ঌ BIOCHARMA
Land Tending with the Earth in Mind
We restore forest health through carbon-sequestering land management that promotes fire safety, soil vitality, and regenerative balance. Our work empowers you to build a sustainable & symbiotic relationship with the land you call home.
Contact us for all your land care needs. Whether it’s microbe farming or firescaping, we offer year-round support, personalized for you.
Serving Nevada County & the Greater California Area
Contact us to Request Travel to Your Location
Firescaping for Resilient Forests
Our firescaping services combine brush clearing, ecological design, and mindful burning to reduce wildfire risk while regenerating the land.
We assess the natural features of your property: its slopes, water sources, and tree density in order to create a fire-resilient landscape that still feels natural and alive.
We give your land a chance to breathe.
When we tend the forest with care, the earth responds in kind.
Biochar locks carbon securely in the soil, balances moisture, supports microbial ecosystems, and strengthens plant growth.
What was once dense and overgrown becomes safe, spacious, and vibrant.
After treatment, the soil hums with new life, trees grow stronger, and the air even feels lighter.
Tending the Land
Cultivating Regeneration Year-Round
Our land tending work continues beyond fire season & focuses on the steady cultivation of healthy, living ecosystems.
Using practices like hugelkultur, microbe farming, and Korean Natural Farming (KNF), we build fertile soil, restore microbial life, and create conditions for long-term forest resilience.
Each project deepens the relationship between people and place, transforming land care into an act of reciprocity and renewal.
Biochar: Culturing Fertility with Fire
Biochar is a form of charcoal made by heating organic matter in a low-oxygen environment—a process called pyrolysis. Unlike open burning, which releases carbon into the atmosphere, pyrolysis locks carbon into the soil, where it remains for centuries. This simple, ancient technology transforms forest waste into a regenerative resource, creating a cleaner, safer, and more fertile environments for all living things.
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𖦹 Carbon Sequestration 𖦹
Biochar acts as a permanent carbon vault, keeping carbon out of the atmosphere and within the soil. Three full kilns of biochar can sequester up to one ton of carbon, helping to mitigate the effects of climate change while improving soil health.
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𖦹 Clean Fires 𖦹
Traditional burns release carbon and smoke into the air, but biochar production uses pyrolysis, an oxygen-deprived combustion chamber that burns cleanly and efficiently. The result is a near smokeless process that converts waste brush into a soil amendment that promotes life without polluting the air.
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𖦹 Living Soil 𖦹
Once added to the soil, biochar becomes a long-lasting habitat for beneficial microbes. It enhances water retention, balances soil pH, and increases fertility, turning even dry or depleted land into a thriving ecosystem.
Our Services
Land Survey & Consultations
Our surveys provide a clear assessment of your land’s condition; terrain, vegetation density, and fire risk, so you understand what’s needed before any work begins. Consultations offer deeper insight and personalized recommendations for those exploring regenerative options before committing to a project.
Firescaping & Land Tending
Our core service combines brush clearing & mindful burning in safe biochar kilns to reduce wildfire risk and restore ecological balance. Each project leaves the land safer, cleaner, and more fertile, transforming excess growth into living carbon that nourishes the soil.
Workshops & Education
The wisdom of fire keeping is a lost art we want to bring back to humanity. When working with fire, our bodies naturally respond, and our deepest intelligence comes alive.
Biocharma’s founder, Ariela, works with The Biochar Coalition 501(c)(3), to offer hands-on training for individuals, communities, and organizations seeking to learn regenerative fire stewardship. From backyard burns to municipal land management, our workshops reconnect people with the ancient relationship between fire, fertility, and care for the earth.
The Biochar Coalition 501(c)(3) is available to partner with firefighters, forestry crews, and land management organizations to provide sustainable, carbon-sequestering fire mitigation and biochar training throughout Nevada County and the surrounding regions.
Our Mission at Biocharma
At Biocharma, our mission is to restore harmony between people and the land through conscious fire stewardship and regenerative land care. We believe true sustainability arises not from domination or extraction, but from collaboration with nature, with fire, and with one another. Rooted in indigenous land care practices, we reimagine forest management as an act of healing rather than control.
Where much of the biochar industry leans toward mechanical efficiency and industrial output, our work puts reciprocity with the land first. We treat each burn as a conversation with the land, where listening is as important as doing. Through gentle and attentive methods, we transform overgrowth into living carbon, creating fertility, safety, and renewal for the ecosystem.
We are here to turn fear of fire into respect, to teach the art of tending rather than clearing, and to inspire communities to live in symbiosis with the forests that sustain them.
Meet the Founder, Ariela Mashiah aka “Ari Chari”
Ariela Meshiah, founder of Biocharma, is a land steward & educator dedicated to ecological and indigenous land-care practices. Her work bridges science and spirit, and is guided by intuition, care, and a deep love for the earth. With a background in Korean Natural Farming, sustainability, and microbiology, she approaches fire not as a force to control, but as a living ally. Her work extends beyond Biocharma; as a founding member of the non-profit Biochar Coalition, her work unites communities by providing biochar education through seminars and workshops.
Ariela has traveled the world and has witnessed how people in different cultures live in relationship with the land. She draws inspiration from Terra Preta: How the World’s Most Fertile Soil Can Help Reverse Climate Change and Reduce World Hunger, as well as traditional and Indigenous land practices that honor fire as a creative force. These experiences have shaped her belief that caring for the earth is central to what connects us to one another; that tending the land is a form of tending our shared humanity.
Her guiding philosophy is simple: we’re all in this together. Through Biocharma, she brings that spirit of connection to every project, restoring health, balance, and reverence to the living landscapes she touches.
Our work would not be possible without the Indigenous peoples of this nation, who have kept alive and passed down these sustainable land care practices for generations. We want to give special thanks to the Nisenan, Maidu, & Washoe peoples of this land we’re on in the Sierras and extend our gratitude to all Indigenous peoples for caring for this earth. Thank you.
Let’s Tend the Earth Together
Biocharma provides firescaping, land tending, and biochar production across Nevada County and throughout California.
Contact us for land care, workshops, or to learn how regenerative fire practices can make your land safer and more alive.
Feel free to give us a call to get in touch right away or send us an email (or use the contact form here) to ask any questions you may have.