) of the literature review and creation of 10 Benefits of Biochar to Dairy Farms completed in late November 2025: https://biochar.net.nz/about-biochar/economic-applications/dairy-cows-and-biochar
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CCC S1E18 with Raymond Dobbe (BiocharTP)
Raymond is the founder, driving force, and funder behind BiocharTP. His company is developing two main products - an air curtain biochar producing machine and a livestock feed supplement called Carbon-kai. We chat about Raymond's working life journey, his entrepreneurial success, and current huge...
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CCC S1E17 with Trevor Richards
Trevor is one of the founding members of Biochar Network New Zealand (BNNZ) and the secretary since its inception in 2019. He joined me for a chat and talked about his journey with biochar and many insights into its prevalence in SouthEast Asia and New Zealand. Another flame cap method using Warm...
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CCC S1E16 - Biochar benefits Composting - audio version of article
In this episode Dylan reads the article now on the BNNZ website that outlines the benefits of adding biochar into any composting system. Dylan was paid by BNNZ to create the article and a couple of versions of it to help promote biochar being used in composting. It outlines 10+ ways that biochar...
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CCC S1E15 with Huhana Smith (Waikōkopu Grove & Orchard)
Excited to release this chat with Huhana so you too can enjoy her passion for biochar and growing good food. Huhana is an artist, university professor, farmer, kaitiaki, biochar enthusiast, and more... We explore a recent stream rehabilitation project made into an art project that has probably...
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CCC S1E14 with Cameron Smith
Episode 14 featured Cameron who lives on a lifestyle block near Pukekohe in the Auckland region of New Zealand. I liked Cameron's answer to what is biochar: "I like the coral reef analogy - I think it's something people understand. They have a strong visual image of what a coral reef is... and…
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CCC S1E13 with John McDonald-Wharry
John is a researcher and academic so it was great to hear his perspective and explanations of biochar knowledge that he has gained from doing a PhD tackling 3 aspects of biochar; investigating how biochar changes on a molecular level at different carbonisation temperatures, quality testing…
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CCC S1E12 with Simon Day
Episode 12 was an inspiring chat with Simon from Waiuku (40km south west of Auckland city) who uses biochar to enhance his pastures as well as feeds it to cattle to improve their health. The success is evident in the increased pasture regrowth times and animals not needing drenching, having high...
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CCC S1E11 with Dale Redwood (Rivendale Wood)
Episode 11 of Char Chit Chat features a chat with Dale from the Bay of Plenty area of New Zealand. Dale is an ecologist with a strong interest in tree systems and biochar. We delve into his hands-on, low budget methods of making biochar from tree branches on the family farm. Dale has started his...
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CCC S1E10 with John Wraight (CharPae)
Episode 10 (into the double digits!) is with John from Paekākāriki on the Kāpiti Coast. We chat about his discovery and immediate fixation with biochar around 2020 and then the formation of a local char group as an offshoot of the community gardens. CharPae applied for grants from local council…
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CCC S1E9 with Helen Dew (Living Economies)
Dylan chats with Helen Dew (now 87) who featured in the documentary called Being the Change at 85. Helen speaks with conviction about how important healthy soil is, and how biochar, bokashi, compost, and mulch in combination all help soil health. We talk about her upcoming autobiography and her...
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CCC S1E8 with Klaus Lotz (PermaDynamics)
Klaus and his family run PermaDynamics Farm and Education up in Northland and we chat about his long history with biochar and agroforestry. Permaculture comes up too. I really recommend having a look through their website after the podcast and also seeing what is on offer on their youtube…
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CCC S1E7 with Cornelia Holten (KoruKai)
Cornelia (and Kai) run KoruKai Herb Farm in Banks Peninsular, near Christchurch. We had an excellent chat about how they make and use biochar for their animals, compost toilet, worm product, and composting in general. Also, about their homesteading and small home business selling herb related...
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CCC S1E6 with Betsy Kettle (City to Farm)
Wow - what a great project Betsy has going on - City to Farm is all about collecting food resources in the city and using it to build soil on a banana farm! The project is on a mission to see if Terra Preta can be created and how it long it will take as well as educating primary school students...
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CCC S1E5 with Ben Elms (Dr Compost)
Ben is known as Dr Compost and works in education, landscape design, permaculture, and with biochar. He is also treasurer for Biochar Network New Zealand. We chat about who Ben is, what he does, and heaps about his biochar passion. Links to topics mentioned: Wanaka Wastebusters Dr Compost NZ Tree...
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CCC S1E4 with Joany Grima (The Good Carbon Farm)
Joany is one of the founders of The Good Carbon Farm and we chat about how she got into biochar, the work her charity is involved in, and what she looks forward to for the future. The Good Carbon Farm on LinkedIn and Instagram. Projects mentioned in the chat: Oke school gardens...
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CCC S1E3 with Dennis Enright (New Zealand Biochar)
Dennis Enright is Managing Director of New Zealand Biochar Ltd and promotes organic and sustainable growing practices, and the role that biochar can play in such systems. He has over 40 years of experience in agriculture and horticulture that ranges from researcher to commercial producer. In...
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CCC S1E2 with Phil Stevens (Slow Farm)
This episode with Phil covers where he is from, how he got into char, his favourite method of making it, what he uses char for on his lifestyle block, benefits of char, interesting new research about decontamination of pfas using char and iron, what he thinks is needed for biochar to go…
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CCC S1E1 Intro to host (Dylan of Passionate Permies)
A short introduction to the host of Char Chit Chat - Passionate Permie DylanOur website: https://passionatepermies.wordpress.com/ Listen to more from Dylan: 31 July 2024 Reskillience: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/retire-by-35-with-dylan-graves/id1723090226?i=1000663884860 9 May 2024…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Char Chit Chat is created by Dylan Graves and explores char in New Zealand and beyond. The podcast aims to interview a range of people involved in biochar, activated charcoal, carbon anodes, and so on. The main subject will tend to be biochar as that is most accessible and scales from individuals making char in their woodstove over the winter to large industrial pyrolysis units outputting several tonnes per day. Biochar is also a great soil conditioner and improver and so is relevant to gardeners and farmers alike. An introduction and overview of Biochar: https://www.sces.org.nz/biochar
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Char Chit Chat
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Char Chit Chat have?
Char Chit Chat currently has 35 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Char Chit Chat about?
Char Chit Chat is created by Dylan Graves and explores char in New Zealand and beyond. The podcast aims to interview a range of people involved in biochar, activated charcoal, carbon anodes, and so on. The main subject will tend to be biochar as that is most accessible and scales from individuals...
How often does Char Chit Chat release new episodes?
Char Chit Chat has 35 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Char Chit Chat?
You can listen to Char Chit Chat on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Char Chit Chat?
Char Chit Chat is created and hosted by Char Chit Chat.
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