Golden rod is rather woody. Back in the day I built a switch grass bale burner. Golden rod burned the best and I didn’t plant it.
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Well I have to give you credit for thinking outside the box. I have plenty of goldenrod and have had may thoughts about it but never have I looked at it and thought fuel source.
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Most likely they took the “bark”/bast for making fibre, and you have the inner core called the hurd. It is short fibres (.5mm) and 20-30% lignin.
I would probably try chunking it as is. It should be fairly long stalks and you could probably do it with a lawnmower with a hole in the deck and flip the blade, extremely quickly. Someone made one for wood once… It should make it easier to handle in bulk and dry faster.
Then you can either gasify it directly, or just char it, but I suspect it will crumple fairly easily and it will end up being biochar. In which case, chopping it and throwing it back on the field will be a lot less work without the charring and it will break down a lot faster.
Pelletizing with the high lignin content should be fairly easy.
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If the goal is to dump it in a field a corn chopper would be a very common tool that would easily make small bits out of hemp.
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That is actually how I have seen it done. It was hand fed into 1 row tow behind corn choppers. I was just trying to think of something smaller, cheaper and easier to try (and flipping the blade over wont work unless you sharpen the backside…) Plus don’t corn choppers have the drums that leave stalks like about 4-6" which seems too long for trying to use as a pellet-like fuel. I would think you would want it closer to 1/2-1" or roughly the stalk diameter.
Corn choppers will work with grass as well just change the pickup head. A wood cipper would probably work as well. But if you are thinking field scale I would say a corn chopper with a grass head. Just get rake it into a row like grass and let that pickup feed it in. We cut some thick stocks that way when we where chopping feed.
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The way I have seen it done. And I won’t say everyone does it this way. It is cut with a sickle bar or corn knives, collected onto the back of a flatbed and taken to a place where it is stripped. then they had a big pile of stalks. They removed the corn head, and just fed the stalks in directly because it fed faster, and arguably safer then throwing stalks on the feed chains. It was almost all manual labor.
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You could also dump the stacks in a row and pick them up with a grass head I am pretty sure that would work just as well.
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Hey guys let me pull this back to BrianH’s (this topics originator) that Hemp was NOT marijuana.
BrianH had some pretty severe health problems.
I am sure for these problems to ween off of BigPharma drugs he did use some THC self-therapy.
Odd. I reviewed the whole sting of exchanges here and caught no mention of hemp derived CBD as a self-helper?
Now on the third old aging out dog with different conditions we have switched to CBD versus Remidil and other BigPharma meds.
The CBD just like the BigPharma has not “cured” any of the dogs. HAS let them live out more comfortably with zero side effects.
Ha! And now a friends very arthritic 19 year old barn cat. I gifted the pharmaceutical grade CBD. (bacon flavored) The cat moves around better. Has an interest in life again. Is back to eating daily.
Well I have a hat-full of aging medical problems now too.
BigPharma Galatimine at 16+8 mg extended release doses a day. Works. Expensive. Some very hard to live with side effects.
A new Nurologist Doc has determined in January that I was diagnosed wrong 7 years ago. That I actually do not have Frontal Temporal Dementia. MRI brain imaging. My reflex results. My still function “Executive Ability”; my still very good spacial&navigation awareness all say my short term memory problems cannot be FTD. Plus I have not died.
“Good news” says the Doc. You are not terminally diseased.
But . . . .not FTD listed anymore the Galantimine I have been taking the last 7 years will no longer be allowed prescribed.
He does not know what my memory problem is.
Wants me to schedule for much expensive psycho-therophy counseling. As I seem to be angry. Must be depressed and have lots of angzioty. And I am too detail orientated. (OCD is what he wrote).
O.K. Enough, already.
So in the last three weeks I have stepped myself down off of the Galantimine.
At the same time ramped myself up weekly on higher levels of CBD.
Surprise. Surprise. I must have dog genes!
Once up to 90 mg daily of CBD active I am getting as much benefit as I ever got from the BigPharma assistance.
And my Galatimine side effects are going away. (It hammers the liver and intestines. Creates a bit too much vivid night dreaming.)
Now my different arthritis areas are much less bothersome on the CBD.
I am drinking much less coffee.
