Phyromining

[OreCart]

I realized I am in an ideal spot to try this, but am curious if others have done so, and what their results were?

I was thinking about doing a phyromining experiment upon my farm this year. I believe I am in an excellent location for this. I have gold bearing bedrock, yet only a few inches above, I have some fertile soil. I was going to plant a few acres of sunflowers anyway, so treating the soil with a lixiviant just before harvest would not be a big deal. Naturally, being a sheep farm, I have the resources to produce that lixiviant as well.

My original intent was to harvest the heads for the seeds, and have the stems to be chopped for sheep fodder, but obviously I cannot do the latter if treated with lixiviant. I experimented this year with using corn mixed in my home-heating pellet stove with excellent results, so I thought this year I would experiment with burning sunflower seeds. Yet rather than use the stalks to feed my sheep, I would just burn the stalks and have the resulting ash assayed to see what the gold/Silver/PMG content was. We have grown sunflowers in the past with really good results, so I know sunflowers grow well here, it would just be interesting to see how much they hyperaccumulate gold/silver/pgm's. Really the only technical help I would need is figuring out how much lixiviant I would need to apply per acre to kickstart the hyperaccumulation process.

I do not know any farm in Maine who is doing this though, mostly because how much gold/silver/pgm areas are located under open farm land?

It would be an interesting experiment though, and while I doubt it would be a literal gold mine for me, it would be easier than hard rock mining (LOL).

It might be interesting to see how much remediation could happen to my farm's soils from the high levels of copper and zinc that have accumulated from liquid dairy cow manure applications too. That unto itself has high benefits for since it is such a problem for us farmers; especially sheep farmers! (Anything over 8 ppm in the feed will kill a sheep as they are very susceptible to copper toxicity).

Heat my home, rid my farm of toxic levels of heavy metals, and gathering up gold all at the same time; it is a very interesting concept.

 

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[OreCart]

There is kind of a funny story about this gravel pit...

Quite a few years ago when I was married to my second wife (not to be confused with wife #1 or #3), she got all bent in the head because I went down to the pit, and there was a pretty good sized hole opened up. I would say 150 cubic yards or so. So not a huge amount, but obviously someone had been serious about taking it too. Well the wife was all cranked up because she wanted the money for it, and I was not sure who had taken it.


"Oh a check will be right along", I said. So a month goes by, and she is getting upset...

"Oh a check will be right along", I said. So another month goes by, and she is getting really steamed.

"Oh a check will be right along", I said. So another month goes by, and then another...

And just as I said, when they got good and ready, they sent a check, for just the amount they took, for the value of the gravel taken. No sense to get all wound up about it, nor try and figure out who took it; somewhere they will square up in the end...and they did. I think my ex-wife was more upset that I was right, and there was no need to get all excited over someone "stealing" from us, then she was in them taking the gravel.

(There father was really good friends with my Grandfather, so he had given them permission years and years before to take the gravel if they needed it, so they had permission, even if my grandfather and their father were both dead at this point. If my Grandfather made an agreement, and I know of it, then as his Grandson, I feel duty-bound to honor it.)

 

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[OreCart]

Placers aren't that difficult to assess, in fact they are easier than lode deposits if you are methodical. Here are a couple of good publications to get you started on a placer assessment program:

Cost Estimation Handbook for Small Placer Mines

Placer Examination, Principles and Practice



Platinum group metals are never found in isolation. There is always a mix of PGMs in any mineralization. The market is very volatile for these metals due to fluctuating industrial demand so a PGM deposit has to be a pretty good size to remain profitable from month to month.

A small PGM deposit is rarely worth mining and a large PGM deposit is beyond the abilities of a small miner. Since you don't intend to sell your family's land the PGMs would be an additional receipt at the refiners, at best.

Enjoy your hunt.

Heavy Pans

Hey thanks for the links; I have not had time on this busy holiday weekend to check them out, but I will.

I have been concentrating my time on the gravel pit ever since finding out it had gold because I have the right to mine it, the equipment to dig, and have extensive test borings on the area so I know where things lie.

It has its challenges though because it is very sandy. It has the occasional big rock, but screening down to 1/4 inch will still mean putting 75-50 percent through whatever I use for gold separation.

The Extec is expensive to operate, so I do not see using that, and the finest I can get is 1/2 inch minus anyway. I will probably run a small dedicated trammel, then go into a concentrator, because I do not see anyway a sluice will get me the fine gold I have here. As I said, it is a real challenge; fine gold in fine sand/gravel.

The other big challenge will be water. I live on a pretty big hill, so no matter what I do, I will have to build a tank or retainment pond of some kind, and recirculate. I am actually thinking about just putting the wash plant in my barnyard, and hauling the gravel up here (1/4 mile) rather than processing it in the gravel pit, just because it would be a challenge to get any high volume of water.

The PGM's...Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I am too cheap NOT to do something with them, but what?

I am thinking for now I will try and find a way to separate and collect them, and then just hold onto them for future use. The PGM's are pretty new to the scene, so hopefully in the future something small scale can be done to separate them out. They have value, so inevitably there will be interest down the road in devising something small scale that can part out thePGM's...no sense ignoring them now, and in a decade wishing I had them.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Reed Lukens (is on here), saved up his PGMs and sold several ounces all at once. There is a market!

 

[Madmox]

Hemp is a good bio-accumulator for PM's and mercury. The resinous leaves can also be used to capture fine gold.

Hmmm...Might explain some of the craziness of the libs out in CA.

Yeah. Just plant an acre of the Devils Lettuce then you can make money on that end too!

 

[OreCart]

Yeah. Just plant an acre of the Devils Lettuce then you can make money on that end too!

Oh my, I don't have to plant it, for some reason the people from the southern part of the state think us landowners know nothing about what is going on here, and plant crops on us every year.

I got a good relationship with the police, which is good. One year they flew helicopters overhead and found a big patch on us, and every law enforcement agency in Maine showed up. This one state trooper was yelling in my face, "we got you. We got you big time," and the local game warden laughed and said, "I am not sure who is growing this, but I know it is not the landowners."

Typically if I see plots of it now, I just smash it with the skidder.

I will say though, that prospecting has been good because it has got me out all over the farm. For instance I saw a neighbor is getting ready to do something with their land...probably log it, and the surveyor's marks were way off. I would have missed it if I had not been going to that particular stream. It is in everyone's interest to keep the lines in the right place.