So day to day, it's just a lot of farming.

It's just irrigating and moving water there's harvesting, processing and sampling those crops and then sending them off for analysis.

It's really like working on, you know, your own farm.

But add in the data.

My name is Michael Lobato.

I live here in Fruita.

I work here at the CSU Fruita research station.

I also have my biochar trial field here at the station as well.

Pretty cool stuff.

I really didn't even know what it was until about 2021 but when I started using it it just went from drying out in a day to, like, drying out in three or four days.

Thats pistachio shell biochar right there.

Biochar is, basically a fancy name for charcoal.

I started learning more about it, its very, very porous.

So like in a gram roughly, it's like 2000 square inches of surface area.

You're increasing the storage of a given soil with with that material.

This was done in a hay field.

The biochar test field here is two acres total you have soil sensors at 6, 12, and 18 inches.

Each cable goes to three sensors at three different levels here.

The solar panel charges this battery and then this battery powers this logger, which is then wired into the sensors.

So we have a zero to 24 inch profile that we're looking at the moisture I have their sensor data on my phone.

So, right over ther they have a sensor in three and in four.

The biochar strips they'll have 23% more moisture in them even after a month, even through the winter with no irrigation.

Increasing water holding capacity in soil is not entirely new like that's known that it can.

What's new is the way we put it in the soil is far optimal than tilling it in and it works differently.

We brought this machine out that's normally used in golf course industry then we inject biochar vertically into the ground.

So when you aerate a soil, you get a lot of good benefits.

Well, if you do it this way and you fill that void with biochar, it's a semi-permanent aeration.

That's how turf machine works.

Also in doing that, we use a lot less material which is cheaper just in the sheer cost of the material.

every time I irrigate, I record the start and end irrigation data and then the flow rates.

So I have all the data for all season.

So now that we have, you know, a year and a half on this project, there's really no question that it improves the water holding capacity.

We're seeing more of the soil health benefit side of it.

This is more like a specialty for orchards, vineyards, any high value crop because if people are looking at ways to cut their water use and cut their inputs of fertilizers that are shipped from around the world they go up and up every year, those costs then if you can take that out or reduce that, then that's a great thing.