Many true OCD are using CBD for benefits.
Many truly depressed are now using CBD for benefits.
Many truly angzizaty disabled are now using CBD for benefits.
So now instead of an expensive BigPharma “placebo” (what i read in this Nurologist eyes and unspoken words - he wrote Pseudo-Demetia), I now “placebo” with a legal organic at 1/3 the daily use cost.
A win-win for me.
A win-win for Mother Earth.
Regards
Steve unruh
(Ha! Obviously CBD has not helped my spelling!)
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Steve I think there is a link to wood gas and memory issue. I have some of the same issues now that came after wood gas.
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MattR mine started long before my woodgasing. Midway into my fourth lifelong career.
But . . . woodgas can be a heartbreaker too. An enthusiasm crusher too. A brain emptying sucker-outter too. A passion killer.
Woodgas promoting is best envisioned as the old Greek illustration of the Man pushing a big round rock up an incline. It is always trying to roll back. Robbing any forwards progress. Roll back and crush him.
Woodgas has been the cause of 3, 4 divorces with those I’ve known.
Freeing yourself is to stop pushing the impossible rock. Step aside. “Opps”. I did my part for as long as was reasonable. And then a bit more.
And then walk on up that life-incline unencumbered towards the light. Towards a future.
This is what the Original MENS creators did.
This is what the Whole Earth guy did.
This was shown real well in the movie Forrest Gump. He stopped running when he’d done what he needed to do for himself. Done to his satisfaction. Others, must find their own ways.
S.U.
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SU; Don’t sweat the spelling. Thats why we have spell check. If you can remember the word you want to use (which I have trouble doing) spell check will get it printed. TomC
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Steve U.
Did you, by chance, try going without any medication for your issues when you got off of Galatimine before trying anything else?
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All I can say is Praise God that the doctor was wrong and you are now on a road to recovery Steve. This is good news, and should help you with a better out look in your daily life. I will still keep you on my prayer list for a full recovery.
Bob
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SteveB,
I was put on back in 2013 donepezil (Aricept) first. Cheaper. Available as a generic.
Gives vivid 3D full techincolor, sight and sound, smells dreams. That train dream, or whatever, will be perceived as real, 'goona kill you if you don’t jump fast enough. Unprepared floor landings hurt.
Galantimine/Razadyne/Reminyl dreams for me were black and white, sepia. 2D, able to be perceived as dreams, not real. Just sleep interrupting.
The third last chance phase is a patent blend of both of these.
I am much better now as getting more hours of healing/resetting sleep.
I am much better now as not having to run to a toilet 5-7 times a day. Hand wash out underwear when I could not make it.
Could not keep foods and hydration in myself for years for good overall health.
Hey! And now I can actually eat chocolate again! Mild spicy foods.
And now I can refuse a BigPharma “solution” for borderline high blood pressure (lower now!); anxiety; depression.
Three more drugs with out-of-pocket expenses. With different side effects to endure.
Ha! Ha! Tom as you know for spell check you have to at least get close! Grrrr. And auto grammar and auto spell check cannot select out the proper tense too often.
To, too, two. Their, there, thair. As in them’thair (colloquial).
S.U.
.
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Steve U.
You have really had a time of it. I don’t think I could deal with all that. Hope things continue to go better for you.
Regarding spell check—I was thinking the same thing as you when reading Tom’s comment. I taught commercial printing in high school and college and gave my students a copy of a neat poem I found somewhere which pointed out quite clearly the problems with spell check. If you really want things to be correct, there is no substitute for good, old-fashioned proof reading.
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I don’t think anyone younger than 40 can do that anymore…
Good to hear natural medicine is working for you Steve.
Maybe we get to meet you in person at Argos? 
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Steve U. and Garry,
I found the poem I mentioned about spell check:
TWO GOOD TOO BEE TRUE
Eye halve a spelling chequer;
It came with my pea see;
It plainly marques four my revue,
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say,
Weather eye am wrong oar write;
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid,
It nose bee fore two long,
And eye can put the error rite;
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it;
I am shore your pleased two no,
Its letter perfect awl the weigh,
My chequer tolled me sew.
– Mark Eckman and Jerrold H. Zar
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Wow, thats jus trite 
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